Borderlands DLC review

Yes I splurged on the three downloadable areas for Borderlands - The Zombie Island of Dr Ned, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.

All three don't directly slot into the game you can only reach them via the fast-travel network, which means that if you start a new game they can't be reached until the 'Repair the fast travel network' is completed. So what do they contain.

[Update - in fact they do show up on the post at the first arena, however I'm unsure how you're supposed to return]

[Update I now have all four 2Claptrap's New Robot Revolution"going cheap]

Both Zombie Island and Armory are almost full games in themselves with multiple connecting areas, Moxxi's is simple a hub with three large arenas.

For Zombie Island you're investigating an area of the planet colonised by the Jacobs corporation for being the only area with water and trees. It seems something has turned all the residents into Zombies! or Wereskags! could it have something to do with Dr Ned who is in no-way Dr Zed from the main game with just a fake moustache over his facemask?

Basically it's the same as the main game with the same sort of fetch/kill quests, but the atmosphere is a vast difference from the desert environments. There's a few more trophies added on, a chance of increasing your storage space and a few more unique weapons. However the sheer size can be a pain at times because there's no fast-travel system in place within the island. Get a quest and you have to travel to the right area the slow-way; then back to cash it in, then back out again. There's enough vending machines to prevent this from being a major hassle and enough signposts so as to know where things are, but it does mean a lot of repetition.

The second DLC is Moxxi's. The titular Moxxi is running a gladiator-style set of matches while waiting for the third Mr Right to show up. This DLC gives you access to a bank, basically a droid-run storage chest you can dump some of the more unique weaponry you've collected to free up your personal storage space, a godsend when it comes to some irreplaceable weaponry that can be picked up. So three arenas with the first quest being to complete the rounds in each arena; sounds easy - it's not.

Each arena has five rounds, each round consists of five waves; that's 75 waves in which you have to kill everything that moves oh and there's no save within an arena and you can only get out of an arena by winning or quitting the entire game.

Just to add more spice to things there are no vending machines within an arena, so at the end of a wave ammo and health crates float to the ground and will replenish your stocks when collected. Also in the later rounds Moxxi will apply a modifier, weapon X will do more damage, but every other type will do less; enemies move faster; are more accurate; or your health will simply drain away and only get replenished when you kill something.

It's a matter of luck what modifier comes up and I would groan at seeing Vampire come up in the fourth "Baddass Wave" because it would stick for the fifth "Boss Wave" gee only four enemies on screen and my health whittling away unless I can kill them, thanks.

However this isn't the main problem, it's the combination of the modifier roulette screen that appears at the end of a wave and the dropping of health/ammo packs at the same time. See down come the packs and they can bounce like crazy to any area of the arena, as they disappear before the next wave starts you need to move quickly to run over to them, and select them to pick them up. At which point your display is almost blanked out by a huge menu box that spins the modifiers. Now imagine this is multiplayer with say four characters all trying to reach ammo/health boxes while not being able to see where they're going. How the hell did this get through testing?

That said the arenas are fun, but as an obvious game balancing measure you gain no experience for kills, which means no increase in weapon proficiency and no weapon drops to loot. That said the kills and everything else still counts towards the internal challenges. So the Guardians killed in the Angelic ruins count towards the "What is that thing?" kill 50 Guardians. So experience points can be gained through that method. Otherwise this DLC is really a multiplayer experience, for a single player it's the bank that counts.

Onto the third and final DLC Armory. As with Zombie Island there's no internal fast-travel system, which means yet more repetition, unlike Zombie Island though the signage is pretty useless. Sadly you're back in the desert again, or more often above the desert travelling on the freeway. As a lot of the game involves driving three new vehicles are introduced through quests. They're pretty sweet except they can only be used in this area which is a shame. This is the only DLC that messes up the timeline. It's assumed that you've defeated the big bad and the former governor is dead. General Knoxx comes in to take over and a bounty is placed on your head. This makes sense if you have completed the main game, but it's possible to access way before that happens. The fact it's supposed to come after the main game means the enemies are fairly high-level so heading there quickly will probably result in multiple deaths.

It's a shame really as Armory has a good storyline and amusing quests, but the freeway system linking the areas just emphasises the repetition. During the later mission I would end up just driving straight through ignoring the awful drones that would pop-up every so often to shoot at me; driving straight through all the guard points without stopping for loot; all until I got to the level change icon. It just got boring and held little challenge between quests.

[Update - the fourth DLC]

Now for the fourth and final DLC "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution". It seems lessons have been learned from Armoury and the layout is a hub system with the various areas attached to it, much less traipsing about to get to where you want and less annoyance about starting at the very beginning again when you save and restart later.

It's a fun level in that the incidentals are fun to listen to it almost makes up for the sheer pointlessness of the content. Like Secret Armoury this presupposes that you've opened the Vault, but not only that but that you've also finished Zombie Island and Secret Armoury. If you haven't some of the action points don't make a whole lot of sense.

That's not the problem though. Given that it assumes you've finished all three you're going to be pretty much of a seriously tooled-up badass when you hit this zone; in my case a level 61 character running through Playthrough 2. The enemies I was facing gave me about 7XP with the odd double digits appearing. Given that the soldiers in Secret Armoury would net me experience in the triple digits this became a duck shoot ;actually more like a fish shoot, in a barrel, with grenades.

I had little sense of challenge, sure the larger Spiderants could be difficult, but that was down to numbers and their dense frontal armour. I had zero difficulty with the 'bosses'. So fun, but not for the right reasons.


So final verdict. Both Zombie Island and Secret Armory give value for money with Zombie Island pipping the post for simple variation. But Armory raises the level cap to 61 so on a technical level it's 'better'. Moxxi's comes last except for those into co-operative play or those desperate for separate storage. Claptrap's was a good laugh, but seemed pointless had this been set before the other two storyline DLCs the content would have been better aligned.

On special mention has to go to the secret final boss in Secret Armory - Crawmerax the Invincible who appears in the mission "You. Will. Die" Yes. You. Will.

[Update - Patch. The latest patch 1.4.1 adds another 8 levels to the cap. With the 11 from Secret Armoury the cap becomes 69 (Dude!). In terms of gameplay some Level of Detail pop-in seems to have become worse as have the framerate jutters during  intense fights such as the Horde Wave in Moxxi's Underdome

You give with one you take with the other [sigh]
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