In Third Person

After my initial lukewarm impressions to The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, I wasn't sure what I would be getting into the next time I played it. I was hoping that having reached level 51 would at least get me past the initial difficulty curve and the rest of the experience would be smooth sailing.

Nope.

General Knoxx is hard like the Rihanna song. Lance soldiers and bandits always seem to be leveled higher than you, making every gun fight a war. If you're up for a challenge, then General Knoxx will not disappoint. Shooting guys and getting better guns is as fun as it always has been in Borderlands. I just hope you come prepared with the right load-out to take on some truly tough competition.

Oddly enough, one of the first enemy types is also the most annoying and difficult. There are flying drones on the highway that gave me trouble the last time I wrote about never cease to be annoying. I actually got to a point where I seemed to be stuck in a death loop, where I would get gunned down by a number of air drones every time I re-spawn and before I even have time to react. I was "thisclose" to giving up on the game right there. After looking through message boards for advice, I was finally able to get past them by using a combination of a shock trooper class mod, a shock mod for my turret and a shock sniper rifle in unison. Never in Borderlands have I ever had to resort to such desperate tactics.

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx just hit XBOX Live and PSN and I was quick to purchase this Borderlands add-on. Unlike the other pieces of Borderlands DLC, this one brought with it a number of additions, including new zones, new guns, new vehicles, new bad guys, a bunch of new quests and most importantly, a raised level cap. With 11 more levels for my soldier to grow, I was eager to shoot more dudes and collect more guns. I've only played just over an hour of it so far, but I thought I'd share my initial impressions.

When you load up the first new zone, T-Bone Junction, a video plays that sets up the story. General Knoxx takes place after the events of the first game, and the Atlas corporation is looking to take you out. However, you still have Scooter and Marcus helping you out, as well as a mysterious ninja, who promises you access to General Knoxx's armory if you help her, which is basically the equivalent of the Vault. Story was one of the biggest weak-points in the main game, and I sort of get the impression that they're trying a bit harder to convey the story better.


From here, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx started off on the wrong foot. The very first encounter you face are a pack of ninjas, which from what I gather are a big deal in this DLC. Right now, I'm not liking the ninja encounters. Part of that dislike comes from the level scaling; I'm not sure if this content scales to your character or not, but I started with a maxed-out level 50 character and the level 51 ninjas immediately wrecked me. That extra level made them way harder to kill and way easier for me to die. I died at least 4 times trying to beat the first ninja boss, which cost me almost $2 million in lost cash.

The other problem I've had with the ninja encounters is that I don't think the game engine was built for players to fight enemies that move the way the ninjas do. The ninjas are extremely quick and can move laterally almost instantly. It's really hard to do any sort of meaningful damage when they're constantly running laps around you. I was getting physically dizzy trying to keep up.


The raised levels of enemies made the first few quests up until you reach Mad Moxxi really hard. Had the enemies started at the same level as me, the fights would have been much more reasonable without being too easy. But because they're all leveled higher than you possibly could have been coming into this DLC, I found myself getting owned repeatedly. During the first highway encounter, I died a number of times because I thought I could handle fighting two airborne drones in my new Monster vehicle. Nope. Then I got into a mess of a situation where I was killed just outside of a checkpoint by a lance vehicle that shot a giant shock blast. When I re-spawned, the same vehicle shot and killed me before I could even move. This happened twice in a row. Thanks for cheating me out of another $800,000. Before I had finished the fourth quest in this DLC add-on, I had lost over half of my money due to dying, which took me two playthroughs of Borderlands to save up in the first place.

I finished off my session with another ninja battle. I leveled up to 51 half way through the fight, and noticed that I was doing a bit more damage and the ninjas were having a much harder time taking me out. Unfortunately, the fight did not end fair and square. You fight the second boss ninja on top of a bridge a few hundred feet above the ground, but my boss managed to jump off the bridge herself. She lived, but the game did not know how to handle the fact that the boss was hundreds of feet below me. The ninja just zipped back and forth and I picked it off like a fish in a barrel.

I get the feeling that I'm only scratching the surface of The Secret Armory of General Knoxx so far, so I will withhold final judgment till I'm finished it. If you're looking for a new Borderlands fix, this seems to be the DLC to get so far because it raises the level cap and adds a ton of new content. Due to the unfair enemy scaling to start, the initial awkwardness of the ninja fights and at this point typical Borderlands jankyness, I'm not as high on it as I would like to be. But I'm hoping it picks up after a rough start just like the main game did.