Of All the Rotten Luck: A Review of The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned DLC

(An Only Slightly Delayed Review)

Well, I finished the first chapter of Borderlands DLC, the Zombie Island of Doctor Ned. Much like the core game I had very mixed feelings about it. So how mixed were these feelings? Were they mushy and weird like the zombies I so elegantly dispatched? Read on to find out.

The first thing that The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned (hence forth ZIDN) did right was narrative. Despite the lack of a blue-ish hazy lady Gearbox still managed to deliver more then the scraps of a story the core game gave us. ZIDN starts with a great narration from the burly Russian gun dealer who is telling a story to a small child about the exploits of the Vault Hunters after they found the vault. The banter between the two is great and the voice actor for the little boy really steals the show. That said, this still only barely qualifies as a story.

You start off in Jakobs cove, where all heck has broken loose. There is a zombie-apocalypse going down thanks largely in part to the evil Dr. Ned and the ignorant Jakobs corporation. It's up to you to set things right the best way you know how, a liberal application of bullets. The story doesn't evolve beyond this, it's really just a one note hunt for a mad man with a few side quests where you… well… hunt for other mad men.

As DLC goes it gets the job done. This is the same Borderlands just with a neat zombie esthetic, nothing more. The missions are brief and fairly simple and it doesn't go out of its way to shake up the formula, adding only a few new enemy units like the loot goon (who is basically just the incredible Hulk with a weapons cache strapped to his back).

The length of the game is ridiculously padded with combat. In Borderlands you didn't have to fight every enemy, you could speed past them in your car (by the way, no vehicles in Jakobs Cove). In ZIDN however, you're dealing with zombies, and you have to kill every single one. It grew to be quite ridiculous how many zombies I had to put down. You shoot one and they all start coming down on you, and if your objective is in that are you best hunker down and shoot, because if you blow past them you'll have an army on you in no time.

To be honest though, I really enjoyed this DLC. There were fewer bugs and issues, though I did still experience a fair share of unintended deaths from going down a non-designated path. ZIDN actually reminds me a lot of the old Duke Nukem expansions. It also shares the same humor as 'ol Duke. There's a lot of tongue in cheek humor in ZIDN, and they go beyond Mad Max jokes (a-thankyou). It's just a new skin, but in the end that's all it needs to be. Yes it rides the zombie trend (a trend I don't mind… too much), but it also takes another stab at a cohesive narrative and does a lot better then the core game. There's still more DLC to go though, so let's see how Gearbox does with DLC pack #2 Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot.