Claptraps have been a part of the
Borderlands universe since the original game launched a year ago. They are polarizing little droids. Some think they're hilarious. Others look at them as the
Borderlands version of the near-universally-reviled Jar Jar Binks. For the record, this writer thinks they're great. Regardless of what you may think about Claptraps, your enjoyment of this release doesn't depend on your opinions of the feisty robots. Even if you hate them, you'll get more than a few chances to thin out the herd. So it's a win-win situation.
Borderlands: Claptrap's New Robot Revolution takes place after The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. The Hyperion Corporation clearly has a taste for irony. The greed of munitions dealers and Vault Hunters has effectively put a stopper in the company's income flow. So, they do something incredibly stupid: they activate the Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap to clean house. Unsurprisingly, the little bastard doesn't do the job it has been hired to do, opting instead to launch a revolutionary agenda. The goal of the aforementioned agenda? The complete assimilation of all Pandoran life. (I totally saw this coming from the start. Did you?) The irony here is that Hyperion hires you to quell the uprising.
Claptrap's New Robot Revolution runs under the assumption that you played The Secret Armory of General Knoxx to completion. If you haven't, do so before taking on this downloadable content. There are several inside jokes aimed squarely at those who have stayed with Borderlands since the beginning. Even if you haven't taken your own mercenary from the skag-infested Arid Badlands to the heart of the legendary Pandoran Vault, there's still some great humor to be found in Claptrap's New Robot Revolution. It's a gushing love letter to nerd culture; within the first hour of this DLC, crystal-clear references are made to geek staples like Back to the Future and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Even the pro-Claptrap propaganda overshoots the simple definition of "paraphrase;" a broadcast tower plays a robo-friendly version of Andrew Ryan's opening speech in BioShock.
