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S1 Ep23: Farcry 3 - Blood Dragon
73 Plays7 years ago
In the near future of 2007... the apocalypse has had an apocalypse. Join Dave and Jake as they talk about their experience with BLOOD DRAGON!
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Transcript
Introduction: A Cyber Commando's Quest
00:00:00
Speaker
It is the near future. The apocalypse has had an apocalypse. A rogue cyborg army is reshaping the world into cyber hell. And only one thing can stop them. Let's show them how cyber commandos get it done. I want them alive!
00:00:27
Speaker
From the toxic ashes of Vietnam War II, a new breed of renegade soldier is born. Part man, part machine, all cyber commando. Michael Bean is Sergeant Rex Powercode. In this year's most thrilling, action-packed cyber adventure. Far Cry 3. Blood Dragon.
Hosts Introduce Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
00:00:59
Speaker
Hey, I'm Jake. I'm not so Jake. And we're the Soapstone. How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. Not so Jake. Oh. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. It's good? It's good? We've got an exciting episode for people who like the game that we're going to talk about today.
00:01:20
Speaker
And if they don't like the game, it's gonna fucking suck. Yeah, then they have next episode to look forward to, I guess. What's next to this episode? Don't tell them we haven't planned that for you. Yeah, that's locked in stone, but we're keeping that under wraps for now.
2013 Release and Retro Style
00:01:39
Speaker
This week's episode is gonna be about Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon.
00:01:45
Speaker
as some would call it. I would also call it Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, as that is the title of the game. Yes. So this came out, we were talking about running this as an episode. I'm like, oh yeah, that's great. It didn't come out too long ago, but I can still have some time to go back and revisit it, loaded it up. And 2013 was when this came out, which for people who can't keep track, like myself, it's five years ago.
00:02:13
Speaker
It's been a while. Yeah, it is older than I thought because it still looks like a pretty polished game for today's graphics standards. Yeah, I think the chrome and the neon cover some of that up just a little bit, but it still
80s Parody and Game Mechanics
00:02:29
Speaker
looks fine. It still plays fine. It's kind of funny how like gaming has dipped off a little bit on the graphics acceleration, like
00:02:37
Speaker
You don't find something that's just crazy innovative in the graphics department anymore. Games look really good. EA wants to save money, Jake. Yeah, that's true. They just need more microtransactions, clearly. That's how they'll recoup their losses. But that was a different podcast. This one's about Blood Dragon.
00:02:59
Speaker
And Blood Dragon was basically a standalone, not an expansion pack, but just a standalone game on the Far Cry 3 engine that was sold for a lot cheaper and was significantly shorter than your average Far Cry game. Yeah, I think typically your Far Cry games would be very open world, have an in-depth story and characters who develop over time and like a villain and grand machinations and other things. Yeah.
00:03:28
Speaker
But this is just straight up a neon murder fest. Yep, just some 80s camp. And not necessarily accurate 80s camp, more like all of the parodies or things like that you'd see now. Like 80s camp looking back on the 80s through tinted glasses that make it look more 80s than the 80s were.
00:03:51
Speaker
Basically, it's similar to if kong fury was a game. Yes, in a sense. That's actually that's a good analogy. I think put that in descriptions of people. Come through the game. Yeah. But you play as Rex power cult, which is, you know, obviously a completely it's an every man right there. Like you don't get more true American from a long line of power. Yes.
00:04:18
Speaker
He's Mach4 cyborg commando as the intro will tell you. Having been rebuilt in this million dollar man type setup, right?
00:04:34
Speaker
It's all kind of, the intro and the cutscenes for the game are all kind of like, I'm not gonna say pixelated, but they could be drawn in paint and animated in paint, I think, with some. Yeah, they're pretty simple, like static images that kind of get moved around. Yeah, like a comic. If there's an animation, it's like, it gets two frames of animation. Exactly. That's static textures. Yeah.
Humor and Self-Awareness
00:04:58
Speaker
And they didn't go absolutely crazy on the presentation in that regard. But it's just there to fill in the gaps where they're like, hey, we don't want to develop. We don't want to put developmental resources to a cutscene or some actual content here. So we'll tell you what happens in this really low tier cutscene style and then jump right back into the gameplay.
