Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon was a game I always knew I would love but never got around to. I don’t know if other people have games like this, that they are confident they will enjoy but never find the time to play, but it’s pretty common for me. For Blood Dragon the reason was that both it and the base Far Cry 3 had a reputation of being awful on console. They launched during that awkward period right before the PS4/Xbox One when the aging 360 and PS3 just weren’t able to keep up with the games being shoved on to them (with the exception of GTA V, which must have created through some bizarre voodoo.) I figured they’d get a port to 8^th gen machines eventually or I’d end up with a PC that could run them well and I had enough to play at the time so I waited. And waited. A decade passed. Time did prove me right and both Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon made their way to 8^th gen…but by the time I played them they were on 9^th gen machines. Far Cry 3 didn’t do much for me, with its cliché setting and often replicated gameplay, but Blood Dragon is an entirely different story.

The thing about Blood Dragon is that as a game it’s pretty mediocre. It’s a competent shooter because it’s more or less Far Cry 3 but the level design and enemy units are very underwhelming. Enemy behavior is rudimentary, especially for the Blood Dragons themselves. While the neon art style holds up well, the rudimentary nature of the encounters is where this game shows its age. The thing is, Blood Dragon was never about the gameplay. Its about the experience. Blood Dragon is what you’d get if you took the sensibilities of a 1986 10-year-old’s sleepover birthday party with NES and action movies and made a “modern” (for 2013) game with them. It feels like someone fell asleep after watching Time Cop and playing Shatterhand and this was their dream.

Blood Dragon is intentionally dumb in all the best ways. You play Rex Power Colt, a Mark IV cybersoldier working as a commando for a postapocalyptic United States. The game introduces itself with cut scenes that intentionally copy the style of games like Ninja Gaiden except that they’re voiced and full of all the cursing, sex, and violence that Nintendo would never allow. The plot is not important except that in the very first mission you end up stopping the launch of a deadly missile by punching it. It’s that type of game. It won’t be the last time you save the world by punching a machine either.

From there the game drops you into its neon covered island where the bad guys live in bases hiding from the giant blood dragons who roam the land as the apex predator. Your mentor Sloan has gone rogue and you are the only man left who can stop him. You free a beautiful woman scientist who doesn’t want to participate in Sloan’s evil scheme and together you set out to take back the island and stop the madman and his henchmen. Along the way you will do Far Cry things like take over bases (called garrisons) and free hostages, all nerdy scientists who talk down to you when you rescue them. If you try to melee a corpse you’ll flip it off. You tear the hearts out of your enemies and use them to lure the Blood Dragons into their bases to destroy them. You blow off heads and spout one liners. It’s that kind of game.

The thing is that it all works. Magnificently. Michael Biehn does an incredible job as Rex “Power” Colt, managing to sound sincere, ironic, and kind of bored in a perfect homage to the 80s B-movies he once made (though of course he is most famous for playing Kyle Reese and Corporal Hicks in two decidedly A movies.) The other actors, mostly unknown, match him perfectly. The script is legitimately one of the funniest I have ever seen in a video game. It is supremely stupid in all the right ways. My favorite line is when Colt is impressed by an automatic door and remarks that he loves 2007 (the far flung future that this 2013 game took place in.) This is hilarious not just because the game’s 2007 is a hellscape that nobody could love, but because automatic doors have been popular since the 1970s and were in no way impressive even in the actual 1980s. The straight-faced commitment to moronic retro futurism is layered absurdity and I loved it. The game is packed with this kind of stuff from its tool tips to the dumb one liners that Colt spews as you mow down enemies to the fact that you can upgrade your sniper rifle to be silent AND have exploding rounds. This is a game that lets you carry 9 grenades because it knows what you’re there to do.

It's a short game and eventually I got tired of exploring the slapped together island picking up VHS tapes and rescuing “nerds” as the game put it, but the last couple missions have some nice set pieces and enough story that it’s an easy run to the end and I left satisfied.

Does the game get a bit boring after you’ve gotten enough upgrades that all the challenge is gone? Yes. Would it have been cool to get a bit more variety and even more outrageousness in the weapons? Yes. Is there a long homage to Mortal Kombat/Quake III: Arena towards the end for no reason? Hell yes!

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a game that knows what it’s there to do and focuses on executing that. There’s some open world Ubibloat because it’s built on Far Cry 3, but for the most part it’s all about injecting a loving satire of 80s action right into your veins. It takes the base of a game I found kind of boring and gives it enough flash and pizzaz that it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year (after InFamous: First Light, another short game based on a longer one, and maybe River City Girls (the first one) which is just a delight.) It accomplishes what High on Life only sort of managed; turning a mediocre shooter into a great experience just through humor and personality. If you, like me, always wanted to play this one but wasn’t sure if it stands up, it’s still worth the brief playthrough, especially cheap or free (I got it through one of the PS+ tiers.). It helps if you remember the 80s but the only thing you really need is an appreciation for some inappropriate humor (it probably couldn’t get made today) and a love of the red white and blue (Sorry, Canada. We had to do it.)