Moar Borderlands
I’m playing Secret Armory of General Knoxx right now; skipped right the hell over Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot because, hey, the Ring of Blood bullshit in the original game was awful, and I have no desire to pay ten bucks for basically a whole lot more of that. So how’s General Knoxx stack up?
Well, the game parts are good — fighting bandits, Space Marines Crimson Lance, and alien beasties in pretty much the same general encounter setup as in the original. It even adds a bunch of new mobs, like the Dreadnought Devastator! So if you liked Borderlands, hey! You’ll probably like this too. The problem is that they hide those game bits at the ends of long fucking roads. So you get in the stupid car, drive for four years, and then you get to shoot some mobs for a while. As an added bonus, General Knoxx continues the design philosophy of Dr. Ned and only contains one New-U: right at the beginning. So you can’t even fucking fast-travel past the awful driving bits to get to the game bits. This is especially annoying when you need to get to the Sunken Sea, which is at the end of a long roadway with a long detour through a scaffolding area full of mobs. You can’t skip it, and you can’t fast-travel over it, so it takes like a half an hour to get through. And there’s no fucking excuse for the game making me spend a half-hour getting to the level. This is especially a problem for those of us who are grown-ups and only have a couple of hours to play. And it’s just goddamn insulting how, the first time you zone into the Sunken Sea, the game alerts you to new quests that have just become available back in the hub area.
The story is about… something. I didn’t really pay attention; I mean, it’s Borderlands. The story is "shoot mans and get hepix." I guess the Crimson Lance is trying to kill me, which doesn’t qualify as a new development in my book. To prevent them from killing me, I’ve come up with this ingenious plan: kill them first. But apparently I’m not too bright, since I needed some other chick to think of that for me. Just like in everything prior, General Knoxx’s mobs have no idea I’m a woman, and keep referring to me as "him," which leads to the most entertaining story bit in the game: the one I make up where I need to bust some heads to get some recognition in this misogynist border colony. What’s a super-powered ninja assassin girl gotta do to get over on this hick planet, anyhow?
In slightly more seriousness, I kind of miss the over-the-top camp of Dr. Ned. General Knoxx goes back to the original formula of mostly-gritty-with-touches-of-badly-done-humor. Seriously, Gearbox, maybe Valve will give you a favorable rate and you can rent Chet and Erik for a week to punch up your dialogue.
So is General Knoxx worth your ten bucks? Depends on your tolerance for the driving bullshit. Personally, I hope the actual gameplay gets a little bit thicker as I go along; I’ve had the thing for a while now and I’ve barely put a dent in it, since half my play time goes toward driving to the zone I need to be in. Have I mentioned how much that blows?
