Borderlands: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot – Review (X360, PS3, PC)
Borderlands was a great new spin on the FPS genre and The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC only improved the formula. Unfortunately, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot only performs a ‘me too’ by adding little more than a ‘horde mode’ to the original title. To make matters worse, it is advertised as being able to be played alone, but it is near impossible to accomplish without friends.
Upon installing Mad Moxxi’s add-on, a travel point is added which can be accessed from anywhere in the game. Once venturing to the Underdome, you will find one much appreciated addition: a bank for storage of weapons and items. Countless times through the retail adventure I found a weapon that was too high level for me and it had to take up a spot in my inventory until I could use it, so now having storage for these items is a nice touch.
Exploring the Underdome further will reveal three arena doors. Each arena has a different theme, but the basic action is the same for each. There are five rounds, each broken down into five waves. After finishing five rounds, twenty round versions of the three arenas are then unlocked. The final wave of each round pits you against a randomly selected boss, many of whom return from the main storyline. Every round after the first, different rules are applied to keep you on your toes, such as enemies only taking SMG damage or you continuously lose health unless you get a kill. Other rules ramp up the difficulty a ridiculous amount, such as ‘naked’ which removes your shields or ‘close combat’ which makes your weapons horribly inaccurate.
Experience and weapon drops have been changed for the worse. In short, they basically don’t exist. At the end of each round, there is a small number of useless guns that drop in the center. However, no experience is awarded aside from a single quest that rewards a measly one thousand point regardless of your level. Health and ammo is only dropped at the end of a wave and is only available for a few seconds before it disappears, sometimes too quickly to actually pick any up. Even more annoying is the gray box that pops up at the end of the round that obscures almost the entire screen. This box shows you what rules will be applied to the next round, so you must pay attention to it while still searching for the random ammo and health drops with most of your vision blocked.
The next major issue arises when you add up all the time required to complete each arena. The five round version of each don’t take too long; usually between thirty minutes and an hour. However, the twenty rounds in each arena can easily take four hours or more. There is no option to quit and return where you left off, so you must be certain that you have a several hours of free time before starting.
The biggest problem with this DLC revolves around how they dropped the feature hyped in the original game where the difficulty would scale to how many players are in the game. The number of enemies seem to assume you have a full group of four people, so playing alone is exponentially more difficult than any other part of the game. As of now, I have yet to meet anyone who has been able to finish a single twenty round arena without friends. This takes a game that had a perfect blend of single player and co-op action and throws that out the window. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome riot basically tells you, “If you don’t have friends with the game, you can’t play this, but we won’t let you know until after we take your money.”
If you do play with friends, there is some fun to be had. It’s a blast revisiting the randomly selected bosses from the original adventure and the trademark Borderlands style remains intact. However, the action ultimately isn’t much different than Gears of War’s horde mode or Halo: ODST’s firefight. With the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx adding so much exploration and action to Borderlands, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot simply doesn’t have anywhere near enough content or respect for the solo gamer to justify a price point equal to the other two DLCs. It honestly feels like this should have been included in one of the other two add-ons, and has no business as a stand alone product.
The Bottom Line
| Pros |
|---|
| Bank storage is a great addition, Some fun to be had with a full group of players |
| Cons |
| Impossible to complete alone, Onyl three small arenas, No mid-round save, Collecting ammo and health between rounds is a pain, No experience or useful weapon rewards for playing |
| Verdict |
| Ultimately a complete rip-off for the single player gamer and the only real rewards are achievements or trophies. |
| Overall |
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