00:05:23
Speaker
And they use that a couple times in the game. I'll mention one later as it comes up, but It's it's pretty hilarious. It's all the game needs Yeah, it has a lot of Dumb jokes in the throughout the game too. Mm-hmm because of how campy it is and how they're It's very tongue-in-cheek. They're self aware. They know that what they're doing. Yeah, for sure like one of the first lines in the
00:05:47
Speaker
first cutscene. You're your Mach 4 commando dude and you're with another guy voiced by Phil Lamarr. If you like Phil Lamarr, he's awesome. And Phil Lamarr is kind of fluxing and saying like, men want to be me. And the typical line is women want to be with me. Right, naturally. But Rex Power Cult, a witty guy that he is, steps in and says, and you want to be with men, got it?
00:06:12
Speaker
yeah it's it's such a great turnaround that kind of just uh sets up i think they've they've got like the definitive bromance type setup the 80s 80s kind of uh partners they literally have like a uh muscle um what is that i lost literally lost the term for that it's on a high five like a clench like that that moment what is it
00:06:35
Speaker
Hand slap, hmm. High five? It's not really, is it a high five? It kind of is. But you know what I'm talking about, the fitness high five, where you're just, you come in from the side instead of, you know, that vertical. You can't like lock arms, but it's not quite like the Roman Legionnaire thing. Yeah, I think this was a literal scene in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, where he's just like gripping somebody else's arm like this, and they just like flex, you know.
00:07:00
Speaker
It's all just roided up hilarity. Yeah, movie you saw with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not on the internet. Yeah. Without Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was fine. It was fine. But yeah, they have a great relationship. Endgame starts out with you.
00:07:19
Speaker
on a helicopter. Just doing a roundabout of this base. Functionally, I think you're invincible, I'm not sure, but you basically can't be killed. You can't just have a chain gun and you just mow down everything in sight. A laser chain gun, obviously, right? Oh, yeah. Everything's neon and laser because it's blood dragon. Yeah.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yep, Blood Dragons are one of the animal opponents in the game. Kind of, you know, more iconic than that, but basically giant robot dinosaurs. I would just say giant dinosaurs with no robot components. They definitely have to have something because they shoot lasers out of their, like, eyes. I feel like there's something robot going on there.
00:08:07
Speaker
It's not on their eyes, it's just their mouth. Is it their mouth? Okay. I didn't look at it and the screen literally goes white when it actually hits you for a second. So I couldn't say where it was fired from. I guess I could look at them firing at something else. But yeah, after that helicopter sequence, they kind of teach you the basics of the game in the most obnoxious way possible, right?
00:08:30
Speaker
over a long period of time, completely interrupted by dialog boxes, each time telling you a basic mechanic of how you can proceed. Running. It's like walking, but faster. Yeah. Hold shift to run. Then it's got things like press spacebar to jump and you have to like, you know, go up and click the dialog box and then hit spacebar and then all of this nonsense.
00:08:55
Speaker
Well, spacebar, I think, is actually to... I don't think they phrase this jump. I think they phrase it as move upwards in a Z-axis. Across the Z-axis, yeah. No, it's hilariously self-aware and Rex hates the whole thing. I was like, oh, I hate tutorials.
00:09:13
Speaker
Because Spider, his friend, voice by Villamar, essentially uploads the tutorial program. It's like, now going through the ABCs of war. And it's really basic, too. It's like, look around with the mouse. Look around to look around. Exactly. And even though you've already had the helicopter sequence, you clearly have some basic controls downloaded.
00:09:36
Speaker
Doesn't matter. So you're just sitting here getting frustrated. They're like, all right now you can crouch All this nonsense It is a it is really satisfying when they do unlock the ability to run though because you run so fast in this game Like ridiculously, so you just sonic the hedgehog and bipedal form basically Is it sonic the hedgehog bipedal?
00:10:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, he has the other arm, I'm gonna say. Something that Chuck doesn't just run on all fours?
00:10:08
Speaker
I realized that's not a song that Chagax did. I'm just staring down Jake at this point. Yeah, different childhoods, I guess. But yeah, the tutorial takes a little while. It teaches you about takedowns. You can sneak up, take somebody out on stealth. It teaches you about chain kills. True, yeah. Which I think is another carryover from the Far Cry series. Or if you can get a takedown, you can kind of rush up to the next person or throw a throwing star in their eye because... Yep.
00:10:36
Speaker
80s and then just were badass. Yeah, they, unlike, so they introduced takedowns in Far Cry 3, unlike, or multi takedowns in Far Cry 3, I should say, because they existed in previous games. Unlike the base game, Blood Dragon's just like, here's everything, basically. There's, I think, one takedown you unlock later through leveling, but for the most part, the game's just like, here's all of your equipment right at the start. We realize this is an abbreviated experience. We're not going to make you unlock all of the fun stuff.
