The swamps are dark, dank and fetid, dotted with murderous critters rather than populated by them. Aegrus is as vast and mysterious as anything we’ve seen so far, with the added bonus that it looks different to anywhere else in the main game and it’s the first truly new area we’ve visited in any of the DLC so far. That all being said, this is still Borderlands 2, and even Borderlands 2 on a bad day is excellent. Instead, Big Game Hunt fills the excitement-gaps in its storyline with a handful of interesting side quests (mostly involving the murder of Aegrus’ unique fauna) and a new Raid boss – and loot, of course lots and lots of loot, including a sizable offering of unique drops. In fact, compared to (or because of) the Leviathan and Badassaurus finales, it just doesn’t pass muster. He spends the entire DLC (the shortest yet at between 3 and 5 hours) giving you threats and gushing over Handsome Jack, and when you finally reach the climax it’s all decidedly dull. Nakayama himself is no real villain, either. In fact, considering that this is Borderlands 2 content, it’s noticeably laugh-free. He’s too much of a gentleman, and as such just can’t bring as much mirth to the table as his predecessors. Sir Hammerlock, likeable as he is, just can’t match up to Torgue’s endearingly obnoxious shouting or Scarlett’s wilful and worryingly honest underhandedness. Either the joke is starting to wear thin (which we’re not sure is possible), or (and this is more likely) it’s simply that Big Game Hunt is sorely missing the personality of Mister Torgue or Captain Scarlett. The missions here are standard Borderlands fare, a mixture of kill, fetch, and activate quests, only compared to either the main game or the previous DLC they’re slightly stale. There’s initially little time for sightseeing, as the holiday is cut short when Professor Nakayama starts interfering with your plans, and you’re dragged into thwarting his plot to clone the despicable Handsome Jack and effectively return him to life. Aegrus is analogous to the version of deepest, darkest Africa popularised by adventure fiction in the 1930s, and as such is full of bizarre creatures and grunting “natives” – but all viewed here through Borderlands 2’s rather skewed lens. The DLC begins with an invitation from gentleman hunter Sir Hammerlock, to travel to Aegrus with him for a lad’s holiday full of shooting the breeze and shooting the wildlife. I initially travelled there with an overconfident level 24 and was ritually sodomised by the first monster I came across – the disturbingly-spindly, spider-like Drifter. It’s also worth noting that, this being a post-game area, it’s bastard-hard for anyone lower than level 32. It can cause some confusion and a fair amount of disruption to the flow of the narrative if you should hop between the new continent of Aegrus and the Pandoran mainland that you’re used to, as one moment Jack is dead and a crazed doctor is attempting to bring him back by cloning him, and the next Jack himself is calling you a bitch via ECHO and generally ruining your day. It’s set after the main game, and whether you play choose to play it then or not, Handsome Jack will be dead in the storyline. The biggest and most important difference, though, is that while The Zombie Island was interesting and exciting, Big Game Hunt falls a little short of the mark on both counts. Ned himself, but in Big Game Hunt the culprit is Handsome Jack-obsessed coward Professor Nakayama. Also, both DLC packs feature a mad doctor conducting experiments on the inhabitants of this strange land. In both cases, this new continent seems to be comprised of ill-lit swampland with too much open space between points of interest. Ned DLC, in that it transports the Vault Hunter to another continent vastly different in appearance to the roads travelled in the main game. But while the previous offerings, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, and Mister Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage were good and excellent respectively, can the same be said about slice number three, Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt?Īt first glance Big Game Hunt shares similarities with Borderlands’ The Zombie Island of Dr. Here we are, barely four months past Borderlands 2‘s release date, and we’ve already seen three substantial slices of DLC – not to mention the addition of a fifth Vault Hunter, Gaige the Mechromancer. Game: Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game HuntĪvailable on: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows PC
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