360 Rant Rave Forums

Introduction:
Last week while everyone was focusing on how they would digest all that turkey, Gearbox said thanks by revisiting Halloween in the first DLC for Borderlands. The expansion, entitled “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned,” continued with the frantic tempo established in Borderlands. Inviting Vault-hunters to pick up their guns and shake off that Pandoran dust, the new content sets hordes of zombies against the treasure hunters as they get to the bottom of what happened to the once industrious Jakob’s Cove.

Gameplay:
For a moderate price of $10/800 points you get a variety of new foes in a dark environment colored with a healthy splash of both Halloween and humor. The island invites you to explore the strange plague that beset a typically mundane island featuring the Jakob company’s lumber mill. Once again the player is afforded the option to mind what is going on the environment and in turn enjoy the humorous plot arc…or simply just run and gun on a killing and looting spree.

Accessing the fast travel kiosk will allow the player to teleport to Jakob’s Cove, even if they have yet to unlock the fast travel service. On this island the treasure hunter will traverse a landscape of gloomy sentinel trees, murky swamps, creepy graveyards, makeshift towns, and even a strangely déjà vu –inspiring locale by the name of Dead Haven.

In these haunting habitats reside the undead. They shamble about aimlessly, ambush from overhanging tree limbs, or pull themselves up from their shallow graves once they detect fresh meat. Some crawl on the ground, legless but far from harmless. Others explode after charging you. A different variety spits debilitating bile at you that distorts your vision and slows you.

Rants and Raves:

Rants:

• Instead of adjusting itself to your character’s level, the difficulty of the expansion is in accordance with story progression
• No increased level cap
• Lots of backtracking without teleport assistance

Raves:

• Can access the island starting at level 10
• While there is no noticeable tweak to the loot system, there IS a new backpack SDU to find, increasing your (legitimate) backpack inventory to 45 from 42
• A number of varieties of new enemies, including Tankensteins (large barrel-carrying zombies that are healed by electricity) and Halloween-themed enemies (like a pumpkin-headed boss)

Extras:
While the level cap has not been raised, the backpack inventory space has, provided you find the Claptrap before the final battle. There is also a bit more humor injected into this first expansion. Close attention to the details will reward the player with a healthy helping of snark, from a nod to Scooby Doo to jokes made about the game’s oft misleading waypoint system. The formula essentially remained the same, but there are a few nips and tucks here and there that make this first DLC a very enjoyable facelift.

Conclusion:
It is way too early to make the expected quip that Gearbox “raises the dead” with this expansion, as Borderlands is not quite dead yet. In fact, though the setting is a bit gloomier and Halloween-themed, many aspects of the DLC seem right at home. Psychos are still present, albeit a little more decomposed. Haven looks very similar, though the Crimson Lance denizens seem a little more bloodthirsty. And even more peculiar, a most unexpected cameo by an old pal grants insight into a very odd diet he most recently established.

Gearbox has not raised the dead with this first DLC; instead, the players themselves are infected just like the poor inhabitants of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. The plague, in this case, first causes itching, then a fever…and the only prescription, of course, is more Borderlands.

Score: 8.5