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The first load of DLC for Borderlands is an enjoyable, diversion from the main storyline that ratchets the seriousness down and the creepiness up by several notches both ways. At the mysterious and eerie swamps of Jacob’s Cove where the only trees on Pandora grow the moustachioed Doctor Ned has been charged with keeping the employees of the Jacob Corporation hearty and healthy. Some where along the line they’ve turned into zombies and it’s up to you to solve the monstrous mystery and loot the place dry along the way.
Hooray for looting corpses! Or in the case of zombies, even corpsier corpses.
Visually Jacob’s Cove is a big departure from the rest of Pandora, there’s trees for a start as mentioned and the expansion area has a green blue black color scheme in contrast with the dry red and brown deserts of most of the main campaign. Jacob’s Cove is the central hub area from which you can access five areas to complete quests in, all of which have a similar horror movie feel and tone to Jacob’s Cove. There's lots of gore and mutilated bodies in pools of blood littered around levels, not to mention jack-o-lanterns, which as we all know are way, way more scary than randomly arranged dismembered bodies.
Other than the atmosphere the other standout feature of Jacob’s Cove are the bad guys. You encounter none of the familiar enemies from the main game, instead blasting your way through a variety of zombies, wereskags and frankenstein monsters. The zombies make up the bulk of your enemies, attacking in Left 4 Dead sized swarms at certain times and vomiting on you to mess up your vision and slow your movement.
In addition to the regular shambling undead there’s Defilers who vomit in a wide arc before running away to let its mates eat you, Psycho zombies who sprint at you and become enraged when you wing them and suicide zombies that hurl an exploding barrel before swelling up and bursting for huge blast damage. Another enemy type actually carries a weapon crate on his back which you can loot once you’ve taken him out. I should also mention that shooting a zombies legs off causes them to crawl towards you as a dismembered torso. Arms can also be amputated with a clinical bit of shooting. I guess the OFLC missed this release as well. The Wereskags were my personal favourites; if you don’t kill them quickly they grow bigger, faster, glow red and do a ridiculous amount of damage.
Another new element to the gameplay is the presence of the Jacob Corporation as the main quest line proceeds. A licensed Jacob’s Claptrap shows up and a receptionist chimes in to offer your missions on behalf of the Jacob Corporation. It expands the world of Borderlands a little more to know that there are other players out there besides the New Haven locals, the raiders and the Crimson Lance.
The rest of the expansion is pretty much the familiar Borderlands model. Quests involve killing someone or something, or finding several not so well hidden data recorders. Don’t cross your fingers for any unique horror themed weapons either. There are some powerful guns and grenade mods to be discovered, but nothing that feels unique to the setting. Given the randomness of the loot drops this might have just been my experience, but I found an awful lot of corrosive damage weapons around Jacob’s Cove. This coupled with the fact all the different types of Zombie are immune to corrosive damage was pretty disappointing. In fact certain enemies have their health restored by certain elemental weapons so you'll want to be careful who you shoot with what and make sure you have a diverse armoury available.
The major feature Zombie Island has going for it, more than anything else, is that it’s an experience buffet. The sheer number of zombies you battle means buckets of experience will be flowing your way. I started the expansion with a level 35 Berserker and after completing only the main missions I’d bounced up to 42. If you were aiming to get one character levelled to 50 but shooting the same Skag’s over and over was getting you down, Zombie Island will help you along. As long as you’re over level 10 the difficulty of the expansion will scale to suit your character so don’t worry about it being too easy or too difficult.
Despite the disappointment of familiar missions and the usual weapon types, the new enemies, atmosphere and humour of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned makes it a worth while purchase for Borderlands fans.
Here’s one piece of advice to save you some frustration as well, don’t bother picking up Zombie brains until you’ve found a certain dead friend from the original game. It’s much easier to gather brains when you’re doing the missions than go back and do it over again.
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Comments
Havnt played it since i hired it, but im thinking about playing it.. stupid good RPS....