HomePlatformPCBorderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty Review

Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty Review


Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Platforms: PlayStation 3, PC, Xbox 360 (Reviewed)
Release Date: October 16, 2012
Price: 800 MSP ($10) – Available Here

Overview:
Shortly before Borderlands 2 was set to be released to stores, Gearbox Software announced that they were planning on releasing four expansion packs to the game in the form of DLC. Now that the critically acclaimed Borderlands 2 has been in stores for a little over a month now and some people have already explored everything that Pandora has to offer, Gearbox’s first piece of story-based downloadable content has been released in the form of Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty. Is it a worthy download? Let’s find out.

Story:
As the Vault Hunters arrive in the city of Oasis via the fast travel system, they will find that this town is probably the farthest thing from an oasis in the desert. While talking to a man who still is living in the decrepit city, you will learn that Captain Blade’s lost treasure can be found somewhere out in the desert and the only way to find it is to team up with an someone who off-handedly mentions how she will betray you.

Borderlands 2 continues to deliver memorable characters and as soon as you step foot into Oasis you are greeted by one of the craziest people in the entire game who spends his time talking to audio-logs, a hermit with total obsession over a woman, and the titular woman herself, Captain Scarlett. Each of these characters continue to provide plenty of humorous dialogue, especially Scarlett who cheerfully lets you join her group and search for the treasure, mentioning how you’ll likely find it in a few hours while both her and her crew have spent years looking for it and how she will likely stab you in the back the minute that you do.

Ultimately a few hours is all that is needed to breeze through the main story of this DLC, however a large number of side-quests (though these are fetch-quest oriented) and additional content which will be mentioned shortly have been packed into Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, allowing the DLC to provide plenty of hours shooting pirates and looting their booty.

Visuals & Audio:
As one would expect, this expansion retains the same visual aesthetic of Borderlands 2 and the named characters within the story are all memorably designed. While a few enemies have been re-used for this DLC, nearly every enemy you encounter will feature a redesign to fit the pirate theme or are entirely brand new.

While the characters and enemies are wonderful, the environments can be hit and miss at best. Players will enjoy sifting through Oasis, but a large portion of the desert is made up of brown environments that gamers will have to slog through until they make their way to some of the more colorful and vibrant areas.

As far as the voices of the new characters are concerned, each one has been given adequate voice work. It seems that special care has been given to the two loony people you meet on your ventures in Captain Scarlett’s Booty, as they sound especially crazy once you meet them. Scarlett herself is handled well, though she forgoes nearly every pirate stereotype as far as dialogue goes.

Gameplay:
As players venture out into the sandy wastes they will come across a slew of new enemies waiting to kill them. As mentioned before, a number of pre-existing enemies such as bandits, psychos and goliaths have been changed into pirate versions of themselves, wielding various pirate like weaponry and a number of new combat patterns and buccaneers have also been introduced as pure melee enemies while various sand worms move beneath the ground and attack whenever they rise above the ground.

Outside of these new enemies, a new vehicle has been introduced to the game via the sand skiff. These sand skiffs are basically hovercrafts that can be equipped with either rockets, razor blades or a harpoon cannon. They easy to maneuver and can even make it inside of various strongholds, giving the driver an edge over the various foot soldiers in the area.

Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty also introduces a new set of weaponry into the game and weapon currency via Seraph crystals. There are a couple of high-level raid bosses that can be extremely difficult to defeat even with four players at a time, even more so than Terramorphous, that players can try to defeat. If they manage to do so they will be given special Seraph crystals which can be used to purchase very powerful Seraph weaponry, relics and shields.

It is worth noting that while there are two very high level raid bosses to be found in this DLC, the enemies in Pirate’s Booty scale to wherever the player is in their run through of the game. Meaning of course that if you were to venture into Oasis while in True Vault Hunter mode, you will face some rather stiff opposition. Newcomers should be warned however that enemies will never drop below level 15, so players will need to have at least a mildly leveled character before searching for pirate treasure.

Overall:
Borderlands 2’s already enjoyable gameplay and multiplayer aspects translate only make the new content found in Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty all the better. While most of the side-quests players will go on involve simply retrieving and returning items, the persistent humor of Borderlands 2 usually keeps these missions enjoyable while the main storyline provides a worthwhile adventure. With new versions of enemies to fight, a new vehicle to drive, new weaponry to find and some difficult bosses to conquer, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty DLC should be plundered immediately.

9-0-capsules-out-of-10

Travis Bruno
Travis Bruno
After playing games since a young age and getting into anime a bit later on its been time to write about a little bit of everything.