Trials of the Blood Dragon Reviews

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"Hey, did you watch all of the [i]Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon[/i] cutscenes like we told you to?" "Yes sir, Ubisoft." "Which one looked the most... interesting to you?" "The sex scene. Why?" "Funny you say that, because we want you to make an entire [i]Trials[/i] game based on that cutscene." "...I'm not sure we follow." "Continue the [i]Blood Dragon[/i] storyline where it left off after Rex defeats Sloan and the Omega Force. Rex gets married with Dr. Darling and they have two kids. One of them is named after a The Police song. The other just has a made-up name. Do what you will with the boy's name, but in the year 2019, there is a fourth Vietnam War, and they are sent to put an end to it. Just like [i]FC3:BD[/i], it should be as 80s and over-the-top as possible." "I'm still not sure we follow." "Just do it, Redlynx. We're sure that this game will be just as good as [i]FC3:BD[/i] and will totally not be forgettable at all." "...yes sir, Ubisoft." That's the conversation I imagine happened for the development of this game, and boy, was Ubisoft wrong. As stated before, [i]Trials of the Blood Dragon[/i] continues from [i]Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon[/i]'s story, where Roxanne and Slayter, Rex "Power" Colt and Dr. Elizabeth Darling's children, are sent to shoot up some alleged communists and end Vietnam War 4. Yeah, two 12-year-olds going to war. Some of the plot points are ludicrous even for a sequel to a game based on well-known 80s films. [spoiler]Examples of such are that Dr. Darling is actually a Blood Dragon taking the form of a human, which makes Rox and Slay half-Blood Dragon. Dr. Darling disguises herself as General Ryback to help her kids kill the "communists," because while they could be communists, they're still just other humans standing in the way of the Dragornians, and the Killstar actually corrupts Rex so that it swings him to communism. That, I can understand though, because the Killstar in [i]FC3:BD[/i] used health as ammunition.[/spoiler] I wasn't much of a fan of the Saturday morning cartoon art style they were going for either. They completely butchered the Blood Dragons with it. The gameplay is a mixed bag. While the APC and on foot sections weren't the worst things ever, the bike and minecart physics never felt all that great. Oftentimes I felt like I had the right alignment with the bike to meet the ground again, only to do an upside-down wheelie and kill myself. Minecarts share the same issue, only with added weight. The levels with the grappling hook bike and jetpack were absolutely miserable. The grappling hook is fun when it's first introduced, but in later levels, you really need to channel your inner Spider-Man to get past them, especially on Triangulation. As for the jetpack, Rox/Slay really wants to go full throttle with it even with the slightest tap of the W key, which makes it harder to turn and easier to undershoot and overshoot everything. In Extermination, where you not only have to deal with bad jetpack controls, you also have to transport a fragile, highly explosive bomb-probe to the mother bug, which does not help at all. What does help, though, is a forgiving amount of checkpoints across all levels. Even if you're not dead, you can still respawn at a checkpoint at any time if you know you're about to, and the respawn time is instant, so you don't have to wait to try again. I also enjoyed the references to other franchises sprinkled throughout the game, even if some weren't from the 80s. There were allusions to [i]Hotline Miami[/i], [i]Halo[/i], [i]Star Wars[/i], [i]Super Mario Bros.[/i], and even [i]My Little Pony[/i]. Power Glove also made an amazing soundtrack for this game, but do you expect anything less from one of the greatest synthwave artists of all time (and where is "Clutch (Dragon Mix)" in the album?)? Overall, [i]Trials of the Blood Dragon[/i] is a D game. Even if the plot is ridiculous for an 80s-based game, it's still charming, but gets overshadowed by crappy gameplay and physics. It's not a great sequel to [i]Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon[/i] and it's definitely not the [i]Hotline Miami 3[/i] we've been waiting for. Hopefully we can go back to the FPS genre for the next [i]Blood Dragon[/i] game. [spoiler]Maybe we won't even get another [i] Blood Dragon [/i] game at all since Rex, Dr. Darling, Rox, and Slay all killed each other in the true ending.[/spoiler]