Borderlands the Presequel:Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2 and Claptastic Voyage

Within this campaign add-on, Jack digitizes the vault hunters and launches them inside Claptrap’s mind to find an enigmatic code and get out of Claptrap’s consciousness without going crazy. Our protagonists must deal with Claptrap’s malware and digital representations of his crushing loneliness. This pack also features a bonus 10 level cap increase.

Trailer:

With Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, I like and dislike different parts of it in almost equal measure. The combat is exciting and the characters are likable. On the other hand, the environments are a little dull and it suffers from a host of obnoxious bugs.

Claptastic Voyage, the first and only “big” piece of downloadable content had the opportunity to fix a lot of what was broken with the base game. For the most part it succeeds in that endeavor, but it still seems like 2K Australia has a bit to learn about making the loot-shooter truly great.

With the premise of entering the mind of Claptrap, The Pre-Sequel had a ton of freedom with where it could go and what it could do. As with the Dungeons and Dragons-esque setup for Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, the narrative hook allows Vault Hunters to leave the planet of Pandora (or its moon Elpis) in favor of even more fantastic locales. In practice, Claptastic Voyage takes players from the samey blue-gray moon surface and industrial complexes to samey blue-gray electronics (that look a lot like industrial complexes).

At least, that’s how the first half goes. It’s immediately disappointing that the limitless setting produces such uninteresting environments, but that changes further in. A little ways into the DLC the Vault Hunters can access Claptrap’s old memories, revisiting areas featured in previous titles like Fyrestone or Overlook. Eventually, the shooting goes deep enough into Claptrap’s mind to find wholly original, diverse environments. The Escherian temple of Claptrap’s subconscious is particularly fun to explore.

One thing that Claptastic Voyage does especially well is to fill in gaps in the overarching story that have only previously been hinted at. It does this with the memory exercise in Overlook, illustrating the town’s deterioration to the state players find it inBorderlands 2. It ends with a direct lead-in to BL2, showing how Claptrap meets Sir Hammerlock in the frozen tundra on Pandora. It even goes so far as to explain Claptrap’s penchant for dubstep where it wasn’t present in the original Borderlands.

All that said, while the details are cute for fans of the lore, the main plot in Claptastic Voyage has been done several times in the Borderlands series. Perhaps it’s intentionally self-referential, but the plot device that introduces the main villain early on as an ally who “unexpectedly” betrays the heroes is tired at this point. He is clearly designed to let the player know what’s up, so watching the characters go along and be flabbergasted by the betrayal creates a sort of disconnect between player and protagonist.

At a micro level, the writing follows what we have come to expect from the series. Though it isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as Tales from the Borderlands has been, it hits the right notes of dark comedy. It manages to get through its eight-to-ten hour campaign without making nearly as many pop culture references as the last few games in the series have done.

Gameplay is largely unaltered from The Pre-Sequel‘s main campaign. It remains fast and frenetic to moon jump and butt slam between enemies. There are very few zero-atmosphere environments in Claptastic Voyage, so players are free to use the double jump without having to worry about running out of oxygen.

Almost all of the enemies are new in some way, with viruses, bugs, and protection software given physical manifestations to explode. Even the old standby enemies like bandits and psychos behave a bit differently, able to phase in and out of existence occasionally since they are computer projections generated by Claptrap’s memory. The theme of software given life extends to in-universe advertisement, with foes who do nothing but stream audio to the player until they are destroyed. There are also pop-up ads: chest-high walls that appear from the ground and can either be closed or serve as randomized mini stores for health or ammunition.

It illustrates how 2K Australia can get some aspects of Borderlands so right, but just miss the mark in other ways that bring the whole experience down a bit. The boss just has too much health, and that one element turns it from an interesting fight into a slog. It’s almost as if it is intended to be a raid boss, except that it’s required in order to complete the story. In fact, there is no optional raid boss like there have been in pastBorderlands DLC packs, which is a little disappointing considering how phoned in the raid boss in The Pre-Sequel‘s main game is.

That said, 2K Australia does its own thing for high level content. In addition to farming the end boss for Legendary drops, a special arena unlocks after getting through the story. It boils down to fending off waves of enemies in an arena, but it allows parties to customize various aspects of the battle. Players can increase or decrease the difficulty and add “mutations,” like bonus damage for certain gun manufacturers or increased magazine size at the cost of decreased reload speed. Of course, more difficult settings yield more valuable loot. It’s an interesting idea that I’d like to see explored further in future installments.

Overall, Claptastic Voyage is an improvement to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. It seems like 2K Australia has been listening to a lot of the criticism of the base game. Aside from some invisible walls, I didn’t experience any of the bugs here that detracted from The Pre-Sequel. The environmental design starts off disappointingly unimaginative, but soon goes to unexpected places. The core gameplay is as fun as it has ever been.

However, Claptastic Voyage still suffers from some of the problems that plague the entire series. The main plot is average, lacking any real standout moments worth discussing. It exists as a vehicle to get players between gunfights or to the more entertaining optional missions. This won’t go down in history as an example of exceptional DLC, but it does what it does well and it’s worth the time to play through.

Features

A new weapon rarity level, Glitch. Glitch weapons feature moving binary code over their bodies, an occasionally distorting appearance and have a chance to choose from up to four different glitch effects to change how the weapon operates.
Multiple new unique and legendary weapons.
New head and skins for each character.
A repeatable slaughterdome that can be customized by changing gravity and oxygen rules, adding buffs and/or debuffs to health, shields, action skills or weapons and by making enemies stronger/weaker.

Missions

Story Missions

Side Missions

Locations

Locations that appear on the Fast Travel list are marked with a *. Exit-only locations are marked with a #.

Deck 13 1/2 *
The Nexus *
Motherlessboard
Cluster 00773 P4ND0R4 *
- 00773 VAULT EXCAVATION SITE #
Cluster 99002 0V3RL00K *
Subconscious *
- Sub-Subconscious #
The Cortex
Deck 13.5 #

Characters

NPCs

New Enemies

Story Bosses

Side Bosses

Notes

Level range in Normal Mode begins at level 30 and scales up to a maximum of 40. In True Vault Hunter Mode, the level range begins at level 40 up to a maximum of 50. In Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, the level range scales with the highest level Vault Hunter from a minimum of 50.

Trivia

The title of the DLC is a play on the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, about a group of scientists who are shrunk down to microscopic sizes to enter the body of another man and repair damage to his brain.