ATLUS Piss Me Off

 

When I got home from work this evening I came face to face with an announcement for Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance.  In fairness, SMT V probably needed a bit of a re-do.  While I didn't hate it on the Switch it felt a little half baked, especially in the story department and it sort of ran like complete garbage with weird frame drops when doing basic stuff like opening the menu so moving it to PC is probably a good idea.

But what pisses me off is that this sort of initial release followed by a "real" release is a thing that ATLUS has been doing that really pisses me off.  A good example is with Persona 3 all the way back on PS2.  Persona 3 comes out in 2006 and then in 2007 they drop an updated version, Persona 3 FES, in 2007 which is basically the same game but better.  Then they do it again with Persona 4 on PS2 and then Persona 4 Golden on Vita where P4G is basically identical to the base game but with just more stuff.  Persona 5 is also guilty of this shitty practice with base P5 and then Persona 5 Royale coming out a year or two later.

You might think that mainline MegaTen is free from this practice since the only thing that seems to come close before this announcement is SMT 4 but 4A is a sequel to 4, its an entirely different game.  But what you may not know is that Nocturne did this shit a couple years prior but it was only in Japan so most players weren't aware.  There was a initial release of Nocturne and then this was followed up with Nocturne Maniax which is the version we got in the west with the True Demon ending and the fiends and all that good shit.  If you were a Japanese player though, you might have got fucked by buying the initial version because its basically the same game just with less shit.  Then they released it AGAIN with a version called Chronicle where its basically the same as Maniax just with Raidou instead of Dante (from Devil May Cry).  

It's not just the double releasing to leech money out of fans that pisses me off though, their DLC policies are horrendous.  When SMT V first dropped it came with a whole bunch of DLC.  Demons, quests, a secret boss fight all locked behind a paywall instead of just being in the game so some scumfuck suits can make a line go up.  Even worse than that you could just pay for levels and money with another set of DLC and what made the whole thing super annoying was that you couldn't just buy the demons and secret boss, it was all or nothing.  It took me way longer than needed for me to get the DLC because I had to painstakingly buy the "good" DLC one by one in order to avoid that pay to win magatama dogshit.  The DLC side of things gets especially shitty with the release of Soul Hackers 2

Fucking iconic demons like Mara and Satan locked behind a 10 pound day 1 DLC.  Absolutely fucking disgusting considering that the game is (still) 50 fucking pounds.  Shoutouts to BOOK OFF for selling me the PS4 version for the yen equivalent of 5 pounds.

I fucking love Shin Megami Tensei and I'm of course thrilled to be getting more of it.  I just wish whoever is in charge of the more business side of the franchise would just fuck off forever because I'm sick of being nickle and dimed with one of the only IPs I'm still passionate about.  

Also bring back SMT Imagine, ATLUS, you fucking cowards

DLC was (mostly) a mistake

 DLC or Downloadable Content is something that has been with us for a while now.  When I first heard the idea of DLC back with the PS3 and Xbox 360 were considered new it seemed like a cool idea but over time it has been twisted and exploited by publishers and developers and now I associate most DLC with soulless money grubbing bullshit.

We've always sort of had DLC even way before high speed internet and console that were always online.  Back in the day when you had a PC game a company would occasionally release and expansion pack.  The expansion pack was like an entire box, disc and manual that you would buy from a physical store and you'd have to go home and install it.  I remember pretty vividly buying the conquerors expansion for Age of Empires 2 back in the day which came with a whole bunch of stuff like new campaigns, new civilizations to play as, new tech, new maps, new units, it was brimming with content and it was exciting to take that shit home and spend countless hours with it.

DLC like this still exists to this day, and this is why there's a "mostly" in brackets in the title.  The series that springs to mind is Dark Souls as an example of this.  The DLC for those games usually comes with entire new areas, bosses, weapons etc. and is usually a decent amount of additional content for the money that you pay.  Basically any DLC that is basically the same thing as an old school "expansion pack" is what I would call good DLC.  Although even this comes with a level of bullshit because most games will eventually release a "complete edition" which just comes with everything some time after release.  So you COULD spend $60 on the game, plus anything between $20 to god knows how much depending on how much extra story or missions or modes or whatever gets put out OR you could just wait, and get a complete edition for like $40 later down the line.  Even though old-school style DLC is good, it deters me from buying most new games day 1 because I know I'll get shafted for extras later and just waiting is infinitely more cost efficient.

