“Savages” tend to hide in the shadows and murky Aegran swamps, ambushing and surrounding Vault Hunters at each turn. Big Game Hunt attempts, with limited success, to further change the formula, preferring to focus on exploration and emergent combat rather than deliberately paced sidequests or tightly constructed narratives.īig Game Hunt introduces two new types of enemy fauna - boroks and scaylions - and reintroduces the drifters from the original Borderlands’ General Knoxx DLC, but these are relatively boring compared to the “savage” enemies. I’ve written before about the ways that the Borderlands 2 DLC is remixing and redefining the series’ goals by introducing instanced raid bosses and new in-game currencies. In something of a departure from past DLC packages, none of Big Game Hunt’s coolest weapons are quest rewards - they’re all tied to some infinitesimal drop rate. These enemies’ redeeming quality is that they can be respawned and farmed for the campaign’s unique loot. The presentation and execution of each hunt is simply bland. The safari conceit that should match so well with Borderlands lies fallow for most of the campaign: what could have been a cool boss-rush mode turns into a checklist of fighting larger-than-normal-but-otherwise-uninteresting variants of the beasties you’ve killed dozens of times already. The Nakayama plot - while well-scripted and voiced - is unevenly paced and pretty perfunctory, a problem compounded by Big Game Hunt’s map design and quest structure. The campaign is ostensibly about hanging out with Sir Hammerlock for a long weekend of dick jokes, hunting, and zooming around in cool fan-boats, but the duo (or trio, or quintet, if you’re playing co-op) are foiled at every turn: Hammerlock runs out of dick jokes, a delusional Professor Nakayama interrupts the hunting, and the fan-boats are clunky, fragile, and ill-suited for Aegrus’ twisty passages and inordinately numerous cliff-faces.
Once the shock wears off - and it does, and it’s horrifying how quickly that happens - Big Game Hunt is uneven and uninspired. It’s a harrowing moment despite, or because of, the fact that Borderlands 2 presents itself the majority of the time as a funny, non-serious game. Less than thirty seconds later, that turret is surrounded by a half-dozen black men in loin-cloths, and I’m picking through their belongings like a conquering invader.
In other words, the first thing that happens after fast-traveling to Aegrus is that my (white) Axton character jumps off a waterfall, marches into a village, and throws down a sentry turret. The enemy character models for these “savages” are used unthinkingly and uncritically - at no point does Big Game Hunt challenge, expose, or subvert the racist ideas that led to the creation of the stereotypes it so gleefully incorporates. On the other, Big Game Hunt pulls from a genre that’s rife with gross ideas - phrenology and the White Man’s Burden - used to justify American slavery and, somewhat later, British colonialism. Shooting a giant scorpion-esque monstrosity in the face is the ur- Borderlands, after all. Some of Borderlands 2’s best writing comes in the form of repurposed genre fiction, as evidenced by the Lynchwood and Captain Scarlett story arcs, and a hunt seems like the perfect, low-key excuse to shoot guns at terrifying creatures. On the one hand, I understand the desire to use the safari adventure story as a jumping off point. The “witch doctor” enemy class brings a touch of the Magical Negro stereotype, effectively rounding out Big Game Hunt’s problematic vision of indigenous black people.īorderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 )ĭeveloper: Gearbox Software, Triptych Games The premise sends our intrepid Vault Hunter to the yet-uncharted continent of Aegrus, which is populated by dark-skinned, facepainted, spear-wielding “savages,” whose vocabulary consists of “ooga” and “booga.” Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt, the third downloadable campaign for Borderlands 2, has the dubious honor of bringing that tradition into the new year. Trotting out tired, well-worn stereotypes about poor people in Ireland and the American South is picking low-hanging fruit. These depictions are offensive at worst, and boring at best.
I was disappointed to find the illiterate, incestuous, and NASCAR-obsessed Hodunk family roaming the Dust I expect that Gearbox’ Irish audience weren’t thrilled to see the Zafords depicted as whiskey-addled leprechauns. It’s a good thing that Borderlands 2 doesn’t often touch on real-world culture over the course of its kitschy, ostentatious sci-fi romp - the times where it does have tended to be low points.
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