00:11:07
Speaker
Which is something that just comes up over and over again in the game. They're just like here's just the content That's good. We'll just push that at you and yeah, they don't try and had it out with things Like we said like there is a storyline but it's there for the sake of there needing to be a storyline and
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah. If you were in middle school and you were like bored in class and you wrote up something on a notebook, this would basically possibly be that story. Because you're going after a rogue, previous commander of yours, who's, you know, had his view of the world change and he wants to kind of destroy everything. Yep. With like shooting off missiles and blowing it all up. And you have your bromance friend. Yep. Yeah. Voice of Phil and Laura. Yes.
00:11:57
Speaker
Trying to think what else is there to be. There's the damsel in distress that you encounter really early. Around the same time, you encounter Sloane, which is the bad guy, the general. You also encounter Dr. Darling, who is, and literally her introduction, like one of her first lines is like, that's what Sloane's talking to her and says something like, this is the way the world really is, darling. And she's like, she comes up back, she comes over and she's like, it's not Darling, it's Dr. Darling.
00:12:26
Speaker
It was just like oh my gosh, it's good taking it back It's it's pretty hilarious And that whole trope where it's just as Rex is continuing through the game. She's helping him in secret And it's like the romance between them and all of that nonsense. Yeah
00:12:45
Speaker
it's all at some point in the game there is a uh a sex scene but because he's a cyborg they they make it awkward like it's it's just a very awkward thing yeah but again it's still done in that ms paint kind of way exactly yeah
00:13:01
Speaker
Kind of like a comic zone style almost. That's literally what it looks like. Maybe that's next week. We'll talk about Comic Zone. The thing is, that game is hard as fuck. Yeah, I was going to say, all you have to do is beat it and then we'll be all fed to talk about Comic Zone. But yeah, it's got all that camp. But you essentially start out
00:13:26
Speaker
After you do this first mission, where you're working with Spider and then you encounter Sloane, you kind of get stripped of all your weapons and thrown out into, you don't know where.
Gameplay and Strategy
00:13:38
Speaker
You wake up, Dr. Darling is talking to you over some intercom, and she's like, oh, by the way, I'd be aware of the blood dragons. You're like, what? So you leave this cave and you see these dragons, they're kind of like,
00:13:52
Speaker
More beast creatures like they're not winged dragons. Yeah, they're more like t-rex is really Kind of like dog t-rex is yeah
00:14:01
Speaker
But what's really cool about them is it's very black design, but they have all these neon lines going through. The robot parts. Yeah. It's kind of like there's a little fish in a way that are translucent. But as they become more aggressive, their neon, which kind of is usually like a lightish teal, becomes like maggenta, the color of choice.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, it'll go to yellow as they're like alerted or like investigating and then to red when they are openly hostile And then they'll come after you like the bite at you. They'll swipe and like Jason for shoot lasers. Yeah and they'll also attack the enemy just kind of The robot guys. Yeah, I guess there's they're also supposed to be cyborgs. I think yeah, there's kind of your token soldiers. Yeah
00:14:57
Speaker
They all have the same Microsoft Sam voice, so it's pretty great. I like how Rex Power Cult throughout the entire game is so violent and will profusely swear, as will most other people. And then those Cyber Commando soldiers are kind of like, holy crap. They're the ones toning it back a little bit.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, and oh, hey Jake, how do you distract the cyber soldier? You can throw nerd rocks or as some people obviously nerds call them d20s And you have an unlimited supply of these and they'll walk over and investigate wherever it lands. So
00:15:36
Speaker
It's kind of useful. I think of the mechanics just that's present on a lot of games, but very rarely is it a d20 that you throw, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, 80s Dungeons and Dragons is a big thing. Got to throw it in. The game actually calls them nerd rocks, too. That's not that's not me ragging on them. That's not your DM slang. Yeah. Yeah. Roll your nerd rocks.
00:16:00
Speaker
So then how do you distract the dragons? Well, if there's enemies nearby, they'll automatically aggress. They aggress to pretty much everybody normally. But as you're looting enemy corpses to get more money and stuff, because all of the drops in the game are basically money or ammo, you'll just rip out a cyborg heart every time. So you're just like, yeah, there's more cyborg hearts. And you can throw those and the dragons will investigate.
00:16:29
Speaker
Which, as it turns out, can be really useful if you want to seed one of their bases that are there on the island. Which Far Cry has done, like, in most of their recent games. I would say almost any open world game. Yeah. Like, if you remember back to Metal Gear Solid 5, you had, like, encampments you could kind of take out.