But then there's the DLC which I class as either cosmetic items or small amounts of content that would have been avaliable in the base game back in the day.  Maybe this is a sign of my age but I remember a time when unlockable or hidden content in games, especially fighting games, was common place.  Beat certain modes or fufill certain conditions and you'd unlock things like music, concept art, costumes, stages or even new characters.  But this has changed, cosmetic touches to a gun or an alternate costume for a character in a fighter are no longer something that you unlock just by playing the game any more, these are things that you have to buy with actual money.  One of the most horrible examples I have had some degree of experience with is Guilty Gear: Strive.  In Japan, if I was to buy the base game it would cost about $80 and then if I want things like extra stages or extra characters I have to spend an additional $30 to, not even get that content, have that content trickled out to me slowly over time.  Then when they decide that the "season 1" content is over, I'll have to spend ANOTHER $30 for the season 2 bullshit.  What's even worse is that if you decide you just want 1 extra guy or the extra colours (not even new costumes, just colours for fucks sake) that'll be $10 for the guy an $10 for the palette swaps thank you very much.  Considering features like this, not all that long ago, were built into the games and you would get it all for a single $40-60 purchase, this new form of DLC is taking monumental amounts of piss.  It wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to unlock it by just playing and people who wanted to speed up the process could pay to get it faster.  That's scummy, but I'll accept it.  But pay-walling features like PALLETE SWAPS is just pathetic.  

But that's not even the worst kind of DLC, there's a tier of DLC that's so disgusting, so vile that just thinking about it makes me unwell and that's Pay to Win "DLC".  Usually found it games that have level up or upgrade systems that you earn by playing, a game may give you the option to just give you all that stuff or boost the earn rate for those things for a fee.  For example, Shin Megami Tensei 5 comes with a number of DLCs, most of which are for extra quest lines that unlock extra demons to gather and extra bosses to fight.  Sort of skirting the fine line between the good DLC and the bad DLC but whatever, fine.  But then there are the "mitama" DLCs.  Mitama in SMT5 are monsters that look like apostrophes that, when killed give some kind of massive bonus.  Demon level ups, stats, money, main character level ups, glory points for upgrades etc. and with that DLC it boosts the spawn rate of those things to an insane degree.  Basically if you pay for that DLC you cannot die unless you are unapologetically shit at Megami Tensei.  The reason DLC like this pisses me off so hard is that if you are going to pay to just win like that, why the fuck are you even playing video games in the first place? If you want a braindead, easy way to experience a story then go watch a movie or read a book or something.  If it really needs to be interactive because you want to at least pretend to enjoy video games, then go play a walking simulator like Layers of Fear or Dear Esther or some bullshit like that, some low-skill garbage that you can beat by holding a single key for two hours.  Playing an easy mode is one thing because at least you're still sort of trying but just paying to have a game clear handed to you ON TOP OF the price for the game itself is just pathetic, please fucking stop.

 (Just as a side note, the SMT V example is even more annoying because of the way the Nintendo E-Shop is.  You either buy everything at once, extra quests + mitama included, or you have to painstakingly buy each non-mitama DLC one by one.  When I did it the process to just get Demi-Fiend and the other demons without the beyond Safety Mode dogshit took like 10 minutes.  I even know new SMT players that got tricked and thought they were a normal part of the game, fuck Nintendo/ATLUS for real)

So while good DLC does technically exist, its 90% absolute dog-water that you should avoid.  Wanting extra stuff for the games that you love makes sense but just remember that 9 times out of 10 you are supporting shitty business practices that are only going to keep getting worse as time goes on.  

Don't ever forget that Capcom once made you pay for a games ending

 

It Used To be So Simple

So recently I bought a PS4 and while I'm quite happy with my purchase and I'm enjoying the fuck out of Bloodborne, it does make me yearn for a simpler time.  When I say this I don't mean the actual games themselves but the process of actually sitting down to play something has become so involved and time consuming that I miss the old days of 16 bits and cartridge based games,

Back when I was a small boy shit was so simple.  I remember waking up one birthday morning in Manchester and having a Nintendo 64 shoved in front of my face, I was overjoyed.  I ran down stairs, my dad hooked that bastard up to the TV, I shoved in Mario 64 and BOOM! I was playing the latest that gaming had to offer at the time.

Compare this to my PS4 where I had to hook it up, set up the time/date/language, configure the internet connection, sign up for then log into PSN, download software updates and more all before I even thought about putting a disc into the fucking thing.  Then after I put the disc in for Bloodborne it had to dump all the data to the HDD and then download a fucking update before I could even start the character creation.  I must have been sat in front of the thing for at least an hour before player met game and that's kind of sad.

Even the thought processes that go through my head when simply buying games now is so much more involved than it was a few generations ago.  Back then I'd pick up a game, look at the box, read the blurb and if I thought it sounded cool, I'd fucking buy it.  Now I have to think about things like performance issues between platforms, DLC, if it's cheaper via download on PSN or the WiiU store or whatever just to name a few things.  Hell, Bloodborne is a great example of this because I had no fucking idea that The Old Hunters Edition of the game came with all the original content.  I thought, like whenever I've encountered expansions in the past, you had to own the original game first and THEN buy the expansion but this version of the game just has everything and it required a google search in order for me to find that out.

Even though I'm bitching about it I do get it, it's one of those necessary evils of gaming that we just have  to accept.  The medium has come a long way and modern technology lets us do so much more with our games now than we were able to do.  We can share content, play together via the internet, create mods and extras by ourselves to share and this is all stuff that has gotten better with time.  That said, the old says where you could just pop a game into your system of choice, hit the on button and be playing in under a minute is a time I do miss.

Still, that's the advantage of living in Japan for me, I have so many retro consoles that those simpler times are just a short hookup away and buying something like a SNES is cheap and easy to find.  I can relive the simpler times and enjoy the benefits of modern gaming, it's just a shame that I have to go through so much hassle every time I want to buy something modern.

DLC Can Go Fuck Itself By Duwiol [Guest Post]

Why is it that so many game companies have decided to become complete and utter assholes? Whenever I think back to gaming in my childhood, I always think “it’s probably just the nostalgia, it probably wasn’t THAT great”. But there’s one thing that WAS GREAT, and that was paying for a game and getting the whole fucking game!

When I bought the Age of Empires, Final Fantasy (any of them!), or Star Wars MOTHER FUCKING Battlefront, I got a full game. Then some time down the line, the company that made the game might release an expansion for the game, e.g. Age of Empires 2 followed by Age of Empires 2: Age of the Conquerors.

The thing is though, these expansions were like games in themselves! They added MORE to the already existing game! Now, I buy a game from a lot of my hard earned money, get home, start playing, and… it’s about a third of the fucking game! To me, this is nothing short of daylight robbery! Then they have the fucking gall to then say to the angry and disappointed masses “oh you wanted this? Well don’t worry! Give us MORE money and you can have some of it. Then wait a little while, give us EVEN MORE money, and then MAYBE we’ll give you the rest… or we might just keep some of it back to charge you again later”.

Take the new Star Wars Battlefront for example. I LOVED the original two games. They were, in my opinion, some of the best shooting games of their time. You had capture the flag style gameplay, space battles, heroes vs villains, and a HUGE number of good and bad guys to choose from.

Now, let’s look at the new Star Wars Battlefront. The fans went nuts when they heard the news that there was going to be a new Battlefront game, myself included. Then as time passed and the game’s release got closer, more and more shit started surfacing. NO Clone Wars, NO Galactic Conquest, NO Story Mode/Campaign, Only 3 Heroes and 3 Villains to choose from, the list goes on and on. The fans are understandably angry, and what happens? They start HINTING that these things will appear over time as DLC. FUCK THEM! You cannot take a game that is already established, remake it, then only offer 20-30% of the original game’s content, and then tease and taunt us with the possibility of getting the rest.

What angers me, and many others, about this is that this kind of behaviour wouldn’t be tolerated in any other industry. You wouldn’t listen to a song then half way through it stops and they say you have to pay more to hear the rest of the song. You wouldn’t get two thirds of the way through a book then find the last pages missing and a note saying you have to pay to get the other pages. Just like you wouldn’t watch a movie where sections were blacked out and you had to pay more to reveal the rest of the screen.

I will say one thing, not all DLC is like this. There are some DLCs that are purely for cosmetics, are optional, and are little add-ons to the game itself (custom skins for example). But that doesn’t justify doing this to the game’s main content, and Its reasons like this that I am very selective with what games I buy, and what companies’ games I choose to play. I for one will not help fund this bullshit, I’d much rather support the companies that still hold true to giving the players what they want, a complete game and experience.

