Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software
Genre: RPS
Release date: Available now

One of the more obvious trends in gaming lately has been the gravitational pull towards the undead. See, with a zombie there’s no moral conundrum to deal with; you just aim for the head and try not to get any blood in your eyes. Games like Left 4 Dead and its recently released sequel have capitalized on this, as well as Call of Duty: World at War, which added yet another layer of shoot first certainty by making the resident shamblers part of the third Reich. Capping soulless abominations requires no thinking and no need to check your fire, either, making the concept a perfect fit for a game like Borderlands. With that, let’s take a trip to Jakob’s Cove and the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.

You read that right, this is Dr. Ned’s house, not “Zed” as seen in the main game, so get that straight right off the bat. There’s absolutely no way, no how that they’re the same person in any way – nu-uh. And never mind the gratuitous use of handlebar moustaches, either. It’s not a disguise, and Gearbox is in no way poking fun at itself for re-using some content from Pandora proper. Did you catch that hint of sarcasm? Half of it was me being silly, but there’s a modicum of truth in there, too. Hear me out, though, because players of Borderlands might want to consider a ticket to the undead isle after I’m finished here.

What makes Dr. Ned’s island different from the main game is how combat is handled. You’re still plowing through boxes of ammo, collecting scads of loot and going from mission to mission, but instead of the spawn here, spawn there way of doing things, this is a constant assault at every turn. Spitting defilers, suicide bombers (“bombies”, as I came to call them), and the aptly named “Tankenstein” all make their appearances, and each one offers a different hindrance to contend with. In addition to this, regular zombies will also rise from the ground and come from out of nowhere when your back is turned. I’ll admit I even got startled a couple of times by a ghoul that managed to break past my line of sight and sneak around behind me, and that’s rare.

And zombies as the subject matter do well to correct one of the main problems I had with Borderlands in the first place. While the A.I. presented itself as predictable -and in some cases outright dumb- in my quest for the vault, substituting the undead allowed me to look past this because…well, they’re zombies! Nobody expects scholarly intelligence from the re-animated, right? Pity the end boss battle didn’t carry this realization over. For all its mass and fanfare, I just hid behind something and pumped lead into it until it died. There’s also a lack of other content like a level cap increase or DLC specific weapons, which I fully expected. Oh, well, maybe next time.

Then again you’ve still got the pretty, stylized graphics to gawk at, only with a horror makeover that switches up the yellowed wastelands of Pandora in favor of a shadowy Tim Burton-esque landscape with craggy trees (who knew Pandora had trees?) skewed buildings and darkened hollows. I have to give Gearbox credit for this; despite my complaints above, it looks and feels like a different game, and leads me to believe that Borderlands could work well in an episodic format. To be honest, for the $10 price point, the 4-5 hours of missions and massacre make for a wonderful weekend time sink; especially if you were more into BL’s combat than progression.

So there you have it. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is money well spent for any fan of Borderlands. The same issues persist as in the main game, but there’s some solid gaming here, new areas to explore and tons and tons of gaming’s favorite cannon fodder to blast into oblivion. Here’s hoping a future expansion gives us even more.

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Our Recommendation: