Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon captures nostalgia of "sh**ty action movies" - Ubisoft

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a neon-lit, static-filtered tribute to action movies of the 1980s. Ubisoft creative director Dean Evans has discussed why the team opted for this pitch in a new interview.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Evans gave a warm, fuzzy elevator pitch, "It's about that single glow. Mum and dad have gone to bed and you're downstairs, there's the Vic-20 over there on the black and white TV, the Atari over there.

"You've seen those consoles change, but the one thing that's stayed the same is these shitty action movies burning your retina, watching Robocop again and again and again and watching that police station scene in Terminator and rewinding it, pressing play and watching it again."

The game stars Rex Colt, a super-soldier voiced by James Cameron mainstay Michael Biehn, who can pull of many of the same stunts that Jason Brody could in Far Cry 3. Except now you're shooting your way through a haven of action movie cultural 'isms', such as whaling on enemies with a mini-gun while listening to Long Tall Sally - a nod to Predator, obviously.

It's open world again, and will see players journeying through military bases and other garish locales that make a change from the dull tone of some shooters out there.

Evans said of Blood Dragons wild setting, "I'm certainly a bit tired of shooters that take place in a modern setting and that have quite a lot of warfare. So it's nice to be able to just f**king go off and do something else. Things don't have to make much sense.

"Look at Platinum Games, the stuff that Kojima does. They get a lot of flak for the kind of stuff they do, but ultimately it's that attitude - so f**king what? Let's go! Was it ridiculous? Yes, awesome! Was it fun? Yes, brilliant! That's the goal of games, to have as much fun as possible."

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is due on Xbox Live Arcade and other formats on May 1. We've got footage of the game right here.