Against all odds, Borderlands 2 is going to grow yet again in fall 2013. Sure, the game's made a crapton of money and there's no Borderworlds headed our way in the immediate future, but games don't typically extend into a second year of downloadable content. And yet that's exactly what's happening here.
Gearbox Software's 2012 "looter shooter" is due for another round of DLC drops, starting on September 3 with the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2: Digistruct Peak Challenge. A series of pint-sized "Headhunter" packs will follow, starting in October with the Halloween-themed mission-and-a-boss-fight, TK Baha's Bloody Harvest. We scored an opportunity to try out both packs during a visit to Gearbox's Texas offices. Read on for some impressions, and be sure to take a peek at our deep dive looks at Borderlands 2's story DLC and character DLC when you're done.
Story/Concept
Climbing Digistruct Peak. The Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2 breaks down into three basic components: you've got a level cap bump up to 72, an entirely new system of "Overpower" levels, and the titular Digistruct Peak Challenge. That last one is a repeatable mission built around sending players through a Crimson Raiders training program. You can tackle it as many times as you like, but it's best taken on by level 72 characters in Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, since every successful runthrough of the challenge unlocks the next Overpower level (eight in all).
There's nothing subtle at all about the Challenge: it's a straight-up gauntlet. A group of four players - you can tackle the Challenge with less, but it's designed with full teams in mind - follows a winding mountain path to battle arena after battle arena, facing off against a broad cross-section of familiar enemies. There's no coming back from death here: if you can't be revived out of "Fight For Your Life" mode and have to respawn, you'll find yourself back at the Challenge's starting point with the entrance locked. You can support your squaddies from the respawn area's elevated platforms, but you can't reunite with them until the mission is over. It's a little like the vanilla game's Circle of Slaughter, but replace the wave-based arena with a straight-up gauntlet of death.
A harvest of pumpkins and DEATH. TK Baha's Bloody Harvest is the first of three confirmed "Headhunter" packs. The basic idea with these packs is simple: give players a mission that tops off with a boss; defeat the boss, and you get to add its head to your collection. Bloody Harvest has a Halloween theme, with players paying a visit to TK Baha in Hallowed Hallow. Our old friend from the first Borderlands has seen better days. He's still very dead, and a bit more desiccated now than he was when we last saw him in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. He's riled up though, because of some jerk named the Pumpkin Kingpin.
TK wants you to take out this scourge of Hallowed Hollow, but in order to do so you'll first need to unlock the gate to his pumpkin patch. So begins a relatively straightforward fetch quest that sends you off to explore a series of spooky locations - you know, a graveyard, a ghost town, that sort of thing - in a search for the three pieces of the gate key. You then fight the local blacksmith - a miniboss - for the magical hammer that is needed to assemble the key. A variety of skeletons and pumpkin monsters pop up to fight you (and each other) along the way. The Kingpin himself looks like a giant-sized pumpkin patch that's taken the rough shape of a humanoid. He's challenging, but more in the vein of a standard Borderlands 2 boss than one of the fearsome raid bosses.
Gameplay
Overpowering up. Completing the Digistruct Peak Challenge while at level 72 on Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (ie playthrough #3) unlocks the new Overpower levels. Think of each Overpower level as a standard character level without the skill point. Unlock Overpower level 1 and you can use level 73 gear; max your character out at Overpower level 8, and you can use level 80 gear. Simple, right? What you're probably wondering is how you actually get your hands on such high-level gear when, even with this new DLC pack, the level cap in Borderlands 2 is 72.
Once you've unlocked one or more Overpower levels, you have the option when loading up your Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode game to set the "world" to whichever Overpower level you've unlocked. It works the same as it does with high-level gear; a world set to Overpower level 1 is filled with enemies balanced for level 73 play, while a world set to Overpower level 8 is meant for level 80 play. It's not going to be easy, but that's the point. Gearbox hopes that fans with hundreds of hours logged will appreciate the extra challenge of climbing the literal and figurative mountain that Digistruct Peak Challenge represents.
A blood harvest of... candy? TK Baha's Bloody Harvest is standard-issue Borderlands 2 play in a lot of ways. It's a somewhat condensed mission, but it hits every beat that a fan could want: new enemies, a miniboss encounter, a couple of small puzzles to solve, and a hulking brute of a boss. There's one additional bonus as well, a Halloween-themed treat that players will only encounter in Haunted Hollow: candy!
Downed enemies sometimes leave behind a colorful candy pickup. Much like the Eridium-eating altars from Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, collecting a piece of candy bestows your character with a limited-time buff of some sort, stuff like faster movement speed or higher weapon damage. It's not immediately obvious what each piece of candy does, however. You can either gobble them up and try to figure it out, or you highlight the pickup and read its item description, which takes the form of a short, funny rhyme that hints at what the buff is.
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