Fuck You Evolve

So Evolve came out a few days ago.  I have seen a few people getting really excited for it but after it came out the Steam reviews have been "mixed".  I've not played it and I don't really have any interest to.  Then again, this post isn't about the quality of the game, it's about THIS bullshit.

Holy shit on a stick look at all that fucking DLC.  This isn't a game that has been out for very long either, this shit is DAY ONE!  Hell, in Japan this game isn't even out yet so as far as I'm technically concerned, this is all shit I have to per-purchase or whatever.

So let's address what we are looking at here.  The first two options are essentially fucking useless.  Look at what you get in that Monster Race pack.  A fifth playable monster and two additional hunters.  What Evolve is basically saying is that if you don't drop the extra £20 or whatever (I suck at maths) then the game is just going to lock you out of a bunch of content.  I don't give a flying fuck if you can unlock it later, that's not the point.  The point is that there are putting a fucking pay wall on some of the games features and that's complete bullshit.

According to the internet, the game with all it's DLC costs $130!  I don't know if Steam price it the same way, I'm not arsed to figure it out, but if you do the conversion that's £85!  EIGHTY FUCKING FIVE.  I thought £35 for a new game was a little steep but £80+?!  Fuck that shit

Now here's where I imagine some tosspot will chime in and say something like "well yeah but it's only cosmetic skins that don't change the game" to which I tell you to go fuck yourself.  Back in MY day we didn't have  to pay for alternate costumes and shit, they were all in the game and you unlocked them by doing certain things within the game.  Why the fuck should I have to pay for fucking cosmetics?  Why the fuck should anyone have  to pay for ANYTHING after the initial purchase?!

I get what DLC was supposed to be.  It was SUPPOSED to be extra modes/levels/characters etc that you downloaded some period of time after the game was released.  While there are some games that may do that, the majority of DLC I see is fucking bullshit that would have been core content 10 years ago.

Fuck DLC
Fuck Evolve and its shitty pricing
Fuck anyone who buys this crap

I Hate the Word Gamer

I hate the word "Gamer", it's easily one of the most annoying things that I ever hear when browsing websites about games.  But I never used to hate this word, my hatred is kind of recent and it's party because of what the industry has become over the many years.

Back in my day, a "gamer" was just another way of saying an enthusiast.  It was a term used to describe a person who was pretty good at games and was knowledgeable about them to boot and that's all it meant.  As long as you took some kind of pride in this thing that you called a hobby, enjoyed it, learned about it and got good, you were a gamer.

But that has all changed now and hearing the word "gamer" makes me imagine the post pathetic pieces of shit that make it embarrassing to play games.

You know the kind of people I mean, like the ones pictured above.  They don't necessarily have to be fat and unshaven, they can look like perfectly normal people, it's the attitude that pisses me off.  These are the kind of people who play usually one or two titles, usually Call of Duty or League of Legends mainly, and constantly go on about "gamer cred" or the importance of fucking achievement points or whatever stupid bullshit.

The kind of person that you know people like Geoff Keighley (The Doritopope) are pandering too when you see that kind of thing.  The kind of people that lap up all this overpriced DLC and accept bad business practices because "you aren't a gamer if you don't", right?  The kind of person you can imagine sitting in a big fat couch with an Xbox headset on screaming at his team mates about how shit they are in any given FPS game du jour.

So yeah, fuck the word gamer.  Just because you play Call of Duty and farm easy games for achievement points doesn't make you one.  Imagine if just because I could throw a piece of chicken into the oven and let it bake for 40 minutes, that qualifies me to be a chef.  That would be ridiculous and so are these people.

Fuck Off Ubisoft

Back in the day I used to quite like Ubisoft.  I still remember that little jingle that would play when you popped in Rayman and their logo came up and things were great.  But holy shit this company has turned into one of the biggest groups of assholes I've ever seen.

Ubisoft, in my opinion, are just as bad as someone like EA except because their games aren't as obnoxious and crap they get off a bit easier.  For all the shittiness that comes out of these guys at least they have some degree of respect for some of their stuff.  Rayman Origins is a great example of how there is still a few gems left inside this pile of shit, but I wouldn't have titled the post the way I did if I was here to give them praise.

So last night I'm watching some YouTube videos when I come across this shit.

Now I think I've already talked about how much I hate season passes but this shit is the fucking worst.  It's not just me who thinks it's the worst either, go have a trawl through those comments and have a see for yourself about how unhappy people are with this shit.  Now, why are people unhappy with this trailer? Well it's because it stinks, and I mean fucking STINKS of cut content.

