FC3 Blood Dragon 1st Impressions?

Festus Moonbear

New member
Feb 20, 2013
107
0
0
So I'm surprised this thread doesn't exist yet, unless it does and I'm too dense to find it. There were a couple of threads about PC users having problems running it, but nothing yet from those lucky enough to have no problems or those ingenious enough to play it on a console and so avoid all that bollocks. So from those guys and gals - what do you think so far?

Personally I'm very impressed. I was worried it might not live up to the hype, but so far it has exceeded it for me. My feelings about FC3 were very conflicted (I'm a huge FC2 fan), but all the stuff I disliked there seems to fit in perfectly here because the tone suits it better. Possibly this is because Blood Dragon is a lot more of a gamey game as far as setting and story goes, while for me, the theme and setting of FC3 didn't match the gamey mechanics. The wildlife in Blood Dragon also feels more awesome and intimidating, rather than just annoying as I found it to be in FC3. And you flip-cock the 1887, as God intended. It hits all the buttons I expected it to hit, and is surprisingly funnier than I had hoped, and less one-note. There seems to be actual innovation here rather than just a lot of pop culture references for my generation, although there's certainly a lot of those, too, which is fine by me.

So how is everyone else liking it? Is anyone disappointed, and if so, why? Does it herald the beginning of a brave new world of official mods that all gamers can enjoy and developers can use to get more mileage out of their IPs, or is it just a gimmick? You can probably tell I vote for 'brave new world', but how about you?
 

Bertylicious

New member
Apr 10, 2012
1,400
0
0
I rather suspect that Blood Dragon was sort of a spin off project of some of the dev team after they were having a "wouldn't it be cool if...?" conversation at lunch. Bit like Left 4 Dead was at Valve when some of the dudes kept playing Counterstrike against hordes of bots armed with knives.

If I'm right then I think that's a credit to Ubisoft, or at least the section of Ubisoft where the conversation occurred, but I don't imagine that a lot of the big corporations like EA or ActiZard or even Gearbox would cultivate a corporate culture where people can go "off mission" so readily. Then again, what do I know?

With the rise of the independant developer I'd imagine we'll see more and more of this. Indeed, you could argue that we've seen modding work being contracted out; such as with Obsidian and New Vegas.
 

Alfador_VII

New member
Nov 2, 2009
1,326
0
0
I'm really enjoying it, it's completely bonkers and doesn't take itself seriously.

What does surprise me is how solid the gameplay is, behind the huge slabs of cheese. The titular Blood Dragons are more engaging to fight (or otherwise) than anything in FC3.

We want more of this insanity from the games industry.
 

Smooth Operator

New member
Oct 5, 2010
8,162
0
0
It's a cool little parody at the right price, I'm just not the demographic for it.

Because despite it's looks under the bonnet this is still just modern shooter malarkey and honestly for me it's like a DNF flashback, but where this is done intentionally and DNF was botched that way.
 

mrseriousguy

New member
Sep 24, 2011
22
0
0
I got my first stab at it and I have to say I am having a lot fun. I would have to agree it's what people wanted DNF to be but not botched like DNF. Plus has anyone got the soundtrack because I was like wow very good stuff really 80's/John Carpenter music.
 

Auron

New member
Mar 28, 2009
531
0
0
Fantastic, hilarious and it references every single sci-fi action movie from the 80's while it's at it! The gameplay is much like Farcry 3 which is awesome. I love the humour and the senseless plot. The soundtrack's amazing it shamelessly rips off lot of sci-fi soundtracks from the 80's but puts a new spin here and there and it all sounds pretty in line with the content.

If I had to complain I'd mention the entire host of collectibles, and Rex hates it as much as I do(The assassin's creed jokes lol.) but they're linked to the weapon upgrades, another bit I didn't like is the fact the pistol's very low damage due to the burst, not exactly my preference either and I don't think I'll find another pistol. Minor complaints however, I highly recommend the game to everyone who's old enough or had enough contact with 80's movies to get the jokes.

I'd love more initiative like this in the industry.
 

EscapeGoat_v1legacy

New member
Aug 20, 2008
2,788
0
0
I absolutely love it. It's cheesy, it's got over-the-top action, nothing makes any sense and it doesn't take itself seriously. It has a montage sequence, cutscenes that look they've been ripped straight from the NES Ninja Gaiden games, Michael Biehn playing some sort of fusion of the Terminator, the Predator and Rambo spouting ridiculous one-liners at every opportunity, awesome 80's synth-metal and giant laser-shooting Tron-dinosaurs.

It's like a wonderful blend of the older 90's-era shooters that had a sense of humour mixed with the more refined gameplay of modern shooters and I think it works beautifully. Sure I have some issues with it, mostly with how it takes a lot of the elements I enjoyed about Far Cry 3 and strips them down to a bare-bones version of what they were - the skill tree is now just a fixed leveling system, crafting is gone so there's no point to having animals on the island and there's no reason to be stealthy when taking garrisons because there's no XP bonus for it - but it's still a lot of fun overall and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone. I'd say it was £12 well-spent, personally.
 

Festus Moonbear

New member
Feb 20, 2013
107
0
0
My favourite reference so far is calling the shotgun 'The Galleria.' The menu description for that gun has a nice dig at Jason Brody in it, as well :)
 

Sarah Kerrigan

New member
Jan 17, 2010
2,670
0
0
I love it. I loved Far Cry 3 and I kind of figured this would be another dose of it, bet more funny and the like. I love the references, Rex is a badass main character, and the cutscenes are a beautiful throw back to past generations.

Also, the music is fucking wonderful. Need I say more?
 