00:16:50
Speaker
Mm-hmm or another open world while not thinking of it. Yeah, it's a very common trope Oh and not it probably is a trope at this point But yeah having outposts you can capture as a key part of Far Cry 3 key part of blood dragon and It's just how do you put content in open world have enemy bases? You know, you need to have something so it's not just oh, there's a patrol. Uh-huh
00:17:14
Speaker
So the bases are like part of the optional content in Blood Dragon. I think there's a couple parts you have to complete them. Probably a couple. But I didn't do it in the order where I didn't just go through the main quest like immediately to main missions immediately. I cleared all of the garrisons in this playthrough and then I went back to the main story. But you can like siege them in a couple different ways. You can be really stealthy and use my favorite weapon in the game, which is the bow kind of ironically. Bow is so good.
00:17:43
Speaker
It's so freaking good. Stealth archer first playthrough. Exactly right. As I was saying earlier, the stealth bow is illuminated with bright blue neon lights, which I just find hilarious. And it's usually a one-hit kill against like standard enemies. It doesn't even have to be a headshot. I forgot about that for like the first half of the game. And then I was like, wait, I could literally just be aiming for body shots and it's still a one-hit kill.
00:18:10
Speaker
oops it's just a rewarding luck it is when you land the arrows and you can recover your arrows by like just walking over the enemy corpses so a pretty good way to clear if you choose to go loud then they'll try to call in reinforcements to the base which might arrive by like bow or helicopter or something else or like truck driving in or the more innovative way to go about it is to lure a blood dragon
00:18:35
Speaker
to the garrison by like throwing these cyborg hearts out and it'll have this super shield or mega shield the base will yes around the base and the blood dragon itself doesn't like to necessarily go into the base until that shield is down but it can fire laser blasts through the shield so sometimes it'll like do a fair job of clearing out the base before you even get there but should you sneak into the base or just siege it
00:19:04
Speaker
You can get to like a main console where you can bring down the mega shield and then bring the blood dragon in And it's over. It's like it's just a matter of time. It just runs over people. Yeah It's nice you have um, I Like we're just like really saying random ass shit about the game. Yeah, there's vehicles. There's like a Jeep you go in there's like a speeder boat and Both of them have like mounted turrets. Yeah
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think the vehicles were basically just kind of imported from Far Cry 3 for the most part, but they just picked a couple of the ones that would matter for this and called it a day. The vehicles are kind of like an afterthought. I think for player usage, you can use them, but it doesn't matter that much because you're super fast. You can outrun, you can outrun homies or whatever on the road. I think everything in that game is essentially
00:20:00
Speaker
Hey, here, go do fun things, and you have some options of how to do it. Yes. So if you want to siege the base, you can lure a blood dragon. You can go kind of like kill the guys equally. You can be me and just get a sniper rifle and just hang them all down. Oh, yeah. Sniper rifle is really satisfying.
00:20:19
Speaker
What is the other one? I know there's sniper rifle. There's sniper rifle. There's a shotgun. Yep, shotgun was the, it was initially just the double barrel. And he holds it like over his arm. So he'll have like his his cyborg arm supporting. Yeah, the supporting the gun exactly the same.
00:20:37
Speaker
And there's the pistol, which you can silence really early by completing every time you clear a garrison. You unlock some side quests. Exactly, some side quests you can run. And you mentioned the bow, you had the sniper, and then there's like... Some assault rifle, I'm sure. Yes, yeah, there was the assault rifle you can upgrade. Eventually you can get like laser shots for that that makes it just tear through enemies like so fast.
00:21:01
Speaker
I actually used that for some of my later content because it was just so efficient and accurate. And then there was some other, there was a chain gun which had limited ammo. You could pick it up at certain places in the game and a flamethrower. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then you could have grenades, molotovs, mines, and C4. That rounds out your arsenal.
00:21:27
Speaker
I feel like I didn't use any of the actual projectiles or planted explosives. Yeah, there's a very brief window in the game where it's like there's heavy opponents which have a lot more life. They're sturdier, you can't take them down with a stealth takedown.
00:21:44
Speaker
where it's like, OK, I have to use explosives because nothing works. And then you can use those explosives for that point. But after you get past that, it's like, all right, now I shoot lasers. And those actually do kill these guys. Or you get leveled up enough by just getting experience for doing things that you actually get the ability to take them down. So all of their strengths are gone. And you don't need to use innovative tactics anymore. Call that a knife.
