Moxxi made me a better player
Trailing shortly after Borderlands' excellent first DLC pack, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, it's easy to write off Mad Moxxi's Underdome riot at first glance due to its absence of carrot-on-a-stick RPG character progression. Enemies don't reward experience, drop loot, or even let you build weapon proficiency. And while Borderlands has never been strong on narrative, Mad Moxxi's story is even more minimalist. But sink a few hours into the arena challenges and you'll eventually discover how rewarding Borderlands can be taken on a truly skill-based level, provided you enjoy the combat as much as I do.
Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot is agruably the first piece of Borderlands content that actually requires a certain level of skill to complete. While there were sections of the original game that could be considered difficult, death just meant that you'd lose a percentage of your money and respawn a short distance away. Death in the underdome means a trip to the penalty box, and if all of the players in the arena are sent to the box, the game well send you back a few rounds or to the beginning, depending on how far you made it. Because death is more punshing in the underdome, I found myself expecting a higher degree of focus and precision just to avoid the death penalty, which is behavior I never really caught myself doing in the original game.
The starting five round arenas provide a decent challenge but the real fun lies in the 20 round tournaments. These advanced tournaments are strictly for the hardcore player with a desire to be challenged, as long as the player has a large chunk of time on their hands. Completing the 20 round Gully took me around three hours with a group of two other players. Enemies will get much more difficult as the rounds progress, with the final waves requiring sharp focus and clever use of cover, considering one or two shots could mean death. The game will also throw random buffs and debuffs at your party, like low gravity, specific weapon buffs, or decreased accuracy. This keeps the rounds from becoming too stale.
As my friends and I have been playing the underdome, I have noticed that we are playing with a vastly increased level of awareness and coordination, which seems like a much richer experience than the weapon farming we've come grown to expect from the main game.
Casual players will still be able to acquire all of the meaningful awards in the expansion. The DLC will award players that complete all three of the initial five round tournaments with an additional skill point, which can become a total of two points if you complete the tournament in both playthroughs. And just for downloading the expansion, the game will give you access to an upgradable bank to hold all your weapons and mods you just can't bring yourself to sell. The only tangible reward for completing the difficult 20 round tournanments is a 15 point achievement. Guns will drop after every five waves in all six of the tournaments, but their quality can vary significantly.
Because the advanced waves are not required for the best rewards, failure in the long rounds is rarely frustrating because you aren't really missing out on content. The reward for the advanced rounds comes in the feeling of besting a significant obstacle, much like beating a difficult level in Super Mario Brothers. You may have to attempt the advanced tournaments a few times before you complete them, which is refreshing to those hungry for a challenge.
But there is a major lynchpin in all of this: Borderlands' gameplay. I have not played a significant number of conole shooters. My genre expertise lies in RPGs and strategy games, and I haven't even played Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps because of this ignorance, I find the gameplay in Borderlands to be extremely satisfying, and I love playing it just for the sake of playing it.
If you are like me, and find the gameplay taken at its own merits to be fun, you will likely have a great time with Mad Moxxi. That being said, if you find the gameplay in Borderlands to be shallow, and you enjoy the game by virtue of its jack-of-all-trades-master-none nature, you should probably skip it unless you want two extra skill points and a bank.
