Xbox Gaming in South Africa

So the Vault's been sealed, loot has been plundered, and Pandora is a nice place again. Everyone is happy in the world of Borderlands. Right? Wrong. Turns out those Crimson Lance bullies – with no qualms against using a bunch of new toys to try to kill you – are trying to reassert their dominance on Pandora. So over in Lance-HQ the order is given and General Knoxx, their weapon-hoarding new leader, is packed off to make it happen.

And that's about as far as the story goes, following in true Borderlands tradition. Nobody really cares, after all; we just want more things to shoot with more guns, and Gearbox knows this. With The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC they've offered a big new setting, big new enemies, big new guns. Big new everything. It's like The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, but back in the desert, and, curiously, with tons of little nods to Half Life 2.

But unlike Dr. Ned, there's still stuff to do once you've killed the big bad, making the game well worth its low price. A handful of remarkably tough quests become available once you've reached the traditional ending. One of these even promises an incredibly rare new class of gear for your characters. It also promises a lot of dying, but that's okay if you play Borderlands to get fancy new toys for killing people, right?

Of course, if you play Borderlands for its oddball humour then you'll be happy to find that this DLC delivers it in dusty spades. General Knoxx himself, whose rambling non-sequiturs never cease to baffle and amuse, often engages the player in ridiculous conversation. Equally amusing are the new Lance security drones who take their murderous job very seriously, offering all due professionalism and a whole lot of courtesy in their attempts to claim the ironic bounty on your head.

Gearbox did miss a few issues, though. Most evidently, as with Dr. Ned, is that it's really tough to get around in General Knoxx. Sure, one of your three new sets of wheels is blisteringly fast and will have you splattering bits of Lance troopers all over the highways of Pandora before they have a chance to find out where that rumbling sound is coming from, but this is counteracted by the fact that the highways extend for kilometres across the landscape – as highways tend to do, of course. Compounding this problem are the roadblocks and other obstructions you'll encounter on the road, often forcing you to detour on foot. And even this wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to do it over and over again, because the game likes to alternate between sending you opposite sides of the planet.

Ultimately, however, General Knoxx is what you're looking for if you want another adventure like Dr. Ned. There's more stuff to do – even if the stuff is kind of exactly like all the stuff you've already done – more crazy things to uncover and more reasons to rope in a buddy to revisit Pandora with you. If you can stomach the 1.66 GB download, it's all yours for 800 MSP.

Pros:

• Finally, experience will matter again.
• You'll be getting a Monster – it's only the best vehicle in the game.
• Lots and lots and lots of loot to plunder at the end

Cons:

• You better hope you're not sick of looking at desert yet...
• ...especially since this desert is sprawling.

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