Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 both sold extremely well and have strong communities behind them. To estimate the amount of enjoyment that you, as a reader, will personally have, there are two questions that need to be answered.
1) Do you like Left 4 Dead?
2) Do you like more of the same?
Zombies...Come out to play-i-ay.
- Game: Borderlands (Buy it)
- DLC Pack: Zombie Island
- Developer: Gearbox Software
- Price: 800MS Points/$9.99
- Release Date: 11/24/2009
If the answer to one or both of these questions is yes, then this DLC is for you. Gearbox, in essence, combines the mobs of zombies from Left 4 Dead and gives you a variety of guns and superpowers in order to kill them. You may have a twenty zombie train trailing you as you run to complete a quest. Combining these two elements of these games makes this DLC a blast to play with friends.
I downloaded the new DLC pack, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, with very high expectations. Ever since they first announced it I was researching it and trying to find all information that I could. It seemed very promising when first released; promising its own story, new maps, lots of side quests, and new enemies. After downloading it today after school (about 1GB), I quickly launched it and dove right into the content.
The first thing I noticed was that it was very dark; very, very dark. The first monster encounter you have is nigh impossible to actually see what you are fighting. Uncreatively enough your first foes are simply called "Zombies". While I know it is a zombie island; I would hope for a bit more creativity in the monster names. I fought my way into the town and activated my first main story quest. The story is not incredibly deep and has one minor twist throughout its course. The trademark humour is still there and there are a few good laughs to be had. The DLC seems rather short, but that could be because time flies when you're having fun. I was extremely glad I had ammo regenerating weapons however; you quickly run out of ammo plowing through waves of zombies. Because the zombies come in such massive waves and so quickly; running out of ammo is never a good thing.
I had a lot of fun with this DLC and it was definitely worth my $10. This, by no stretch of the imagination, does not mean it's perfect. There are some minor complaints (that could be viewed as major by some) that I have with this content. Firstly, the monsters were not doing it for me in the slightest; second, there was nothing that really popped at me; and third, the difficulty.
I'm not sure if that's blood or sausage juice...
There are approximately seven different monster types throughout the expansion pack. This would be perfectly fine if they were mixed up and presented in different ways. Instead they are lobbed together in masses and thrown at you; after fending enemies off for about an hour they begin to all look the same. While Gearbox advertised Were-skags as a main attraction; I think I ran into five at most. The zombies have a repetitive look and you are often fighting a fair amount at once. The other types, which I shall not talk about in order to avoid spoilers, are more varied and rare and thus do not blend with everything else.
The lack of a popping feature also bugged me the entire time I was playing. There was no ridiculous quest, no awesome drop, and nothing really huge or monumental. The quests were straightforward for the most part except for one, which contains a very nice surprise. Other than the one quest (or rather line of quests), all the quests seemed rather linear. I thought I had also read somewhere that there would be five new epic weapons added into the game. I have come across none of these epic weapons and weapon chests are scarce within the new maps. Also, in the original game, a boss would always drop a signature weapon after his (or her) demise. In the expansion that does not happen at all. I defeated a fair amount of bosses and none of them had any spectacular drop that was linked directly to them. I am not sure if this was on purpose or not, but it does not give a great feeling of satisfaction when you do not get a great piece of loot for killing a hard boss.
The difficulty of this expansion was also quite a let down. The final boss succumbed to my bullets after 30 seconds or so and the zombies were no match for me. My opinion on this could be skewed since I have a few rather powerful weapons and almost all my proficiencies maxed. I'm also, of course, level 50. Even with all the enemies being level 50 (this happens after defeating the original final boss for the second time), I had no trouble. I think I went down twice and quickly second-winded both times. It is not a huge problem because once you become high-level with good guns everything seems easy, but just a mild annoyance.
Regardless of the fact that there is a fair amount of negativity in the previous three paragraphs I still had a blast with this game. My friend and I played co-op through for about 8 hours and completed the entire DLC with the exception of a few side quests. I think that paying $10 for 8 hours of fun is most definitely worth it. I highly recommend this to everyone who owns Borderlands because of the amount of fun to be had is simply ridiculous.