I thought the idea of a season pass was so that after the games launch you didn't have to deal with buying and downloading all the DLC, it would just be automatically added to your game as it was released.  But no, in the case of Watch Dogs the season pass is "hey, look at all the shit we cut from our final product so we can nickle and dime you a bit more"

But Watch Dogs season pass bullshit isn't the only thing that's come to my attention.  Look at this shit.

 This game has just come out and look at this shit!  All this fucking DLC for a game that's just come out and the worst thing about it to is that the Golems Plight pack is about the only one worth a shit, the rest are just fucking packs of items or boosts or whatever.  It's just a case of Ubisoft cutting a quest and charging 3 euros for it and then on top of that money grubbing all the players who suck at the game by offering all this other shit.

Let's not forget that Child of Light is apparently forcing people to log into UPlay, and UPlay is a collossal piece of shit that shouldn't be forced on anybody.  Oh but of course there is no mention of this on the Steam, you can only get this information if you scroll down and look at some of the negative comments regarding the game of angry consumers who can't access the fucking thing they PAID MONEY FOR because UPlay is fucking playing up.

I want to like Ubisoft, I really do, they are just about the only big name developer/publisher that isn't afraid to put out a new IP like Child of Light but this constant money grubbing just pisses me off.  Fucking stop that shit!

DLC Wars: Tekken Tag 2 Vs Skullgirls

Before we start, let me direct your attention to an old post of mine

http://identitygaming.blogspot.se/2013/08/skullgirls-dlc-is-disgusting.html

If you don't want to read it then it's basically a rant I made about how stupid the Skullgirls palette swap DLC is.  Basically, you have to may money for the artist to use the fucking fill tool in paint, it's stupid.

Anyway, today I was talking to my friend and he brought up an instance of DLC in a fighting game that didn't make me want to kick someone in the head.  If you own a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 then there is a bunch of DLC you can get for that game completely free, including new characters of all fucking things!

I don't own a copy of Tekken Tag 2 (I will do soon though) so I had to go do some googling to find out what the deal is.  Turns out that the producer, Katsuhiro Harada thinks that modern day DLC is a load of horse shit so he's trying to right the ills of the world by providing a load of awesome shit for free.

THIS, people, is a good developer right here.  He's no small fry in Namco Bandai, he's a guy who works as the producer for the fucking Tekken franchise, I'm pretty sure he's under quite a bit of pressure for his games to make some fucking money, probably more so than any indie developer is.  Yet despite this, he's providing all this shit for free, absolutely NO MONEY.  Costumes, characters, multi account usage, stages and god knows what else for £0, $0, ¥0!

Then you turn your head the other way and see Skullgirls charging for the use of the fucking fill tool, it's disgusting.  If you're going to charge people for something, fucking put some goddamn effort into it.  Hell, as long as it wasn't on disc, I'd be willing to pay for a new character or a new stage, some guy somewhere drew that shit, rendered it in 3D, made it work and all that jazz, some credit for the effort is deserved and yet Tekken just GIVES that shit away.  In this day and age of almost every company using DLC to just wring money out of you, this is a breath of fresh air.

Skullgirls looks like a good game, I'm willing to support it, but they can take their palette swap DLC and go shove it up their arse.  Finally, Katsuhiro Harada is a fucking beast and it's a shame that more developers don't follow in his footsteps.  Capcom could learn a thing or two here.....

Skullgirls DLC is Disgusting

Skullgirls is a game I've not played, but looks pretty good and I'll be getting it on Steam once it's released.

Quality of the game aside though, while looking at the Steam store page I found something pretty rage inducing that I would like to share my thoughts on.  A long time ago I made a blog post about how Palette swapped enemies and characters in games are a bunch of lazy bullshit, go read that here.

http://identitygaming.blogspot.se/2012/07/now-thats-some-bullshit-2-palette-swaps.html

Now unless your Mortal Kombat, where your passing off swaps as new characters, doing this in fighting games isn't so bad.  Like in Street Fighter, being able to change Ryu's clothes or Sakura's school uniform from their standard colours to something that you find more appealing or something funky is cool, it lets you personalise your character a bit.

So those features were kind of cool and you liked it right? Well now, at least in Skullgirls, if you want to personalise your character just a tiny bit you have to fucking pay for that shit now.  Something that was a standard feature in pretty much every fighting game I've ever played is now being passed off as fucking DLC.  Also before anyone wants to tell about how cheap it is, I don't give a fuck, no one should have to pay for fucking palette swaps.

