Review: Borderlands The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned

Written by Paul Barbara Sunday, 29 November 2009 01:09

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2K Games have delivered in short a great piece of downloadable content right off the bat.  Even though the game has been out for only a month, 2K Games have delivered the goods while the game is still hot.  The Zombie Island of Dr Ned is a fresh undead-themed add-on for your Pandora adventure filled with swampy new environments and a host of new foes to tackle.  Your new zombie foes will crawl, lunge, lurch, and run at you from every single direction making for some big surprises indeed.

When you download The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, a new location will become available from any fast travel kiosk.  If you haven’t yet unlocked the ability to fast travel, that won’t matter, as Jakob’s Cove will now be available to you.  Jakob’s Cove is a mill town and is set on a swampy island covered with massive trees and an abundance of green everywhere.  Essentially Jackob’s Cove has been overrun by zombies who are the reanimated former workers of the Jakob’s Corporation.  Within Jakob’s Cove there are gnarly plants that loom from overhead, dark green vines that dangle all which create a gloomy forest like atmosphere.  Also, you’ll encounter spectacular hillside graveyards, ramshackle towns and familiar zombie filled streets.  There is also plenty of humour in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.  Dr. Ned has some great one liners and the audio recordings are also quite amusing also.   The humour mixed with the new environments certainly does create a fantastic add-on to an already great base game.

As you progress through the missions on offer one thing is instantly clear.  Everywhere you go is crawling with zombies.  They will drop down from trees, emerge from the ground.  You won’t just be fighting your regular slow zombies.  You’ll encounter many variants such as the Defiler, Physco Zombie and Torso Zombies.  There are also bigger and more badass zombies such as the Badass Tankensten and Suicide Zombies on offer.  There are also smaller zombies such as the Midget Zombie and aerial zombie birds called Corpse Eaters.  Many zombies will run straight at you and begin to attack by swinging whatever limbs they have left, while others will vomit on you much like those from ‘Left 4 Dead’.   This vomit will slow you down and cloud your vision making it harder to escape or counter attack.

As with any zombie, you can expect to see limbs and other body parts fly into the air and pop off in amusing ways.  You can also score headshots and pop the zombie’s brains right out of their skulls.  These zombie brains can also be collected as part of an amusing quest, provided you can find it.

As you blast your way through the many main quests and side quests you will certainly be mowing down hordes of the undead that will thoughtfully drop weapons, cash and ammo for your character.  With the items that are dropped, it’s important to note the following: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned does scale everything according to your progress through the main story of Borderlands and not according to your character’s level.  My character was Level 37 when I entered Jakob’s Cove and the first mission stated we needed to be Level 35 in order to complete it.  Originally I had thought that the DLC was meant for higher level players but as you can see it tailors the missions and difficulty to your current level.

As with any DLC add on for a game, the usual price versus time comparison is often quoted.  It is rather annoying for me to hear how some players screamed through the DLC in 2-3 hours.  I can assure you that if you play the extra content in line with the way it should be played, you will find it will take a solid 6-7 hours to complete.  On my play through, I made sure the main quest line was completed in conjunction with the various side quests.  We battled enemies and listened to the audio logs as they were uncovered.  We did not aimlessly run and sprint to our objectives and the result was a nicely paced add on that took a solid 6-7 hours to get through.

The Zombie Island of Dr Ned is not without some shortcomings and the biggest of these was frame rate issues.  During moments in the quest line, particularly along the water areas you will be attacked by Corpse Eaters (aka zombie birds). This will cause some hectic action which can result in visual slowdown.  These moments are few in number and won’t spoil your game experience.

There's a lot to do on the Zombie Island, and though you can complete the main quest in a little over a few hours, side quests can extend your play time significantly. The DLC is a worthy expansion that provides a nice variation to the borderlands experience.  While there are some minor issues to consider, the overall package is strong. And with much more humour than the original game, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned has a lot of entertainment for only 800 Microsoft points and weighs in at just over a gigabyte in size.