Danger! Excitement! Mustaches! Borderlands 2’s newest and latest DLC add-on, ‘Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt,’ is now available for download, but how does it actually fair? Find out in this review.

As per usual, like other Borderlands 2 DLC, you find yourself being greeted by a rather entertaining intro video to Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt. Once you manage to fast travel to Hunter’s Grotto, where the story starts off, you’ll immediately notice how big and open the swamp continent of Aegrus is as well as the rather diverse cast of hostile creatures you can look forward to slaying during your stay in the refreshing swamp-like environments. The scenery is a much needed breathe of fresh air and features a rather bad-ass fan-boat that’s outfitted with a short-range flame thrower or caustic/shock mines that stick to their targets.

Axton taking on a few of the native savages in Aegrus

The story behind Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt starts off by having our favorite vault hunters taking a weekend trip with the most sophisticated gentleman on Pandora himself, Sir Hammerlock, to hunt down some of the ‘biggest’ creatures on the swampy continent. Things goes terribly wrong thanks to a Hyperion scientist by the name of Proffessor Nakayama who can be simply described as the evil hyperion scientist version of Shade, the NPC from Captain Scarlet and Her Pirate’s Booty DLC.

He constantly interrupts you and Hammerlock to get his revenge since you killed his idol, Handsome Jack. It leads to awkwardly funny conversations as he desperately tries to seek your attention to fight him and avenge Handsome Jack’s death. Unfortunately for those who were expecting a rather lengthy main quest line, you’ll be saddened to know that Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt only features three – yes, three – main quests that you can easily breeze through in less then an hour. It leaves much to be desired from this DLC and leaves a big shoe for the side-quests of Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt to fill in. On a more positive note, the side-quests do try their best in making this DLC as entertaining as possible, which some actually do well. For example, Clap-Trap has you clean the urine of a creature who’s been vandalizing Clap-Trap’s secret getaway hide-out.

You will soon start to realize that Sir Hammerlock’s DLC still contains a lot of fetch and go missions and has you travel around the many new locales without much excitement happening around you. It will get boring to most people rather quickly. However, to make up for the lack of fun and original side-quests. Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt does contain various new creatures and savage bandits that do give you an actual challenge when you do encounter them, even if your outfitted with the best possible equipment. You’ll find that taking out the witch doctors, which happen to be bandits with mystical powers that you learn to fear the most out of all of the new baddies added to this DLC, are still quite enjoyable to battle with.

With the addition of the witch doctor comes a new dimension to the Borderlands 2 combat system. They are often supported in combat by fellow bandit savages who’ve been powered up. If these witch doctors are left alone for a long time, you will be in a world of hurt, as there seems to be no limit as to how far they can power up their allies. They can also be very agressive along with having strong defensive capabilities.

Speaking of challenging creatures, Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt features two new “invincible” enemies that are, thankfully, creatures this time around and not humaniods like the past three. First up is Voracidous the Invincible, who happens to be a slightly larger version of your super bad-ass stalker. As fun as this fight was, this boss requires more specific character builds and strategy, which is a plus in my eyes.

Maya and Zero taking on some of the minions protecting Voracidous the Invincible

This brings me to the hidden invincible Drifter boss, Dexiduous the Invincible. For those who loved fighting Crawmerax from the first Borderlands, you will enjoy taking on the behemoth Dexiduous. He only takes damage from shooting at his yellowish critical spores that change location once you have destroyed the others.

But there’s a rather hefty catch into getting this massive Drifter to spawn. It will require you to deposit 96 bars of Eridium into four furnaces that are located throughout Hunter’s Grotto. You’ll then have to flip the switch to spawn him, but not before taking out the mobs of savage’s that spawn around the switch.

Thankfully, if you do manage to take down Dexiduous, you will be heavily rewarded with a shower of purple loot and as well have a chance to get his special drop, ‘The Chopper,’ which is a Bandit assault rifle of blue rarity that’s capable of containing all of your assault rifle ammunition in one massive magazine.

For those who mostly care about the new loot that Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt is set to bring, you will be very happy to know that all of the new weapons that it includes are very powerful and, in fact, contain pretty sweet Seraph items that are actually worth the grind. This inclues rather easy-to-get powerful items which drop from the various creatures that you are sent out to hunt.

3 / 5

Overall, Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt seems to be a step back from Mister Torgue’s Campaign Of Carnage and can be considered a little bit too short with little to no replay value, aside from taking down Dexiduous and trying to acquire the best possible loot and some of the new equipment that’s been added to the game. Sir Hammerlock’ s Big Game Hunt DLC get’s three stars out of five.