So Far Cry 3 came out of nowhere and took 2nd place in my top 10 games of 2012 at the end of last year, now Ubisoft have released a completely unrelated expansion pack titled Blood Dragon.
Originally thought of as an April Fools joke, Blood Dragon is a 80's action flick spoof through and through, but is it any good?
The year is 2007, the world is in a nuclear war and you play as Rex Power Colt, a cyber-soldier that has been put on a mysterious island to investigate Colonel Sloan, a rogue elite cyber-soldier. However when things go tits up and shit hits the fan it is up to Rex to foil Sloan's evil plot to enslave the world under his tyrannical rule utilising his experiments, Blood Dragons and a mysterious artefact named the Killstar.
From the offset you can tell that Blood Dragon doesn’t want you to take it seriously even for a second, which initially made me a little concerned seeing how serious Far Cry 3 was with its themes of insanity and human trafficking. Luckily Blood Dragon is a success, it combines the gameplay that made Far Cry 3 great (if stripping it down quite a bit) and provides you with a 5-6 hour thrill ride of neon explosions, hilarity and a lot more collectibles.
As stated previously the game plays near identically to Far Cry 3, however its been on a diet. From the off you notice that the game world is significantly smaller (about 3/4ths the size of the South Island on FC3), also there are a lot less weapons (7 in total) and there are only about 5 main missions. However Blood Dragon is a reasonably long expansion pack coming in at about 5-6 hours. The game has more garrisons (outposts) for you to take over, hunting & hostage rescue side quests and a shit ton of collectibles such as TV's & Videotapes.
Rex plays just like Jason Brody, however you have infinite sprint and do not take fall damage due to your cybernetic implants. The skill tree is also gone, you can still earn XP and level up but you cannot choose what skill you unlock next, instead it is pre-set for you what you will unlock. This is both a good and bad thing, its good due to the short length of the overall product compared to FC3 but 15 of the 30 possible unlocks are health upgrades. This was a missed opportunity to include some awesome mechanics and it also makes the games final missions far too easy.
The story in general is a bit shit with no character development or interesting moments with a really bad plot twist, not to mention terrible voice acting, essentially everything FC3's story wasn’t, however it manages to pull it off because it is a spoof of 80's action films with references to many films (most notably Predator and Terminator) and genuinely making me laugh for the majority of the main questline.
Now for graphics...imagine Far Cry 3 at night with a bunch of neon lights and a red fog covering the landscape...yep that’s about it. It still looks fantastic though gone are the fantastic lighting effects brought around by sunlight. The games soundtrack is also very nice, with yet again inspiration from 80's action flicks that really help to set the mood and get you pumped up for the action.
Well short review I suppose but that’s Blood Dragon in a nutshell. For £10 it does seem a bit of a stretch but the fact that its more Far Cry 3 even if its not quite the same as the base game and its really quite funny at times make it worth the investment. If you do not own Far Cry 3 you can still get Blood Dragon as it is a standalone title to download via XBLA, PSN or Steam.
Lets just hope that the next Far Cry expansion pack will be more fleshed out and go back to the games roots.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
7/10
+Hilarious 80's action spoof
+More Far Cry 3
-Too dark
-Not enough content
