I've decided to try to make my reviews more critical, coming at games from a particular angle rather than simply evaluating their visuals, sound, story, and so on. This look at 'style over substance' in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is my first attempt.
‘Style
over substance’ is a phrase I often see in video game reviews. I came
dangerously close to using it in my own review of Metal Gear Rising: Revenegence, and can think of scores of other
games I’ve played that it could apply to. But what does it really mean? To me,
substance refers to a game’s controls, systems, and mechanics, whilst style covers
sound design, art direction, and narrative. A game that prioritises style over
substance, then, is one where attention has been lavished on the game’s
aesthetic and the expense of its gameplay, or at least one where the selling
point is the former rather than the latter. Since the vanilla version of Far Cry 3 is near identical in substance,
it’s clear that Blood Dragon’s main
selling point is its distinct, 80s
throwback style.
Let’s
look at substance and style in Far Cry 3,
for which Blood Dragon is a stand-alone
expansion. Following the definitions
above, substance covers things like the shooting mechanics, the weapon upgrade
system, and hunting animals, while style covers the design of the island, the
theme of insanity, and the dubstep-ridden soundtrack. Blood Dragon appropriates almost all of the substance from Far Cry 3, but jettisons its style
completely. In its place is a self-consciously bombastic one lifted from the cheesiest
of 80s action movies. Instead of overmoneyed waste of space Jason Brody, then,
you control wisecracking cyber commando Rex Power Colt; instead of distasteful
dubstep, you’ll be listening to distasteful guitar solos; instead of a mission
to rescue your friends from pirates, you’re battling neon dragons that shoot
lasers. This is an intentionally – and often amusingly – stupid game.
 |
| Despite being more machine than man, Rex Power Colt still proves to be a more relatable, human protagonist than Jason Brody (Picture: Destructoid) |
I’ve
always disliked the phrase ‘style over substance’ because it feeds the notion
that the two things are necessarily separate; in many games, style and substance
are interwoven. Mass Effect, for
example, treats narrative as something you do as well as something that informs what you do. Unfortunately, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon fails in this
respect, and its open world design sits uneasily with its 80s action movie stylings. Action films from this era,
particularly the B-tier ones that Blood
Dragon draws many of its ideas from, are tightly scripted affairs. A movie that
treats character development as a pretentious affectation is unlikely to have time
for scenes where the hero hunts animals or upgrades weapons, after all. (If
these tasks did feature in an 80s action movie, it would surely be as part of a
montage, probably set to some hair metal.) That you have to engage in these
kinds of activities at length in order to get the best out of Blood Dragon is jarring. Of course, you
could ignore the side quests, but they’re heavily incentivised. Who is
seriously going to want to play a game set in the future as imagined by the 80s
without unlocking the laser fire upgrade for the assault rifle?
This
isn’t to say that Blood Dragon fails
entirely as a tribute to 80s action films, but it is constantly hampered by the
trappings of modern game design. For example, it raised a smile when I started Blood Dragon and saw the Ubisoft splash
screen display in the wrong aspect ratio for my widescreen TV, complete with
the flicker of a taped-off-the-telly movie. But the illusion was broken when I saw
the ubiquitous ‘don’t turn off the game when you see this icon’ warning in a
distinctly modern font immediately after the splash screen disappeared.
If
you believe its writer, Jeffrey Yohalem, Far Cry 3 is a ‘satire’ on video games. Call me a cynic, but writing a story
overwhelmingly filled with clichés with barely a hint of critical analysis isn’t
satire in my book. Blood Dragon’s irreverent
style, however, proves a better vehicle for commentry, its intentional ridiculousness setting an appropriate tone for
skewering the equally ridiculous sections of games that are less self-aware. Fleeing
from enemies near the end of mission four, for example, Rex questions why an
elevator is taking so long to arrive. His sentient HUD suggests what we were
all thinking: “Dramatic tension?” The level ends with Rex blowing up an ‘Amphibian
Shark-Squid Hybrid Attack Titan’, before deflecting praise for his actions: “Paintings
of clowns crying and dogs playing poker… those are incredible. What I did?
That’s just the job.” This bizarre line – clearly a send-up of the overmodest
hero trope – is only slightly sillier than Old Snake’s tediously self-depreciating
dialogue in Metal Gear Solid 4.
Blood Dragon has a particular bone to
pick with meaningless collectables, expressed through Rex’s dialogue when he
comes across one: “So I collect shit, to unlock shit, and then I get shit. Got
it”. I was glad to see this trend getting some gentle criticism; its been a
turd in the game design punchbowl at least since Rare’s heyday in the late 90s.
But I couldn’t help thinking that Blood
Dragon would be in a better position to critique the saturation of open
worlds with collectables were its own open world not, well, saturated with
collectables. Again, Blood Dragon’s style
is scuppered by the substance it inherits from Far Cry 3.
So Blood Dragon turns out to be a solid
open world shooter, dressed up as an enjoyable but flawed attempt at homage and
satire. What you get out of it will, ironically, depend on how compelling you
find its mechanics and systems in their own right. Because although its 80s
style is extremely appealing on paper, it’s hindered at every point by being attached
to a wildly inappropriate game. Far Cry
3: Blood Dragon has plenty of substance, but it’s the wrong substance for the
style it’s trying to convey.
6/10
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