Borderlands 2’s second round of DLC was just as much of a surprise announcement as the first, but is quality beginning to be sacrificed for speedy releases?
As any newbie Vault Hunter knows, Pandora is all about the guns. No game since the first Borderlands has put so much life and downright…personality into their game’s weapons. And no more is this seen than in Gearbox’s second round of DLC for Borderlands 2; Mr Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage. Featuring the titular Mr Torgue, CEO of his namesake company, one glance at this huge, muscled, mullet-wearing wall of pure testosterone and CAPITAL LETTERS, anyone can clearly see why Torgue weapons are the BIGGEST, the LOUDEST and the most downright EXPLODERY weapons on Pandora. With this new DLC, Vault hunters can travel to Torgue’s “Badass Crater of Badassitude” and it’s surrounding locations, to take part in a gladiator-style competition to become the “number one ranked badass on Pandora”, and win the right to open a newly found vault in the crater itself. Also included in the DLC are replayable arena-style battles and races, which can be played to earn “Torgue Tokens”, specialised currency that can be used to purchase Torgue weapons from specialized vending machines. And yes, they can even be used to purchase legendaries.
In terms of actual content; the DLC itself is of a similar length to Captain Scarlett, though if possible, I found the main story to be even more linear, which for anyone who read the review for Captain Scarlett, will know was a big disappointment. There is still plenty of entertainment to be had, and players will get their money’s worth, but the overall quality is not up to the usual standard. The basic format of the tournament is do something to “annoy the competition”, travel to new area to fight the competition, rise a level, and repeat five times or so, with very little surprises along the way. Even the side quests this time round are much more repetitive as well; a large portion simply involve playing exactly the same arena fights on higher difficulties to earn tokens, and it is actually fun to get stuck into a melee against lots of other bandits at the same time in an arena environment, the fights can get very intense, but they are always one round long, unlike the two arenas from the main game, so it can get repetitive and boring quickly, as the difficulty never changes drastically. Even the other quests are fairly generic compared to the usual borderlands fare; there are a lot of simple fetch quests, and even the majority of the questgivers are characters from the main game as well.
This brings me to my next point; the characters. The eponymous Mr Torgue is easily enough personality for any sane individual. Obsessed with EXPLOSIONS and TESTOSTERONE, he could quite easily feature in a Powerthirst commercial. He consistently shouts everything at the top of his lungs; he makes random announcements over the PA system questioning player’s badassness if they aren’t “MADE OF METAL, GASOLINE OR BACON”, and seemingly does not care about trivial things like someone breaking into his arena or other competitors getting one over on him, as long as things are EXPLODING. I certainly loved listening to all the random things he shouted as I made my way through the game, and I looked forward to hearing what he was going to say next, but he is a very intense character, even more so than Tiny Tina, if such a thing is even possible, and he did begin to grate on me slightly towards the end. So if the ever-so-slightly eccentric Tina drove you crazy last time, Torgue in one place is likely to completely push you over the edge.
