No, major releases continued throughout the year for Xbox 360 XBLA, and that trend looks to continue well into 2014 and possibly even beyond. Of course, Microsoft’s last-gen console and Xbox Live Arcade platform weren’t about to go quietly into that good night. Apologies for our tardiness, but we’re here today to make it up to you with our awards for the very best XBLA games to release in 2013.Īfter eight long and (mostly) wonderful years on the market, the Xbox 360 saw the beginning of its end in 2013 when its successor, the Xbox One, launched in November.
You can blow through it in about six hours, but you should take your time and let the testosterone flavored nostalgia wash over you.Īn XBLA download code was provided by the publisher.The year 2013 has come and gone, and you know what that means: XBLA Fans dropped the ball on getting our Game of the Year awards out during the same calendar year the games released. I think it would be great as an episodic series. It's available now on the XBLA, PSN, and PC. Then I unlocked explosive rounds for my sniper rifle and I started to feel bad for everyone who wasn't me.įar Cry 3 Blood Dragon is a great value at 1200 MSP or $15.
The brutal and satisfying Takedown system is in full effect. Once I unlocked the minigun the game was cake.
There are collectibles scattered across the island that will upgrade your weapons and health. The early unupgraded guns are kind of vanilla. If you decide to take Omega head on you will find an impressive arsenal at your disposal. Early in the game I snuck into most bases and disabled the shield generators, letting the blood dragons do my dirty work. They can still fry you with their laser eyes, because if it's one thing a battle dinosaur needs, it's goddamn laser eyes.
Enemy bases actually use a force field to keep the beasts at bay. They leave nothing but destruction and dead Omega soldiers in their wake. These mega-predators look like mini-godzillas (the lame Matthew Broderick version, not the awesome one). That brings me to the blood dragons themselves. The open world area seems to be about a third of the size of the world in FC3, and there are plenty of enemy bases to claim and fierce creatures to hunt. I won't spoil the story for you (stuff needs killing, the earth needs saving) but the main story objectives will include things like "Blow stuff up over here" and things like that. It also costs a fraction of the price of the retail title. There's nothing new as far as the core gameplay is concerned, but a change of scenery and a shift in attitude can go a long way to make a good game great. I knew I was in for a treat at the start of the tutorial when it asked me to demonstrate my ability to read. Speaking of stupid, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is good stupid fun. Sure, he sounds like he's in a gravely voice competition with Alec Baldwin and Will Arnett, but what do you expect cyborg super soldiers to sound like? Austrian bodybuilders? That's just stupid.
You'll be playing as cyborg super soldier voiced by Michael "I almost killed a Terminator and I sort of lived through Aliens" Biehn. As someone who was born in the 70's this had me squealing like a little girl -or staring stoically at the screen while waiting to take control of the choppa-mounted minigun. The opening scene is an homage to movies like Predator, Terminator, and Commando. I'm offended that Ubisoft put out Far Cry 3 when they could have cut the crap and delivered the glory that is Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon.īlood Dragon is a stand alone downloadable title that takes the solid (albeit repetitive) gameplay of Far Cry 3 and brutally thrusts it into the ridiculous excesses of 80's action movies. Overall, it was an enjoyable open-world, stealthily-stab-everyone-until-you-get-caught-then-shoot-everyone-in-the-face-until-you-escape-or-they-run-out-of-reinforcements experience. I cleared all the enemy bases and bro'd my way through the main story. I thought last year's Far Cry 3 was pretty decent.