00:22:14
Speaker
There literally was a point for this this heavy guy where I was on a it was like it was like an oil Derek basically Oiled Derek gotcha. Yeah world Derek. I was on oil day anyway and I was just like running around a Central area and there was a guy not like five feet away from me as I basically run around essentially a pole more or less and
00:22:37
Speaker
Just waiting for that takedown prompt so I can stealth kill him while I run like 30 miles an hour in a circle. He blanks your mind. I'm stealth. Got him. Yeah, that's literally what it was though.
00:22:55
Speaker
The side missions and the garrison take up actually most of the gameplay.
Side Missions and Pop Culture Homage
00:23:01
Speaker
If you're going for 100%, which you could probably clear this game in like six and a half hours, then that's where most of your time would be spent.
00:23:10
Speaker
And some of them are like rescue missions for the scientists. Other ones are like, hey, go find and collect these things. And you get rewarded with usually weapon upgrades. Yeah. Something you can purchase. It makes it available at like the weapon terminal. Yeah. Like, um, first sniper rifle, you might not have to hold your breath as much and you have more stability or it gives you longer range or explosive rounds. Oh yeah. If you just want to shoot a car and be done. Yeah. That one's really good.
00:23:39
Speaker
It's so good. Yeah, they had like a long scope, they had fog scope so you could see through smoke, which I don't think I ever utilized, but I had it. It wasn't as common in the game because the entirety of the layout of the map is very dark, like everything is at...
00:23:58
Speaker
kind of a I Don't say hazy night. Right it is. It's like it's very overcast. Everything's dark There's kind of like a like breeze before a storm type feel going through the the grass and the trees and then it's trimmed by these Various neon lights coming from dragons the laser shot it just It's got a nice look and feel to it
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the color scheme they chose, like the neon on everything, it just wouldn't have worked if the game was bright. It was just like daylight, none of this would have made sense, none of it would have showed up, but they picked these dark scenes to make it all play out. I feel like that's anything 80s though. Yeah.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, this is nighttime in the 80s, basically is what they're going for. Yeah, the missions, the side missions you were mentioning. That's where some of the creative thought, I think, for the game came in. One of them that was a...
00:24:58
Speaker
There were a couple that were basically jokes. I know you have your favor for that, but the the one I really enjoyed was actually you had to go out to a boat and there was a scientist being held on the boat and you could sneak up from the back and kind of like clear the boat enemy by enemy tactically and it was a different experience from what the game usually demands of you because usually you can just go up on a hilltop and be like hello everyone
00:25:24
Speaker
done, you know, snipe them all out. And I like that it puts you in those other situations. And then right next to the boat was a TV underwater. It was on with a logo on it. And that was a collectible, of course. So that was pretty hilarious.
00:25:43
Speaker
One of my favorite missions that sticks out in my mind is you have to go find these four turtle warriors in the sewers. You go in the sewers, there's a couple of traps. It's not a huge pathway. But you find and kill these turtles that have, you know, an orange, a red, a blue, and like purple pandanas on them.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I think there's like one rat that's also in the super. Yeah. And just the homage to TMNT, which is cute. Just freaking hilarious. The turtles also like, some of them have traps. Actually, I think I know three of them do. One of them, it's like you can see the turtle beforehand. He's behind a grate. And as you approach him, he'll like, like a rolling barrel that's like caught on fire will like go down the ledge toward you with you.
00:26:37
Speaker
kind of assumption that he pushed it. There's another one that when you enter the room where he's in he like turns a valve on the wall that like opens up a spout of fire. That ignites the gas. Yeah and the last guy you can see just he's just right there on his own no traps or anything just across this short little pool of water and you jump in the pool immediately are attacked by an allocating.
00:27:01
Speaker
It's actually got some more danger to it than a lot of the actual gameplay.
00:27:09
Speaker
Though I wouldn't say that the water is exactly the safest place. Yeah. Because like on the land you have the soldiers, the blood dragons, occasionally there'd be like attack dogs which are made out of like chrome. Yeah. Or something. I don't know. I don't even know if they rendered right on my machine. And there's also like panthers which are also chrome. It's fucking weird. Yeah. But underwater they have these sharks with lasers attached to them. Yeah. Cyber sharks.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah. And they'll come bite you and you just punch them in the face and they'll be fine. And you stab them in the eye. Yep. Some of the side missions are fighting the various types of wildlife and they'll force you to use a specific weapon. It's like, hey, kill this X target with this X weapon. And it's sometimes pretty limiting. I know there's like a tiger hunt with a bow. That one was actually, that was one of the tougher ones, I guess. Overall, the game's not that hard.
