The previous Borderlands content pieces, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot, are both great in their own right, but are overshadowed by what The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx has to offer. Essentially, it’s the equivalent of Broken Steel from Fallout 3. So not only do you get an extension of the story, but you get a whole heap of new stuff, vehicles and an increased level cap.
For those who have yet to finish Borderlands, kindly skip forward to the next paragraph. For the rest of you, The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx picks up very shortly after the completion of the game. After you transport yourself to the newly laid T-bone Junction, you’re very quickly informed that your fight for Pandora isn’t quite over. Unhappy that you’ve thwarted their plan to enter the Vault, the Atlas Corporation is out to get you, and they’ve sent the remainder of Lance, as well as General Knoxx to clean up what Steele couldn’t finish.
OK, so we've seen this before...
Still, you’re not on your own. An Atlas assassin/traitor, Athena, is there to help you out in your mission to finish the antagonists off once and for all. And by help, we mean hand out a bunch of missions to you. Mad Moxxi didn’t have enough scope for humour, so it’s whole heartedly welcome return some story-based gameplay. The depressed musing of General Knoxx’s red tape and his ambivalent pleas for you to “just go ahead and die already”, Athena’s dead-serious tones, the Atlas advertisements that play across the highways and the appearance of Moxxi make for a thoroughly enjoyable and genuinely funny experience.
What’s more, the game adds more missions than you can poke a stick at. Well, for a piece of DLC that is. Playing the story aspects could take you upwards of six or so hours, with side missions at least doubling that and going even further. Sure, some are fairly run-of-the-mill, but there have been some impressive and fresh mission additions. There are some interesting little twists and surprises tacitly included into the gameplay, a whole heap of new weapons to plunder and plenty of new enemies to kill. That, and the game isn’t over once you’ve conquered the story. There is a little matter of one final extra boss, who is virtually impossible to beat unless you’ve re-maxed your cap. For the record, this new cap raises the level from 50 to 61. Why an eleven level increase? That’s Borderlands for you.
In terms of substance, as well as the additions and expansions to the game, The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx is right up there. For the price, you’re almost getting more game than you would for a lot of retail games. However, there are a few aspects of this content that still could have used a bit of extra thought. Firstly, part of the lengthy play time comes down to the size of the new area, and part comes down to a fault in the system. To traverse the massive expanses, you have three new vehicles, the Monster, the Racer and the Lancer. The Monster and Lancer are slower and bulker than the Racer, but each packs a lot more punch and armour.
Haven't seen that before!
And you’ll need them. You’ll spend a good portion of the game in vehicle combat. However, it’s often across narrow roadways, so playing on your own can get very disorientating. As with a lot of Borderlands, your best bet is to play as a team. That, and either way, you can get the impression that you'll spend too much time in vehicles. However, the really annoying aspect of The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx is the save system. Basically, you will always end up back at the fast travel post at T-bone Junction. Everytime. Regardless of what end of the map you’ve finished with. This inflexibility can be real downer, as at some points, you’ll have a large section that you’ll need to re-fight through just to continue your mission.
The other part of The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx that isn’t as good as it could have been is the inflexible difficulty level. Basically, it assumes that you’ve either finished playthrough 1 or playthrough 2. So unless you’ve strictly completed either, you tend to be either over or under-levelled throughout your experience. Being over-levelled helps a little if you’re flying solo, but it isn’t as satisfying as you’re not gaining too many levels. While it would have been preferable if the difficulty was more dynamic, it’s not a huge downer on the rest of the material that is on offer. And generally speaking, this content has a fairly steep difficulty curve.
Aside from the busted saving and inflexible difficulty, there isn’t much more you could possibly ask from The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx. It is a great expansion to the story, to the gameplay, to the content and overall, to the humour and lore of Pandora. For the asking price, you almost have another budget priced game to go through. If you ever needed a reason to get back to Borderlands, this is it.
Worth buying? Yes
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Downloadable content ratings system
We've given a 'buy' rating of 'Yes', 'Maybe', or 'No'.
Yes means that the content is either great value or brings some substantial additions to the game, or possibly both.
Maybe means that the content may be fun while it lasts, but may either be too short or not enough to fully justify the price tag.
No means that we don't recommend downloading this insubstantial content.
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. Really like this dlc.
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