Soulrender95

New member
May 13, 2011
176
0
0
I was sold on this game the minute I saw it's cheesy announcement trailer, never owned or played Far cry 3 itself so the fact that I didn't need to buy that to play Blood Dragon was perfect the only thing that I would possible have changed is Rex's voice actor Micheal Biehn (nothing against him or his VA talents it fits the game) but part of me wishes just a tiny bit that they could have got Arnie to voice Rex because for me Arnie was the 80's.

Arnie voice pack dlc $20! :p
 

josemlopes

New member
Jun 9, 2008
3,950
0
0
I liked it and all but what I want to see is more devs and publishers learn from this. Use your big AAA games and re-use a lot of the already made code or assets and make a low-budget 10$/15$ game from time to time.

Imagine the guys that did Batman:AC doing a silver age linear brawler with co-op using Robin, just have linear levels with models more suited to the silver age (not so gritty and dark, they dont even need to be all that detailed since it would give them a cartoony look). A very basic game that would take the already coded and animated gameplay of AC to a more straight forward experience with a more simplistic and less serious story. Making the co-op work would probably be the most complex part of the whole thing since it wasnt in the core game from the start.

The models for silver age Batman and Robin are already there and they even have their own set of moves so making this whole game would be incredibly cheap for them. Kind of like what I expect Blood Dragon was for Ubisoft
 

EHKOS

Madness to my Methods
Feb 28, 2010
4,815
0
0
An eighties to early ninties utopia. The music feels like it's straight from that TMNT cartoon. It's campy, but awesome at the same time. They got rid of that awful fall damage restriction where you would take damage falling from 1 foot high. And to reflect the cyborg fact, you can run really fast. Rex's voice is great, soft yet weathered. The humor for the most part is great, except they start making fun on real problems with games, which makes me wonder why they don't fix them if they're aware of them.

There are three bad things I can think of though.

The red filter hurts my eyes after a while.

They tease a giant creature, and then you don't get to fight it, which would be less of a problem except you don't get to fight the main antagonist and there's really no final boss fight.

They never fixed that delay when you know you're on fire, but can't put it out yet.

So yeah, I loved it except for that bit, and it was a tad short, even after doing everything I wanted a bit more, but it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I sadly can't find the poster or soundtrack for sale anywhere.
 

Duffeknol

New member
Aug 28, 2010
897
0
0
I already finished it. Absolutely the best spinoff I've ever played. I pre-ordered it on Steam because then I'd get the soundtrack for free. By the way, if you recognize the end credits music, you will laugh. And laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Because you will know what it's from. If you don't, you'll just laugh because it sounds pretty cool. But if you're one of the lucky few who gets the reference, congrats.
 

Wolfram23

New member
Mar 23, 2004
4,095
0
0
I like it, but for two things. I don't like that Steam launches Uplay which launches the game. That's messed. Secondly, while I get it, the AI is really terrible and I suck at sneaking so it just turns into a shooty fest, and unfortunately the basic starting guns aren't too exciting.

Still, the game is awesome in every other respect and I'm going to put a few hours into it this weekend (I only played it for maybe 2 hours).
 

Vanbael

Arctic fox and BACON lover
Jun 13, 2009
626
0
0
I fucking love it, witty one liners, perfectly cliche plot, d20's (you can actually see what you rolled with is a win!), bio-luminescent dragons, mechanized animals, comments about how automatic doors are the tits when you have a mechanized arm!? What more can I want?
 

jollybarracuda

New member
Oct 7, 2011
323
0
0
I'm really enjoying it. The gameplay feels so much faster and more fluid. My favorite experience with it so far was sprinting on the catwalks in a garrison and leaping off, propelling myself practically to the other side of the building, and then stabbing a cyborg on the way down. It's that kind of ridiculous that you couldn't really get in FC3 because of that pesky realism thing it was going for.

However I can only really play it in short bursts, though that may be because i'm more of an RPG guy at heart. Overall, i'm happy with it. It's like really, really good popcorn that you can boot up for 20 minutes, do some awesome stuff, and then be done for the day.
 

Aiddon_v1legacy

New member
Nov 19, 2009
3,672
0
0
It's goofy as hell as that's why it is awesome. We have too many games taking themselves "seriously" and need to learn to just be silly every once in a while.
 

daveman247

New member
Jan 20, 2012
1,366
0
0
Festus Moonbear said:
My favourite reference so far is calling the shotgun 'The Galleria.' The menu description for that gun has a nice dig at Jason Brody in it, as well :)
I'm ashamed to say i can't quite remember the reference behind the shotguns name :( I feel i should know it though, terminator maybe? Its got the spin-reload after all.


All the guns have pretty fun descriptions. I DID get that the pistol is called the AJM and is dedicated to a fallen detroit cop.



Great game, basically exactly what I wanted it to be. Little things like no fall damage have opened the gameplay up even more than in far cry. The collectables actually mean something now, giving you rewards. How there are "scan lines" on the screen - true cyborg vision!

I just want MOAR of it, missions and side missions. And maybe some more imaginative skills (not just ripped from far cry 3) and crazier weapon attachments would have been nice (lasers and fire bullets are a good start though). I hope this isn't the last we have seen of rex colt.


On a different topic - its sad to see so many comments on videos and reviews saying they don't get what the game is, or that its too silly. Or they would rather have had something connected to the far cry 3 plot :/
 

daveman247

New member
Jan 20, 2012
1,366
0
0
EHKOS said:
EDIT: Oh yeah, I sadly can't find the poster or soundtrack for sale anywhere.
Try amazon MP3 or Itunes. The sountracks about eight quid on there.