Zombies Come for the Borderlands

As I’ve settled into reviewing games and movies for this website, my standards on what I want to cover, and how I want to cover them, have shifted. You can see this easily here in the BorderlandsConceptually, Borderlands is Mad Max but set on an alien planet, with magic. The game play might be action-shooter-RPG fare, with a bit of Diablo thrown in, but the aesthetic is pure, Australian post-apocalyptic exploitation. series where I initially tried to cram as much content into my reviews for Borderlands and Borderlands 2 because those games had been out for a while by the time I was back up and running on this site and I wanted to cover them. The reviews of those games aren’t just their main content but all their DLC shoved in, slapped together to (in my current view) get them done and move on to newer content.

Since then, though, I’ve gone through and reviewed the successive games that came out afterwards and in each case (such as with Borderlands: The PreSequel) I devoted an article to the main game and then did follow-ups for each of the main DLC packs that came out afterwards (Holodome Onslaught and Claptastic Voyage). These were fairly big releases in their own right and shoving them in as tiny parts of a larger article didn’t really feel fair. But that still left the old DLCs from the first two games without proper reviews, and having gone back and revisited each of those games with better rereviews (see: Replay Rereview), it felt like I had to give the DLCs their due as well. So here we go, in order of release.

With the success of the first Borderlands title, DLC expansions were all but inevitable. The world of Pandora is huge (owing to it being a full world) and there were plenty of narrative opportunities for the story to continue by exploring characters, corporations, or ideas that had been raised before. While the first Borderlands may not be as richly detailed as the sequel (owing to the fact that the first game’s story came together at the last minute) there were still places DLCs could go to add depth and context to the world.

And yet, even with that in mind, I don’t think most would have expected the first DLC for Borderlands to go to a land of zombies. Released one month after Borderlands came out, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned took players to a horror-themed section of Pandora, one packed with werewolves, monsters, freaks, and, yes, zombies. From one perspective it was an interesting direction for the DLC to go as Borderlands wasn’t a horror game, and while it had some light fantasy elements (Sirens, specifically), it was much more grounded in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, Mad MaxStarted with a single 1970s Australian exploitation flick (a popular genre in the country at the time), the Mad Max series went on to spawn three sequels, an entire genre, style, and what many consider the greatest action film of all time, Fury Road. Not bad from a little low-budget film about cars smashing each other after the fall of society.-meets-space exploration aesthetic. Zombies seem far outside those bounds.

On the other hand, though, there are a lot of first person shooters that have zombie campaigns in them. Call of Duty: World at War (released in 2008), was the first game to really popularize the idea of putting zombies into a shooting game, and pretty much every other title in the genre followed. Borderlands having a zombie campaign felt a lot less weird back in 2009, when the game was still relatively new, and it only seems strange now considering the breadth of the series as a whole (even if it has continued to revisit the idea, with a Headhunter pack in Borderlands 2, and then a Cthulhu-based expansion for Borderlands 3).

Credit where it’s due, though, the team at Gearbox did a solid job building out this strange little zombie-filled island for Pandora. Unlike the main game which is, by and large, populated by wide expanses of desert and dirt, occasionally dotted with trash, the zombie island is a dank, dark, dreary place that feels distinct and interesting. It properly suits the theme of a land of ghouls, buying into that classic horror movie aesthetic as much as it can considering the original game’s art style. It works really well in context.

The meat of the expansion is about Dr. Ned (not Dr. Zed, as this is clearly not the same person just wearing a terrible mustache) needing your assistance in getting the island under control. Ned (not Zed) has done some experiments in the past and, unfortunately, these experiments have gotten out of control. A supposed vaccine ended up turning the denizens of Jacob’s Cove (the area you explore in this expansion) into walking, shambling monsters, and now the vault hunters have to fight their way through the hordes to try and help Ned (not Zed) get things back on track.

Except, as you learn, the mad doctor is… well, a mad doctor, and these experiments were purposeful. The zombies escaping containment was an intended consequence, and you see there are plenty of other experiments that Ned (not Zed) has unleashed on the island as well. There are wereskags, nasty lycanthropic beasts made from unassuming Jacobs workers, as well as Tankensteins, horrible, hulking beasts with a taste for blood. And behind it all is Ned (not Zed) pulling the strings, wanting to see what the vault hunters do so he can perfect his experiments and create the best monsters.

While I like the story and the aesthetic of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, I will note that the actual play experience is hit-or-miss. If you just focus on the main story, and speed through the main missions without touching the side content, the expansion is pretty decent. It does drag a little in the last couple of missions, with maps that feel overly long, created just to make you walk for long stretches instead of getting to the story, but for the most part this is a solidly crafted main adventure that keeps the action pumping at you all the time.

The side content, though, is where it falls apart. The biggest offender is T.K. Baha, who is back from the dead (after dying early at the start of Borderlands, sorry for the spoilers). He’s a zombie now and he has a craving for brains. Lots of them. At first it’s just a few (10 at first, and then another 25, and then 50), but by his last couple of missions he’s asking for a ton of them (100, and then 250), and you have to keep collecting them to finish him off. Bear in mind that collecting 10 brains for the first mission doesn’t count for the 25 you need for the next mission. Each is independent, and you get to keep collecting, on and on, as the expansion goes on.

And to do that you have to headshot the zombies. A headshot kill will take out the zombie and free their brain, and the best way to do that (I’ve found) is either with a really good sniper from a distance, or a solid shotgun up close. Anyone that likes to main pistols, SMGs, or combat rifles has to shuffle around their weapons for this expansion. And it feels absolutely endless, with the action dragging on as you try to take out all these zombies while focusing on other tasks. Plus, any time you finish collecting a desired amount, you need to walk all the way back to T.K. (as this first game only gave you one fast travel location for each expansion) to turn it in, just to get the next one in sequence, so you can keep collecting… on and on. It’s a real drag on the game. Like, I get what the designers were going for but it’s an idea that’s better as a joke than as a real mission you have to complete.

So no, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is not perfect, but I cut the designers some slack as this was their first expansion ever in the series. They were still feeling out what they could get away with, what worked and what didn’t, in the series as a whole. By that metric this first expansion is pretty solid. It provides a fun play experience, a new location with its own aesthetic, and a decent amount of action to entertain. Not all the pieces fit perfectly, but it does work on its own as a way to expand the world and give players more of what they wanted: more Borderlands.

And when you compare it to the next expansion in the sequence, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot, this expansion comes out looking like a five-star experience.