Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon

I went into Blood Dragon expecting a throwaway joke and came out the other side genuinely impressed by how completely Ubisoft Montreal committed to the bit. This is a standalone first-person shooter built on the Far Cry 3 engine, set in a neon-soaked, laser-drenched dystopian version of 2007 where nuclear war happened and cyborg commandos are a perfectly reasonable military branch. You play Rex "Power" Colt, a Mark IV Cyber Commando voiced by Michael Biehn of Terminator and Aliens fame, and the game leans into that casting so hard it becomes its own punchline. The 16-bit-style cutscenes, the VHS tracking filter on loading screens, the synth score by Power Glove that is legitimately good to listen to outside of the game: the aesthetic package lands with real confidence. Gameplay is a deliberately stripped-down version of Far Cry 3. You have a core arsenal including a shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, bow, and the arm-mounted Killstar laser cannon, with weapon upgrades unlocked by completing side missions and hunting robotic animals. The crafting system from the base game is gone, which is a clean cut rather than a loss. The skill tree is also simplified: as Rex levels up, perks unlock automatically in a fixed sequence, covering things like chained takedowns, grenade-pin-on-an-enemy finishers, and indefinite underwater breathing thanks to his cyber-lungs. You lose the agency of choosing your own build, but you also never stall in front of a menu wondering what to spend points on. For a game designed to be a brisk, loud experience, it's the right call. The 13 garrisons scattered across the island are the structural heart of the game, and they work exactly as well as Far Cry 3's outposts did, which is to say very well. You can stealth through them, run in loud, or drop a Cyber Heart on the ground and let one of the titular Blood Dragons eat the entire garrison for you. The dragons are massive laser-firing reptiles whose aggression level is color-coded by their neon, and weaponizing them against enemy bases is the most satisfying thing in the game by a clear margin. The main story runs seven missions, there are hostage rescue and assassination side quests, plus scattered VHS tape and CRT TV collectibles. A completionist run lands somewhere between six and ten hours depending on pace. That is short, and if runtime-per-dollar is your main metric, this will feel thin. Where opinions split is on the humor. The jokes come at a constant rate: loading screen gags, tutorial prompts that mock the player for needing a tutorial, in-universe action movie titles, and Rex's one-liners delivered in maximum Biehn deadpan. Some of it lands hard. Some of it is the kind of crass, mid-2000s gross-out humor that has aged worse than the synth soundtrack. The parody also has an inconsistency problem: the cutscenes look 16-bit, the gameplay is modern 3D, and the island itself is mostly dark and drab in a way that feels more like recycled Far Cry 3 assets than an intentional stylistic choice. The neon is loud but the world underneath it is flat. If the comedy doesn't click for you, you're left with a competent but shallow open-world shooter that you'll finish in an afternoon. For the right player, none of that matters. If you have any affection for 1980s action films, synthwave, or games that treat themselves as a delivery vehicle for a specific, uncompromising mood, Blood Dragon earns its runtime completely. The gunplay is smooth, the garrison sandbox holds up, and the Power Glove score alone is worth the admission. It does one thing exceptionally well: it makes you feel like you're playing the game version of a VHS tape found at the back of a video rental store, and that feeling does not wear out before the credits roll.

Alex · Scout Team

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