Borderlands 2 Campaign of Carnage piles on the boss fights

Our take on the latest Borderlands 2 downloadable content, "Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage."

November 20, 2012 5:00 AM

The original Borderlands was lauded for its diverse and well-designed downloadable content packs. It's easy to forget about the one notable exception. Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot was generally panned by critics and fans, who found the wave-based combat redundant, unsatisfying, and in certain cases, just absurdly hard. The DLC, in which a minor character hosted a fighting tournament, did not sound appealing to me. It was the one pack I skipped. So when I stepped into Borderlands 2's "Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage," and a minor character almost immediately started inviting me to a fighting tournament, I had some reservations. Fortunately, it was a ruse. While "Carnage" sounds similar to Mad Moxxi in its premise, those similarities were planted to subvert expectations. Mr. Torgue is actually very light on arena battles, and instead provides vast open vistas to explore, lots of original writing and characters, and several memorable boss fights.

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This is all delivered with the sensibilities of a professional wrestling match. Children of the 80s will instantly recognize Mr. Torgue as a clear reference to "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and the plot twists are narrated with the breathless, feigned surprise you'd hear from WWF announcers. It was a decent parody, though I admit that I may have missed a gag or two that relies on more knowledge of the wrestling world. But like a good pay-per-view event, the spectacle requires heroes and villains. The hero, the Vault Hunter(s), is thrown into the middle of the action without much agency. The villains are grotesque in appearance and personality. They're described as doing awful things to make them more worthy of our contempt. They cheat as a matter of course, and every match has the underdog severely outgunned by his or her opponent. The plot centers around becoming the #1 ranked badass on Pandora. Mr. Torgue has his own list of who counts as a badass, and whether you've completed the game or not your name to him is mud. To rise the ranks, you'll have to take out the others who are ahead of you: countless standard enemies, and a bevy of bosses. That's not to say that the DLC is just a series of boss fights. This is actually a proper campaign from start to finish, consisting of several quests, new enemies, appearances from familiar characters like Moxxi and Tiny Tina, and a handful of large environments. The critical path can last around three hours, but several side quests dot the landscape. The DLC also includes a new form of currency. Finishing quests or beating the bosses gives you Torgue tokens, which can be used to cash in for weapons (of Torgue manufacture, of course) at special vending machines. This would have been a nice idea if the weapons in those machines were kept significantly more powerful than whatever the player has equipped. Instead, I kept looking in the machines, finding red-downward arrows across the board signifying less powerful equipment, and moving on. As a result, I was usually disappointed when a mission or boss resulted in the tokens instead of something more useful, like actual money or eridium. I enjoyed (and profited from) the Captain Scarlett DLC a bit more than Mr. Torgue's content. The writing wasn't quite as snappy and the areas weren't as unique. But even if this pack wasn't great, it certainly qualified as good. It achieved that by showing great self-awareness of the complaints against Mad Moxxi, to the point of being self-deprecating. A subversive twist wrapped in some over-the-top boss fights should be enough to satisfy.

PC version note: The DLC is identical, but with a few more technical glitches. There were issues of clipping where bad guys would get stuck in boxes or buildings. They were able to shoot at me, but only a rocket launcher or lucky hit from an SMG burst seemed to damage them. Also, sniper shots to the heads of midgets appeared to pass right through them. Only aiming at the neck did I get the critical hits. While the experience was still enjoyable, it seems the technical side of this DLC suffered on the PC, something that had not been an issue in the main game or in Captain Scarlett. --John Keefer

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November 20, 2012 5:00 AM

Steve Watts posted a new article, Borderlands 2 Campaign of Carnage piles on the boss fights.

Our take on the latest Borderlands 2 downloadable content, "Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage."
- shinseitom
  
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  November 20, 2012 9:29 AM
  
  Is there any use for eridium other than the upgrades at the main hub town?
  Because I would not want eridium either as a quest completion reward if I was anything but earlyish in my first playthrough of a character. By the time me and my group of friends had finished the first playthrough of the game we'd already bought all but a few of the upgrades for the weapons we didn't use. We did do all the side missions, but we didn't go out of our way to open all the containers in each area.
  
  I'd love it if there was some way to exchange eridium for cash.
  - jasenmp
    
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    November 20, 2012 9:52 AM
    
    You need eridium for raid bosses.
    - vai90
      
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      November 20, 2012 9:52 AM
      
      Oh yeah, true.
    - shinseitom
      
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      November 20, 2012 10:31 AM
      
      Oh yeah, I remember when I went in there just to see what the boss looked like.
      
      But when you're swimming in max eridium, the measly amount of money it takes to get in there is hardly a dealbreaker. Now... if you had to pay some fee every time you died and wanted back into the battleground...
    - ninjase
      
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      November 20, 2012 4:32 PM
      
      yea but it seems like they drop more when you kill them than it costs to get to them!
  - vai90
    
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    November 20, 2012 9:52 AM
    
    No other use for that afaik. They even added a separate currency in the 1st DLC and apparently yet another one in this DLC, too (as I've heard).
  - nem00
    
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    November 20, 2012 9:56 AM
    
    you need eridium to open the raid boss areas but it's only 4 or so.
  - ninjase
    
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    November 20, 2012 4:33 PM
    
    eridium is funny. at first its like the most awesome thing ever to find, then after you buy all the upgrades to it you max out at 99 and you seriously dont give a fuck about it at all :(
    
    they need to raise the cap (at least to 999?) and have a lot more sinks for it
- Hilux SSRG
  
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  November 20, 2012 10:56 AM
  
  Does anyone know how many DLC are yet to be released? I want this game bad, but willing to wait for a game of the year edition.
  - scatterblack
    
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    November 20, 2012 11:02 AM
    
    Knowing Gearbox and the first game, about 20 or so.
    - DedlokPM
      
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      November 20, 2012 1:30 PM
      
      First game only had 4 content packs. And only other game that they have done that was not an expansion pack to an already exsisting game was Duke Nukem Forever and that only had 2. So your comment is vastly ungrounded hyperbole.
      
      Now if it was Volition developed, or a THQ or Rockstar published game your "20 or so" would have more ground.
      - scatterblack
        
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        November 20, 2012 1:43 PM
        
        all my comments are vastly unfounded hyperbole bro, it's my schtick...
        
        vai90
        
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        November 21, 2012 12:23 PM
        
        They are entirely meaningless then, so just stop posting them and misinforming people with your mandacious bullshit.
        
        "Knowing Gearbox..." You know nothing about Gearbox, so shut up and get out.
  - jeffcox111
    
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    November 20, 2012 1:11 PM
    
    There will be at least 2 more, since they said that the Season Pass grants access to 4 DLC packs and this is the 2nd of them. They also hinted recently that they are considering doing more content beyond just those 4 campaign packs and the Mechromancer, but I don't think they've confirmed it yet.
    - Mad Brahmin Disease
      
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      November 20, 2012 1:38 PM
      
      More classes, not necessarily campaigns.
- silentbobuk
  
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  November 21, 2012 12:05 PM
  
  "Ooh, new Aliens trailer!" *clicks image* "huh? Borderlands DLC?"
  
  I think the front page link is borked.