Borderlands DLC

27 May 2011

I got my hands on the complete set of DLC for Borderlands. I only needed Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx since I already had The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot installed. I’m a big Borderlands fan even though it is bloody frustrating at times - you know what I mean visiting the same location multiple times and kicking the same ass several times, sometimes twice in one mission once to get to the mission goal and once on the way back to the waypoint. I was a little disappointed with The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and didn’t get into Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot, it was just boring for me as a single player.

I’d read a little bit about The Secret Armory of General Knoxx enough to know there was a bad-ass boss at the end so I thought I’d start off at a gentle pace with Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution.

Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution

I was very disappointed with this DLC. The bosses were very poor and easy to defeat and, the missions were mind-numbingly boring and predictable. The new “baddies” in the form of Claptraps and Hyperion guards were too easy to defeat. I’d defeated the main boss, Mega Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap (MINAC), before completing all the side missions so I seemed a bit pointless and painful to complete them, especially the last one for Patricia Tannis which involved collecting 150 Claptrap parts and therefore requiring you kill 150 plus Claptraps (as not all dropped the parts you needed). It was worthwhile playing this but it was way too short. I don’t think I can even be bothered to do play-through 2.

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx

I enjoyed this much better than the Claptrap DLC. Someone actually took time to think of missions that were interesting and challenging. However there were still some really annoying sections where you repeated yourself numerous times. For example there are a few road-blocks throughout the game. You are responsible for clearing them which is fine however later on when you have to revisit the location sometimes they are down and sometime they are back up which is annoying. I was unfortunate to find a/the bug in the Circle of Duty challenge where one soldier is left but you can’t get to him as he hasn’t appeared from his hole yet. In a mission for Marcus you have to visit Lockdown Palace to kill 50 prisoners. Despite the fact that you have already been there to rescue Athena you still get the cut-scene with her in it although she isn’t actually there - bizarre. At the time of writing I’m up to Level 59 so haven’t managed to kill Crawmerax yet but everything else is done. I’m on to the 2 play-through and have just completed the Armory mission. Speaking of that mission there is a great bug where you can drop through the floor into the Armory before you get to the actual lift that takes you down officially. This gives you unlimited time to check out every crate. The only downside is that because the timer never starts you have to kill yourself to leave and if you pass over a certain point a part of the mission is “ticked-off” and even if you leave you can never return as the access door is locked. So time to crack open WillowTree

One overall problem I had with both DLC’s was that you could not use the Way-Station to teleport between locations within the DLC’s. This meant that you covered the same ground on numerous occasions which was tedious to say the least. Despite its frustrations it is an excellent game with a lot of play value.