Game: Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
Format: Xbox 360
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games

The Newb Review Game of the Year nominee Borderlands received it’s third piece of downloadable content last week, and to cut to the chase, it is brilliant. After the shambolic mess that is Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot which cut out all of the fun aspects of Borderlands: exploration of vibrant open areas, looting, and levelling up, we are treated to a lengthy new campaign, complete with expansive environments, new enemies, new weapons, and a further 11 experience levels to unlock.

Taking place directly after the events of the main game story, your character is contacted by Athena, an assassin who has recently quit working for the Crimson Lance and asks for your help bringing them down. Summoning you to T-Bone Junction, an entirely new town that you can access from any fast travel station, you are tasked with destroying the last stronghold of the Crimson Lance, in particular the titular Armory of General Knoxx.

T-Bone Junction and the surrounding area is large. Each area is linked together by Highways that are overrun with Crimson Lance soldiers. Your main objective is to destroy roadblocks in order to gain access to new areas such as a Prison and Deep Fathoms, which is a dried up lake. During your travels you will meet a number of memorable characters, and while the story is not exactly great, the dialogue is as fantastic as ever. General Knoxx in particular shines with his apathetic messages regarding his superior officer who send him taunting orders written in Macaroni and Crayons. As well as excellent new characters, a number of old faces make a return including Scooter and Mad Moxxi, complete with amusing dialogue.

New vehicles and enemies are abundant in this add on

In order to access the new areas you will need to construct new vehicles to break through the Crimson Lance’s road blocks. The three new vehicles comprise of The Racer (a speedy version of your standard car), The Monster (a Jeep armed with machine guns and homing missiles) and The Lancer (A four person tank armed with mines, machine guns, a laser canon, and a pulse blast). Each of these vehicles has their own strengths and weaknesses, such as the Racer being incredibly fast but vulnerable to damage. The vehicles are very useful when facing off against the new enemies that have been added to the game.

As well as the elemental shock troopers; armoured soldiers that have weapons that inflict either shock, explosive, fire, or corrosive damage, there are a number of new bandit types and new creatures called Drifters: towering spider like creatures. On top of the new enemies and environments, a new super rare class of weapons has been added. These Pearlescent weapons (coloured a sort of turquoise blue in your inventory) are incredibly rare and devastatingly powerful.

The enemies you face are very tough

Due to the fact that the main story of this add on takes place after the ending of Borderlands, you cannot access any of the missions until you have completed the main game’s story. Consequently, the enemies that you will fight are pretty tough. It is very clear that this pack has been designed with multiplayer in mind, as there are a large number of enemies on screen at any one time.

There are a number of side missions included in the game, ranging from simple assassination missions to general Fed-Ex quests. One mission in particular “the Super Secret Final Boss”, is actually impossible to beat on your own as the boss is a level 64 character. The level cap has been raised to 61 in this game, which means that even if you completely upgrade your character, this boss is 3 levels stronger than you are. The only way to beat him is to team up with other high levelled characters and work together to take him and his minions down. You will be rewarded with some of the rarest items in the game for beating this boss, but it is no mean feat.

General Knoxx is an apathetic bastard.

As with every other mission in Borderlands, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx can be played through twice by each character; once on playthrough one, and the final time on a second run. The second play through features stronger enemies of a higher experience level, which should keep this add on challenging even for those with exceptionally strong characters.

Review Round-Up

Graphics: 5/5 Brilliant character designs with bold, colourful, expressive graphics. Very stylish overall.

Sound: 4/5 The strong voice acting you would come to expect from a Borderlands game returns. The music remains as strong as ever, and the sound effects are as varied as usual.

Gameplay: 4/5 A wide variety of missions ranging from simple assassination missions, to your typical fetch quests. The three new vehicles shake things up a bit, with each of them having their own strengths and weaknesses. Although it is easier to play this add on with other players, and probably more fun, it is possible to play through it in single player so long as you have a strong enough character.

Longevity: 5/5 The main story missions will last a good few hours, and there are a number of optional side missions. The inclusion of a further 11 experience levels could also provide enough reason to go back and complete more missions in order to get as much experience as possible.

Overall: 4 Pearlescent Shotguns out of 5 It seems Gearbox have listened to the critics of Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot and delivered an incredibly strong add on that builds on all of the original game’s strengths. Exploring a large open world populated with memorable characters and a ton of new equipment has brought new life to Borderlands.

