Review: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot - 7

Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot is the second piece of downloadable content for the first-person shooter Borderlands and is centered around a wave-like cooperative multiplayer style of game play. The content sticks to the game’s gorgeous art style and sense of humour along with introducing new multiplayer modes and several new in game options. However, the content surrounds this new cooperative coliseum style fights completely and can cause the content to come up as slightly shallow in overall value.

The main feature about Mad Moxxi is the new coliseum mode to play in. The object of this mode is to survive a number of rounds while enemies flood into the area. Each round has five waves and contains different enemies and different handicaps or bonuses. These little add-ons can range from increasing the damage or one weapon while reducing the effect of others, to game play devices like making the enemies more accurate, have more ammo, or even taking the players shields away from them. There are a number of handicaps that can be set up for each wave and the more rounds you complete, the more bonuses will be added at one time.
The waves also differ from how the enemies will go about trying to kill you and as you progress through each round they will become smarter and stronger. One nice addition to the rounds is that the final wave of each one is called the Boss Wave and pits you and your team against either one of the main story’s bosses or a new one for this content alone.

The waves are formatted like Horde mode from Gears of War 2 or Firefight from Halo: ODST. Like these other games, the coliseum causes your team to stay together and work as one. Leaving to fight by yourself will quickly lead to death when playing on the higher rounds and finding precise locations to set up a camp is important. Each of the three coliseums are based on areas from the main campaign and are set up in very different ways. For example, The Gully consists of a tall sniper tower with three levels of arena beneath it, while The Angelic Ruins is wide open with not many closed off areas to make a safe place to hide out in.

There are a total of three coliseums and two different round caps to choose from. The first being a short five round game (25 waves in total) and the second being a long 20 round game (100 waves). A short game can take around 30 minutes to complete while the latter can last over four hours. Apart from these three arenas to play in, Mad Moxxi also includes an all new bank system and the ability to unlock two more skill points for your character. The bank is probably one of the more intriguing features to the game. It allows players to stash any of your guns and equipment. You can also purchase bank upgrades that will give you more room to hold your stuff. The bank is a very welcomed feature since you now have a place to hold those weird weapons that you’re only carrying to show off to your friends.

The one downside to this add-on is that it focuses completely on the coliseum battles and nothing else. This causes the content to feel a little short and shallow when you look at what you’re really paying for. Despite some of the matches lasting very long, finding out exactly how to position and use your team over and over can come off as a bit repetitive. With that said, the handicaps for each wave add a random element to each fight and can cause you to mix up each of your formations. This addition greatly s and alters the otherwise monotonous nature of simply kill everything.

Despite the short length of time between this and the previous piece of additional content, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot feels like a solid addition to the game. Even though the arena fights can get repetitive during your third hour of the 20 round games, the number of different bonuses and handicaps can still keep you on your feet. The bank system is very welcomed to anyone who has come across a weak but unique gun that they don’t want to have to sell off in order to keep some inventory room. And to anyone who has hit the level cap - but still wants to upgrade their character - the two unlockable skill points are a great addition. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot not only gets the wave-like cooperative game play right but alters it enough to make it feel new and very exciting.

Overall: 7/10

So excited

This is from Kotaku, here to be exact. Finally I can spend another 100 hours on this game.

We are on itunes!

We submitted our podcast to itunes the other day and it was just now accepted to the store. You can now go into the itunes store and search for the Blown Speakers podcast and you should find it. If you want to look it up faster you can go here. Hopefully you guys will enjoy our podcast enough to subscribe to it.

Giant Bomb is about to go off

Arriving to my computer this morning and checking my usual sites. I come across GiantBomb.com one of the by far best video game websites, has changed the way it looks. It now has a screen there with a note saying "Giant Bomb landing shortly." It seems the so far blog programed site is about to start. Not sure about you, but I'm way excited. Yes I emailed them for a beta spot.

Update: Checking Jeff's (co-creater or Giant Bomb) blog, he made a post saying that the site wont be up within the day or anything. Here is the offical wording.

Note that "landing shortly" does not mean you should stay up tonight waiting for the open beta to begin.

Update Update: I just received an email from Giant Bomb telling me the site will be up soon so check the site regularly now.

Yay new 360 controller has a Guide button!

Thought I would post a quick thing I noticed while looking at my 'My Xbox' page.

Microsoft is releasing a Limited edition red 360 controller. So far so good. Says its bundled with some charge kit stuff. Still good. Though some of the things they noted as a "Feature" on this controller, I found quite odd. Odd in the sense that...they're not really features, to the point - if this controller didn't have these, it's not a 360 controller.

The weird, almost funny, ones they stated were that it has "Integrated headset port for Xbox Live play." This may seem ok, but only if you didn't read it properly, they're talking about the port, not a head set, or something new, just the port for which you can plug a head set you buy seperatly into. The next weird one I saw was that it's advertising the Guide Button! They state "Use the Xbox 360 Guide button to keep track of your friends, access your games and media, or power on and off your Xbox 360 console" ok that's cool, I guess some parents or maybe the girlfriend reading this can get a little info on it. But if the parent or whoever doesn't know this, do you really think they'd be this deep into xbox.com? I don't.

Anyways the full list of features from the site is below.

