Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

The feeling is that Blood Dragon is a straight-to-VHS sequel that occasionally manages to top its blockbuster equivalent due in large part to a sharp wit and an enthusiastic execution on a popular nostalgia.

This lightweight canapé with a taste of the 80s B action movies aesthetics will keep you busy, laughing.

That Ubisoft saw fit to make a shooter for laughs is enormously commendable, and a step that we hope others will follow. But its commitment to dumbing down means that this is a pure-bred B-game rather than all-star A-lister.

Blood Dragon becomes too easy too soon, thanks in part to the steady stream of health-bar upgrades and damage-reduction bonuses you’ll unlock as you tear through 30 experience-based levels of personal progression. By the end you’re practically unstoppable, so you’ll almost certainly overcome all seven story missions, and complete every optional hunting excursion and hostage rescue, in under five hours.

This isn’t Far Cry 3 at its best mechanically, but it’s definitely the game at its most charismatic. Because as a bunch of well-worn VHS tapes at Ubisoft Montreal undoubtedly prove, the ’80s knew how to do personality.

It's slightly disappointing, but I found myself returning to Blood Dragon after I'd finished it. The compulsive appeal of the parent game carries over, and it's nice to play a sci-fi shooter that's not trying to tell a so-called 'epic' story. Here you shoot people, a lot, and for most of its short running time that's good fun.

The result of all this is a deep and well crafted premise in a somewhat shallow game. Blood Dragon is well made, and thoroughly entertaining to lovers of the eighties, but in many ways, it becomes a victim of its own success -- the core ideas are so fun, so lavishly crafted, one aches to see them in a game equal to their quality.

The 80s aesthetic is great and the fun here is guaranteed. If you lived through this particular decade you will definitely appreciate Ubisoft's latest.

Blood Dragon perfectly captures the essence of '80s action kitsch, but it's often at odds with the gameplay.

It’s great value for money, as a sort of mini-Far Cry 3, but those that have played the original are likely to find it a rather weak sauce substitute and those that haven’t may just wonder what all the fuss was about.

In Blood Dragon the risk-taking, while welcome, is arguably in the wrong place. After 60 minutes' play, the joke wears away to near invisibility, and all that's left are the familiar systems that underpin the game. These remain enjoyable and, after the slow start, most players will be compelled to push through to the end. But there's an undeniable thinness here, the sense of a mild joke that's been eked out for too long, that can't fully wrap around the heft of the underlying game onto which it's been grafted.