Exaggerated Mechanics and Inspirations
00:28:01
Speaker
It's actually, it's not a difficult game. Pretty easy. I played on hard this time and I think I died once. Yeah. Like, cause you'll pick up health packs over time and you can kind of just inject it to regain like three or four bars of health almost instantly. Yep. Or even if you don't have a STEM pack for health, you can either like reach in to kind of adjust your circuits and your electronic arm. It takes longer to do so, but you'll still gain health. Yep. You can also grab one of the,
00:28:33
Speaker
It's like a grippy thing. Oh yeah, the strength. Grip strengthening, yeah. It's just like a coil. Squeeze it a bunch and it gets your blood pumping and you get health. Time to heal. Yeah, like the other Far Cry games have that. They have like, I think they started that with two. It's like, oh, you need to heal. Oh, well, your leg must be on fire. So you got to put that out or there's some like shrapnel in your arms. You got to rip that out.
00:28:59
Speaker
bandage it up. And they would use that, like you said, if you don't have like a stim pack like options, something you can just stab in there. But I believe the other games put a limit on that. So your health has to be like really low for you to use as like field repair, like field healing type options. Like rip the stick out of your arm or whatever. You can't do that if you're almost like in pristine condition. No, but this game is entirely.
00:29:26
Speaker
It appeals to the male power fantasy? It does, actually. The whole point of the game is to be fun and go around and fuck shit up. So they don't really try and limit you in any way. Like they give you the fun vehicles, whether you're doing the boat, the car. There's a hang glider at some point. Oh yeah. I don't think you can shoot while you're on that. There's like one. And it's not even like, I don't even think it's a great idea to use it. No. Like very long. It's used in like one cutscene. Yeah.
00:29:55
Speaker
Like an in-game cutscene. Yeah. There's also like a zipline. Oh, yeah, which you can use, but it's not. It's all optional. Yeah, they they grabbed some of those mechanics from from like Far Cry 3, but they're a lot more sparse here. The map's a lot smaller. We mentioned the game's pretty quick. It's pretty short. So six and a half hours if you're going for like completionist.
00:30:18
Speaker
it's honestly you could probably beat this game in like an hour and a half maybe maybe two i'd say two maybe two yeah two if you try if you just like speed run it because there's even some of the main missions uh there's no actual limitation that you kill everybody it's just accomplish the subjective um there's a couple times where it's like defend x and then you obviously can't you know speed that up but
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's usually just like hey hold this point like ways of enemies will come at you. Exactly. So like you're defending the scientist he's trying to shut down the one reactor. Oh, yeah. And it's like boats are coming up and shooting at you and you're just mowing them down with a chain gun. And you have to go underwater and like to sail some things and you're fighting sharks underwater. Yeah, it is. It is pretty hilarious.
00:31:05
Speaker
just kind of the tasks they set upon you. So there's that one where you're helping the scientist, right? The culmination of that is he's helping you kind of disable this reactor. That thing I said, yeah. Yeah. And the way you disable it is after he's taken down the shielding around it, you have to walk up and punch it, obviously.
00:31:26
Speaker
So, like, you said this appeals to the male fantasy, the male power fantasy. I think it really appeals to the Rex Power cult fantasy more than anything else. I do have fantasies about Rex Power cult. Yes, I mean I do too now, but don't tell my wife.
00:31:44
Speaker
But like the cute juxtaposition is always appreciated because like they'll throw out this high level science and like all these things are going on but it's kind of just like NCIS science is kind of like these terms like oh yeah yeah science and then you just you punch it and that's it. And there's something else later where again you punch it and resolve. And Rex isn't like the brightest protagonist there's actually a point early on when
00:32:11
Speaker
You're one of the I think the first mission you're actually working with spider and he explains something mechanic like something you'll have to hack or whatever He's like and you'll have to take care of this and Rex is just like there's an actual like three-second pause and Rex is like what? It's amazing I love it. Yeah, he's not the most tech savvy He's very
00:32:38
Speaker
Okay, so I have to mention at some point, the game draws a lot of
00:32:44
Speaker
Inspiration are just taking from escape from New York. Yeah, because the character is fucking Kurt Russell He has like an eye patch. He's kind of like that lone renegade badass. Yep, who's like Cracking wise and making these like dumb fucking puns and just murdering people but that's kind of like the the campy appeal if you have this guy's like ah
00:33:11
Speaker
Almost like Ash versus Evil Dead, in a way. Oh, I've never seen that. Bus creative. Yeah. I appreciate things. It is really good. Yeah. Next podcast. Ash versus Evil Dead.
