Introduction

Do you like 80s movies like The Terminator, Predator, and RoboCop? How about their sequels in the 90s? What about the B-movies and the straight-to-video fare?

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is an affectionate parody of 80s and 90s movies, and while it is full of references to well-known blockbusters, it is also heavily inspired by the low-budget knock-offs that you’d find lurking in the video store.

The VHS box would have spectacular cover art, like a post-apocalyptic biker using lasers to slice up dinosaurs, or a film noir detective with robot arms that are dual-wielding submachineguns. Of course, what you’d actually end up with were a couple of guys armed with toy guns, driving dune buggies around a quarry. The best you could hope for was that it would be unintentionally hilarious rather than unwatchably bad.

Blood Dragon is like a forgotten, amazing B-movie, one that actually delivers everything that it promises.

You play as Rex "Power" Colt, an action hero who could teach Duke Nukem a thing or two about one-liners. (He’s voiced by Michael Biehn, best known as Kyle Reese in Terminator and Hicks in Aliens). Blood Dragon is a standalone game that uses the same core gameplay as Far Cry 3, but instead of fighting pirates in a tropical paradise, you are throwing shurikens at cyborg soldiers armed with laser guns, in a glowing neon world under a radioactive sky.

As if that weren’t enough to get you into the mood, the story is told using pixellated cutscenes that look like an old NES game, and it has an amazing soundtrack by Australian synthesizer-duo Power Glove. And Little Richard.