• Limited Edition red finish, with newly designed black accents
• Bundled with a Play & Charge Cable and matching red rechargeable battery pack
• 2.4GHz wireless technology with 30-foot range
• Use up to four controllers simultaneously on one console
• Integrated headset port for Xbox Live play
• Adjustable vibration feedback for longer battery life
• New left and right shoulder buttons are designed for ease of use
• Use the Xbox 360 Guide button to keep track of your friends, access your games and media, or power on and off your Xbox 360 console

Playstation Network ID linking now on

Announced at this years E3 yesturday at the Sony Press Conference, you can now link your Playstation Network IDs to your Playstation Underground account. A good feature about this is you don't need a PS3 to get some of the benefits of doing this.

The site states this as benefits you'll be able to get by linking your accounts:

Once you've linked your IDs, you'll receive all these great features:

• Identify yourself on the Web using your PLAYSTATION®Network portable ID
• Display your portable ID on social networking sites
• Meet other PLAYSTATION®Network members
• See who's who on the PlayStation® message boards
• Keep tabs on your PLAYSTATION®Network friends on the Web with the Friend List

Seems like a good idea, I just made my account link up. I don't have a PS3 but I have had a Underground account for a while now.

You can click this link to get to the Playstation Underground.

Forge 4 Rush?

Diablo 3 has finally been announced after 7 years since the last game in the series (Diablo 2 LOD) was released. It was slowly announced using the various Bizzard sites to show a small teaser on the front page. Now my excitement for this game has slowly been building over the past few months as I briefly decided to return to the Diablo 2 with some friends and we began doing the usual activities like Meph Runs, Rushes and Uber Tristram. Although I recently have found the concept of the game a little disappointing. I'm not just referring to the new graphic design of the game which seems more like Untold Legends then a Diablo game with much more cartoony looking characters but more the time I will be "Wasting".

Now when I was a kid spending unknown hours doing runs and leveling up just for the purpose of being "The Best" seems kind of lost on me as I've been falling out of favor over the past couple of years with pointless leveling since my last foray into the world of City Of Heros and the fact that my PC is currently residing in my closet until I decide to upgrade it. Is it perhaps that I've grown accustom to constant instant gratification in my games as opposed to working slow to achieve my goal? Perhaps but I do plan to pick this game up (as well as a new graphics card) when it is eventually released but I mean what's the hurry? It's Blizzard, I'll be lucky if it's out by the time I move out.

New Prince of Persia site

By now you should know that Ubisoft released the news that a new Prince of Persia game is in the works. If not, I don't know why you have chosen to live under a rock. I personally loved the Sands of Time Trilogy and had PoP3 easily make it to my top PS2 games. So I am quite looking forward to this.

Today they made the official homepage of the new game, along with that came the new logo for the series. As you can see above.

The last thing that should be noted was that there is a feature on the main page where you can register your Ubisoft.com account so that you will add this game's info/news to your mailing list. This basically means that you will get news about this emailed to you. Also, registering yourself allows you to be able to get linked to have Prince of Persia widgets for your personalised google sites or facebook. Yay? I encourage you all to register your accounts (for the emails), or if you don't wish to, your in luck. I just signed my account up a few minutes ago and when I get new info on the game, I will be sure to share it with you all.

It Speaks

So I finally decided that I would try out this 360voice.com thing that's been on the web for quite a while now. I choose to bring it up now, because like I said, I just set up an account. This wont be so much as a review of the service, and more of just my general take on it.

For you who don't know 360voice is a website that let's you "give your 360 it's own blog." This basically means that each day there will be a small post on your account's site about what you did the say before (strangely titled with the current day though). It will talk about thing like what games you played, how long you played or the achievements you gained while playing. It also has several add on services and goodies that you can get/partake in.

With the introduction now past, I'll get into what I like about it, and what I don't.

Positive Points:

• Keeps track of your top 10 most played games.
• Tells me how many achievements I just got and how many that adds to my total. Also tells me what I had and now have after that play session.
• You can earn special 'badges' by completing specific things such as "Play for 10 days in a row."
• They seem to enjoy having a lot of competitions to see who can earn the most points in a certain time, they also let you host your own competitions.
• My 360's personality.
  

Negative Points:

• It tells you what you did the day before, be titles the post as today's date making it seem like I did all that stuff today instead of yesterday.
• If you make an account after you have played a game and gotten achievements in it, then load that game up, the site will announce that you got all those achievements at once. So let's say you gained 8 achievements in a game, then made your 360voice account, then put in that game. The site will say that you gained those 8 achievements today. Also, it doesn't say how many points this got you, it makes it seem like they were worth nothing.
• For the top 10 games, it's the top 10 since you made your account. Which I really don't like since I'm sure Rock Band is one of my highest (especially since going through the endless setlist) and yet I have Turok as number one since that's all I've played since making my account on the weekend.
• My 360's personality
  

So this site seems pretty cool, but the big thing you'll want to do it seems is make your account right when you get your 360, it's a little annoying having this after I've had my 360 for a few months but I'm sure some of the registering problems (ex: top 10 problem) will eventually smooth itself out after a while of playing more games. This service is free and I recommend making an account because it's always a cool thing see what your 360 has said about you.