00:33:25
Speaker
And yeah, the progression for the game, if you just do the main missions, is really quick, but they mix up your locales. One of them is you have to set some explosives on a dam, and it's got more verticality to it in areas like that. But it pushes you along a pretty steady clip if you're just going main mission to main mission.
00:33:49
Speaker
Um, and it's not long before they start introducing like other elements. They're just like, okay, uh, in order to defeat Sloan, you'll need, uh, you'll need this powerful weapon. Uh, something that like only the strongest men can wield. They're just like, okay. And there's just like a stone door you can see the front and the back too. And he's just like, what's that? He's like, oh yeah, that's where the kill star is. And you're like,
00:34:14
Speaker
What's that though? She's like, oh no, Dr. Darlene's like, of course, I must have told you what the kill star is. I know I told you. And you're like, no. It was just like a spinning shuriken on your wrist that shoots out a fucking laser and will insta-kill most enemies. Oh yeah. It just draws from your own health kind of slowly. Doesn't even do all that much damage to you.
00:34:38
Speaker
But the process to actually get the kill star after you've gone through all of this is you have to go through these like challenge levels. It's almost Mortal Kombat-esque in the way it's set up. Mm-hmm. Because like you have these levels and the way they phrase everything is very very Mortal Kombat. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. There's literally like a God-like voice kind of above you being like test literally like test your mind essentially.
00:35:05
Speaker
And they'll give you one weapon at a time usually with infinite like ammo supplies Yeah, and you'll have like waves of either cyber soldiers dogs Other things yeah, and they all happen in these kind of like enclosed arena doom or quake style maps where you'll be like running around with your doom like speed basically Trying to keep from getting overwhelmed by these waves
00:35:33
Speaker
But after you've cleared all of those, then you get the kill star. And you're into endgame now. This is your final push. Kill Sloane and avenge your fallen comrade, which we didn't even mention because, you know, of course, yeah, of course, Phil Lamar dies. Yeah, again, plot doesn't really matter. It's more so the
00:35:56
Speaker
all the candy things and like the, you go, I remember that. Oh, that's kind of cool. A little, a little reference, a little homage. Yeah. And the, the dumb jokes they get away with. Oh yeah. But some of them are really good. One, I want to actually cite.
Critique on Video Game Violence
00:36:10
Speaker
So at a point you're talking to Dr. Darling and something comes up about some video game she mentions and he's like, Oh, you play video games. And she goes, yes, Rex, video games are a proven coping mechanism. Like any hobby.
00:36:25
Speaker
They've been shown to improve hand-eye coordination, problem solving, social interaction, and self-confidence. And no studies have managed to prove a correlation between violence in video games and violence in real life. And anybody who thinks so is a fucking idiot. It's incredibly tongue in cheek, like awesome.
00:36:44
Speaker
Yeah, and if you've played any video games over the years and you know who Jacko is or how a lot of different issues are trying to shit on video games saying, oh, well, this recent shooting was because people played GTA 5. It's like, no, it's because we have other societal issues that we don't address appropriately.
00:37:06
Speaker
But it's just, it's great that they put in those things and they know obviously that they're in a fucking game. Yeah. But they're also trying to like sell, hey, this game you go around and murder a shit ton. But that's the point. Yeah, exactly. It's like they know their audience. You're not you're not playing this game because you don't like violence or something like that.
00:37:25
Speaker
Also, just along those lines, they have no problems breaking the fourth wall of night constantly. Whenever there's a loading screen, they'll just make fun of you or give you nonsense knowledge or things like that. One of my favorites was sniper rifles, and they'll have it in a different color, that particular bolded.
00:37:47
Speaker
Text and they'll say like close-range weaponry for when you pick the wrong weapon, you know things like that There's another one that I really enjoyed that was a need help the next randomly selected loading screen might help Just things in that vein that are hilarious There was one I didn't didn't put here, but I remember encountering which was just like I
00:38:09
Speaker
We blew all of our budget on, like, special colors for the loading screens. And that part just was in color. It's just, it's really great. Yeah. And a lot of times with the plot, they'll kind of jump the shark or just throwing things that they had never mentioned before. One of your missions, you actually do jump a shark. Yeah. And you drop grenades into some sea creatures face.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty direct. It doesn't beat around the bush at all. It's just here to be hilarious and make fun of itself and everything else.