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is available for download now on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

[starreview tpl=16]

Any devoted readers of our site will know how popular last year’s Borderlands was amongst the staff. We must have loved it, because it was one of our nominations for Game of the Year.

The real joy we found in Borderlands came from not only the tight controls and the charismatic characters, but from the compelling loot system. The game boasted the fact that there were millions of different types of gun, each with their own individual statistics. Arguably, it was the search for bigger and better guns that made Borderlands so compelling. You can imagine our disappointment when upon loading up this latest piece of downloadable goodness, we discovered that there is essentially no looting to be had at all.

Moxxi provides commentary during each round... And it gets pretty stale.

To set the scene, Mad Moxxi is a woman looking for love. After three failed marriages – including one to a recognisable character – Moxxi founded the Underdome Riot. This is an arena-based battle to the death, with the hope of possibly finding husband number four along the way. Moxxi herself is a typically charismatic character with well written dialogue.

However, in terms of gameplay, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome is a very dull place. There are three arenas: each based on areas you visited in the main storyline and you are tasked with defending yourself against wave after wave of opponents. The first set of challenges has you fighting against five waves of enemies. However, each wave is made up of five rounds, meaning you have 25 rounds to fight through before completing an arena.

At the end of each round you fight a randomised boss character from the story mode. In a way it is similar to the fire fight mode in Halo ODST: up to four players keep fighting their way through increasingly difficult waves of enemies, with certain waves having unfair advantages, such as being immune to headshots. This is all very well and good, but the real problem with this format is that you gain no experience for each person you kill, and they drop no loot.

The only way to get loot is to defeat the boss round at the end of the wave, and a randomly generated gun will fall out of the sky at your feet. So far I have yet to be given a gun that is actually any better than the ones I had previously found.

The new waving robot had them completely entranced

The second problem with this add-on is that the enemies are often too tough, as they have no set experience level. Instead, they match the experience level of the player that hosts the game. In true Borderlands fashion, if you are unfortunate enough to not at least match the experience level of the host, then you have absolutely no chance against the enemies. They are all just too strong.

You could argue that this is where teamwork comes in, allowing you to strategise with your team mates. But there is little time for strategy as the enemies tend to just come charging towards you. Once you eventually make your way through all 25 waves in each of the three arenas, you unlock the advanced challenges. These place you in the same three arenas, but this time you must fight through 20 waves of enemies in each arena, bringing the total number of rounds to 100. Even completing the 25 five waves of the original set of challenges became tedious, and as of writing I have given up slogging through because it has become so mind numbing.

Having listed the faults it would be unfair not to list the few good points of this DLC. A new bank system is introduced, allowing you to store items that previously you would have to have dropped if you found something new and interesting.

Round 1! By round ten you'll want to scratch your eyes out...

Moxxi herself is a good character, although it is sometimes easy to forget this when you are forced to listen to her repeat her phrases for the 131st time in a row.

Finally, if you can stomach beating the Underdome then you are rewarded with one new skill point, which will please the more hardcore players that have already reached experience level 50, and are looking for some way of advancing their character.

Review Round-Up

GRAPHICS: 3/5 Borderlands’ graphical style remains unchanged. The new environments are made up of parts of levels already experienced in the story mode, which is a little disappointing.

SOUND: 3/5 As usual, all the sound effects remain pretty much unchanged. New music will play in the game when you reach the boss fights and this is suitably fast paced and pleasing to the ear. Moxxi’s voice acting is competent, but after the 200th time of hearing her yell “horde wave!” you may get sick of her.

GAMEPLAY: 1/5 While there is a certain amount of fun to be had playing these challenges in multiplayer, it only lasts so long. This add-on is as tedious as it is long. While I appreciate the inclusion of various handicaps in rounds – such as enemies only being able to be harmed by shotguns – by the time you beat the first three arenas you will probably have seen everything there is to see.

LONGEVITY: 2/5 Each of the first set of arenas will take approximately half an hour to beat. When you move on to the final three arenas, which are four times as long, you can expect to spend a few hours on each map. However, the removal of one of the key elements that made Borderlands fun in the first place (the looting) will likely mean that you won’t bother.

OVERALL: 2 Horde Waves out of 5. It seems the developers have forgotten what made Borderlands fun in the first place. Having chosen to remove all the fun of looting and expansive environments to search, they decided to stick you in a familiar looking set of arenas and force you to shoot at wave after wave of generic enemies.

[starreview tpl=16]