Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr Ned (2009) - Action Videogame DLC Review (X-Box 360)


The Zombie Island of Dr Ned is the first DLC to be released for the excellent hit FPS/RPG Borderlands. It is set in a brand new area; the Zombie Island of Dr Ned unsurprisingly, and is full of fantastic creatures; zombies!
The DLC is accessed via the area selector. The island looks vastly different to the areas of the main game, being set in a spooky wooded island complete with a mansion, secret labs, graveyards and abandoned factories. The island is the home of one of the big gun manufactures of the Borderlands world. Due to unknown circumstances the workers have all turned into the undead.

The game is very tongue in cheek, the more zany style fits the world well, and is very funny. It is just comfortable in it's wackiness. For instance Dr Ned is the same character model as Dr Zed (of the main game) just with a big comedy moustache, the game makes several references to the fact, pointing out 'no way is that Dr Zed just wearing a false moustache', the health machines have Dr Zed's name. but with the Z covered up with a N. 


The missions are quite cool, but no different to the rest of the fetch quests, this is no bad thing. A very funny mission saw you hunting down the voice recorders of a group of young teens investigating the zombie mystery. It quickly becomes apparent these teens are a pastiche of Scooby Doo, seen most obviously with a broken down bus with 'Mystery Mobile' plastered on it, and the voice recordings are by 'the gang'.

There are lots of new enemy types, as well as the many many zombies there are midget zombies, werewolves, crows, and Frankenstein monsters. 


In terms of quality this is up there with the Fallout 3 DLC, and even beats a lot of that, nearly as good as the swamp DLC for that game. An entertaining pastiche of classic horror which doesn't feel out of place in conjunction with the main game (unlike Operation Anchorage for Fallout 3 for example). For 800 MS points this is essential if you love Borderlands (and pretty much everyone does).


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