00:38:49
Speaker
to a pretty hilarious degree. Hilarious. Hilarious. Let's keep saying that. Okay. I wasn't going to point it out because I started doing a mental track. It was a metric fuck ton, which would be what you can count on me. I'm trying to say metric fuck ton. Yes. Thank you for that. Another example of that was some of the animals
00:39:09
Speaker
that are out there. One type is boar, so we'll have boar, like a herd of boar. I don't know what a group of boar is, but multiple boars, a gaggle of boars in the wild, and they each have Sloan spray painted on them. You're just like, oh, okay, yeah, he is the villain, isn't he? Right, okay, it checks out. It's just too much, too much stuff, but also not enough.
00:39:35
Speaker
because it's all over way too quickly. I know what that's like. Yeah. Because I played this game. Right, yeah, awesome. It is a fun one-off though, and it's like 15 or 20 bucks. Oh yeah. But I think I got it at like a LAN party and I just played through it in the night and I was like, holy shit, this is really fun. Yeah.
00:39:56
Speaker
obviously cared about enough to make it an episode. Yeah. But it's just the focus is fun. And they've kind of really streamlined what they do for the Far Cry series, trimmed it in pretty, pretty neon. Yes. And just encapsulated the fun and tropey parts of the 80s to do so.
Conclusion: A Favorite Far Cry Experience
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah. It's like where this game is so short. It's it's focused and short, like everything that's there, they just
00:40:27
Speaker
through in because they thought it was going to be great content. They didn't try to make it last really long. Like I said, they give you your whole arsenal. Usually these open world, specifically Far Cry games, can be really long. You can dump 100 hours into some of the longer ones if you're trying to 100% everything.
00:40:45
Speaker
And this one has collectibles all over the place, but there's really no reason to search for all of them unless that's just your thing. The gameplay itself is just way more focused than Far Cry games usually throw at you. And you can look at like how they've been reviewed recently and it's fallen off quite a bit. Primal was like
00:41:10
Speaker
mostly positive, and Far Cry 5 I think is mixed right now. This game is doing considerably better. A lot of people, myself included probably, this is their favorite Far Cry. It's not like the experience that has all of this nonsense plugged into it that a full Far Cry game does, but it's fun. And that counts for a lot when you're playing video games, as it turns out.
00:41:40
Speaker
Dota 2. Yeah, that's unrelated. You just play that due to addictions. You don't have to have fun. Yeah.
00:41:52
Speaker
It just escalates all toward the end. By the end of it, you're wiping out waves of people on your blood dragon mount that shoots its own lasers. And you're just kind of on this cage thing on its back. Well, you're shooting your kill star as separate targets. With your kill star powering the top, I think. It's just really... They turn it up past 11, I think, basically.
00:42:19
Speaker
There's also a line your mount says towards the end, because there's literally like a rainbow bridge that lights up as you approach the mount. And it's got this kind of like, I want to say like one of those dog translator voices from up. Oh, yeah. That's literally what it sounds like. And it's just you're just killing everything. And it's just like, this is sad. This is too good.
00:42:49
Speaker
So nice, three out of 10. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's, I would definitely pick it up on sale because it is so short. I think, I don't know if retail is still 20, but I feel like 20 is too much, but I know it goes down to like five. Oh, it's five. Yeah. Like I said before, like eat, contact me. I will probably buy it for you. Right. Cause it's just a nice, short, fun experience that encapsulates a lot of what you love.
00:43:16
Speaker
We should put a limiter on that in case, like, the podcast ever blows up for no reason. Oh, if people start contacting me, like, Dave, you promised. I'm like, no, no, that's Jake's voice you heard. That's the only email we get is requests for the games that you offered by people. Money, please. Oh, man.
00:43:34
Speaker
But yeah, hopefully sometime in the future Ubisoft can return to their 80s synth neon roots and just, I mean, Assassin's Creed Blood Dragon. I'm just saying. Just throw that out there. Don't get there one day, Jake. We joked about Trump, but look where we are. That's true, man.
00:43:53
Speaker
in America. I'd like to thank everyone for listening to another episode of Soapstone. As always, you can contact us at our Gmail, soapstonepodcastatgmail.com, and like us on Facebook. If you enjoyed the podcast, facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. We always love to hear from our fans. I don't know if we have any fans, but we love to hear. I don't call them fans. I call them listeners. Listeners? Yeah. Like innocent bystanders who just accidentally clicked on the mic.
00:44:21
Speaker
Well, welcome here. Somebody was at work and they just, like, had their speakers playing me or something. Like, we count those as our core audience, really. YouTube shuffle! What the fuck is this? That's our outreach program. But, we appreciate you guys listening, and we'll see you in the next one.