I can't remember if it was Persona or Blazblue or whatever but I remember in one of those guys you could pick like a section of clothes or part of the character, and then choose from like 60 odd colours so that you could really make something that you liked.  Sure it's a small thing, but making that a paid add on is fucking arse.

But you know what, I don't blame the developers, I blame the people who buy it.  You can't fault a bunch of people who want to make money on their game, and sure, if people are willing to pay for stuff that has come standard for years, then why not?!  Their the fucking idiots eating it up and telling them it's OK to pull that shit.  What's worse is that I found a community website with this announcement on it and people were fucking loving it!  I couldn't believe it.

Well whatever, I suppose I'm getting overly annoyed about a small thing, but it shouldn't fucking be this way! Goddamnit!  You are being charged for the dev to use the fill tool, think about that.

Don't Buy Metro: Last Light

Typing that title hurt, goddamnit.

Now before people start losing their shit and calling me a hater, because I do hate a lot of things, but Metro is not one of them.

Metro 2033 was one of those games I bought on Steam during a sale because I had some extra dosh sitting in my bank account and upon firing it up had absolutely zero expectations.  What I got was a slightly frustrating but all round awesome shooter, way different from most of the military CoD crap that I had long since got bored of at the time.

So when I heard about Last Light I was super hyped up and ready to throw my money at 4A Games in a fit of joy.  But then something went very, VERY wrong.  Once again, greed has come into play and has completely soured my attitude to this title.

Most people know what's up by now, but for those that don't a whole mode got removed from the game so it could feature as preorder DLC.  I wish I was fucking joking.  What's even worse is that it's the Ranger Mode that got removed, which was the whole reason I enjoyed the original Metro so fucking much.

What pisses me off about the whole thing is that I heard somewhere that the reason they did this is because they were being pressured by retailers to make preorder DLC available to push sales.  Well let's look at what preorder bonuses are being offered alongside the ranger mode.  An exclusive gun, 100 military grade bullets (game currency) and a digital comic.

THAT'S NOT ENOUGH?!  Let's make clear what is actually going on here.  Greed! Flat out, fucking low down, money grubbing, shitlicking greed.  They fucking knew how much fans of the original enjoyed ranger mode, so now their punishing consumers by fucking charging for it.

Oh yeah, you can still get it if you don't preorder but it'll cost you an extra $5 or £3 or whatever.  Fucking dogshit, especially out of a niche game like this and a no name developer.

So here's the deal, DON'T BUY LAST LIGHT! DON'T FUCKING DO IT!!  But if, like me, you want to play the game, just wait a while.  Eventually there will be a steam sale or the price will drop, buy it then.  Getting the game at a reduced price means that paying the extra for the ranger mode won't matter.  Vote with you're wallet! If you pre order the game or buy that DLC, you are sending a message to the developers and the publishers saying that this shit is OK, and it's fucking not.

There are plenty of other great games available on steam, for a cheaper price that you could have a crack at while you wait for this to go on sale.  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a few games in your backlogs to be getting through while you wait for Last Light.  So just chill out for a while and save a few bucks, let's not have this practice creeping into more and more games.

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr Ned

Wow, I beat this thing ages ago and didn't blog about it! Well better late than never!

The Zombie Island of Dr Ned is DLC for the first Borderlands game and something I didn't play when it was new because my computer was crap and I was too busy playing other things to give a shit about it when it appeared on Xbox Live.  Many years later I have got round to playing the damn thing and I actually thought it was better than the main game.

The story for this bit of extra stuff is that Dr Ned has gone and filled an island full of zombies and you have to go and end him, nice and straightfoward stuff.  Aside from the main story there are a couple of little quests to go on that flesh out the goings on that flesh out what happened before the zombie attacks, but like most plot related things in Borderlands you probably don't care.

The island itself is quite an interesting place to explore, with lots of forest and beach environments to run around which are dotted with a few caves, a nice change of pace from the main games open expanses with nothing in it.  It also keeps itself nice and short, clocking in at only a few hours of play but long enough to qualify as DLC done right.  It's also packed filled full of references to various horror franchises like one of the quests being called "House of the Ned", or Shaggy from Scooby Doo leaving an audio log.

A fun little expansion so if you didn't get the chance to play it when it was new, go grab it and give it a spin, you've been missing out!