Review by: Brandon "Lost Lewts" Cackowski-Schnell

There are times when playing the various Borderlands DLC packs that I get the feeling that Gearbox doesn't know what they're doing. I don't mean this in the pejorative sense, far from it, more that Gearbox is using these packs to figure out what works and what doesn't, as well as explore further this backwater world they've given us to run around in.

Zombie Ned was a hillbilly Halloween party, a character and level designer's dream, full of fantastic moody set pieces and shambling takes on the main game's enemies. Moxxi's Underdome Riot was there for one thing and one thing only: back breaking difficulty, testing the patience, perseverance and tactical skills of the most battle hardened teams. With the latest pack we have a set of missions that follow the main game's story and mission structure the most faithfully, providing plenty of challenge and loot for your time, but giving us the biggest glimpse of the universe outside of Pandora.

Turns out Pandora wasn't always a backwater planet, home to treasure hunters and mercenaries. At one point it was meant to be a galactic suburb of sorts, protected by the Atlas corporation, that is until the burning midgets and and badass psychos moved in. Atlas is looking to come back and reclaim Pandora and they're not too happy with you opening the Vault, so instead of our quartet of merry mercs being just another looter looking for the Vault, Atlas has you pegged as enemy numero uno.

It's a small shift, story wise, but a necessary one. After all, you did what no other treasure hound could. It only makes sense that everyone would come gunning for you as a result. This content pack also opens up the Atlas corporation a bit more—to hilarious results. For all of their weapons and battle hardened Crimson Lance soldiers, they're just as incompetent as the rest of the bozos you regularly mow down. General Knoxx is a world weary soldier, ground down by working for a literal child, Admiral Mikey, and it shows in every droll audio dispatch he makes to you, entreating you to kill yourselves and just save him the trouble. Can you blame him though? He's got a rogue ninja-esque assassin Athena looking to you for help blowing up his munitions dump and is leading a group of soldiers manned by idiots that lose the code to his vault while on personal ice cream leave. I'd probably want to quit too.

Despite the focus of hostilities being you and your partners, the focus of the game is still loot, loot, loot. The main quest line culminates in you running rampant through the General's armory, stuffing every backpack slot you have with all manner of murder machine. Don't worry if you don't get everything you need as the optional quests will have you coming back two more times. While I appreciate the ability to return for more loot, repeating the same quests as a means of padding out the number of optional quests seems like a cop-out, as does all of the artificial game-lengthening driving you'll be doing to get from one area to another. Like Zombie Ned before it, Knoxx's playground only has one fast travel point, T-Bone Junction, with all of the other sprawling areas accessible only by vehicle.

Luckily Gearbox saw fit to give you an expanded stable of vehicles including the Monster, a homing missle equipped 4x4, the Racer, a fast and sleek speed machine and the ultimate in OMG APC's, the Lancer, a Crimson Lance beast of a vehicle, capable of bringing all the kiddies to the party along with multiple destructive gifts. You'll be spending a lot of time in these rides, so it's a good thing that they're so much fun to drive, or man the turret The driving back and forth gets a bit tiresome, but the vehicles allow for much larger destinations, complete with some great new enemies, such as the drifters—giant, towering daddy longlegs that shoot gobs of acid and bob up and down on their spindly legs such that a line of them appear to be cheering on the fact that you just got flipped out of your vehicle and are beset by wild skags. There still are plenty of places vehicles can't go, leading you to face down more waves of the usual Pandoran beasties, but also new ones such as skag riding midgets, wild skags and various updated Crimson Lance troops.

With all of the new, varied, enemies, this pack brings to the game something somewhat lacking from the main game and all too present in Moxxi, namely a challenge. As this DLC picks up right where the main story ended, the enemies you face and the loot you nab is all centered around level 37 characters, and it shows. Enemies aren't pushovers and the Crimson Lance apparently spent some money for elemental training and have the chemical, shock and pyro troopers to prove it.

Sticking with one elemental type for all conflicts, something very easy to do in the main game, won't cut it here, not unless you want to spend a lot of time respawning and paying the price for it. Of course, you can always take your level 50 character through playthrough one and gank the system, but don't expect to hit the new level cap of 61 that way, or have much of a challenge. Instead, take that leveled up merc through playthrough two and you'll have a challenge that's entertaining, but doable, something sorely lacking from both DLC packs up until this point. If you're still finding it too easy, feel free to take on the baddest of the bad bosses, Crawmerax. He's barely doable solo, and marginally easier with a team, and even then, he brings plenty of pain. Luckily he drops plenty of loot, easily three or four trips to the vending machine's worth and is your best chance for getting the new, ultra rare pearlescent weapons. Once you see the loot drops from this criminally huge crustacean, General Knoxx's armory is but a distant memory.