The Holodome Onslaught will instantly feel familiar to anyone who has played Borderlands before. It's very similar to the Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot DLC from Borderlands 1 - A horde mode where you fend off waves of enemies through a set number of rounds until everything is dead.
It's slightly on the lighter side in terms of depth of content compared to last time, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Underdome Riot was guilty of serious content padding with up to 20 waves of enemies in a single round that made it feel like it just went on forever. I don't like the way they've essentially just copy and pasted a previously used concept, but at least they've been sensible with it's scale on this occasion. We don't need generic horde mode offerings that outstay their welcome.
I'm not saying this is good by any stretch. It's actually very unspectacular and ordinary. However, it does serve purposes to other ends, and my biggest positives of this experience are linked to how the Holodome arena can be used to ease the requirements of other trophies within the main list.
Firstly, it's a good source of experience points for both the enemies you'll kill within the arena and turning in missions for beating the Holodome. One of the trophies within the main list requires you to reach level 50 with any character, and this content is my first stop in exhausting all viable options that'll allow me to reach that milestone without having to indulge in too much repetition.
Secondly, the Holodome is also a good source of Moonstones, which enemies drop fairly frequently here, and you'll need a ton of these in relation to the achievement of some other trophies within the main list, so it turns out to be a great farming location too.
The package also comes complete with 3 additional trophies of it's own, and these follow a very simple route to completion;
The initial phase of the Holodome will see you go through 5 successive rounds, and beating all of these will net you the first trophy within the list. Each round contains between 4 to 6 waves of enemies, scaling in volume, but nothing too outrageous in terms of overall difficulty. If you're like me, and you've beaten the game, and you're using the Holodome to squeeze out some extra levelling, you should have powerful enough weapons to deal with the majority of the enemies fairly adequately.
However, once the initial 5 rounds have been beaten, you'll unlock a final Badass round. Of the 2 outstanding trophies, you'll unlock one of these for beating the Badass round, but for the final Gold trophy, you'll need to go a step further;
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| I Welcome Your Attack, Fool - Completed the Badass Round without going into Fight For Your Life. |
Tackling this trophy as a solo player turned out to be a bit of a rough experience. The Badass Round of the Holodome contains 7 waves, and throws some tough enemies into the mix that are capable of taking you down in a couple of hits if you're not careful.
"Fight for your life" mode is activated when you lose all your health and go down. In solo play, you'll be able to revive yourself by killing an enemy to earn a "second wind" and continue fighting, but this will also void the trophy so you need to be able to progress through all 7 waves without being downed.
The key is to take your time and be patient. Some of the weaker enemies can be held off at distance with sniper rifles or plasma rifles, but some enemies will need to be fought in close quarters in order to realistically kill them, and this is where the problems arise. Ophas and Virtuous Ophas are dangerous in close quarters because of their powerful melee attacks, but they also spawn Putti - Small creatures which provide health regeneration capabilities to protect the Opha when in danger, so the tactic to pick them off at range with a slower firing weapon wasn't a viable approach because they'd regain their health back too quickly. This forced me into fighting them at close range with an effective Shotgun and Melee combo, but it's a treacherous catch 22 scenario that cost me my life numerous times.
Additionally to this, Guardian Ponders and Guardian Reapers are also incredibly dangerous, and will actively instigate close range fights with their ability to teleport. This often means they'll end up directly at your feet without warning and they both have high damage attacks that can kill you almost instantly. The main thing that makes this frustrating is the lack of ability to get away from a fight courtesy of the space atmosphere that makes your movement floaty and slow, so in most instances where a Ponder or Reaper would suddenly spawn within close proximity, it was rare I'd be able to move quickly enough to escape death. Another annoying way to die that occurred far too often.
There are smaller inconveniences at play too. The arena has an open floor that exposes an insta-kill saw blade trap that caught me out a couple of times, and ammunition management will also become crucial, even if you've upgraded your backpack capacity.
The approach of taking my time and ensuring I did everything I could to fight enemies from a reasonable distance eventually paid off, though I'd estimate it took me over 20 attempts to finally unlock this trophy. You get a feel for spawn patterns and understanding the importance of dispatching the more dangerous foes quickly. It does become a tiring exercise, especially those failed attempts that reach the latter waves - That's over 30 minutes of wasted effort each time. The motivation of levelling proves to be a nice ongoing incentive outside of the Gold trophy. I managed to go from level 32 to level 37 whilst chasing down the 3 trophies in this set, though this did slow down significantly towards the end and I'd just about squeezed the maximum value out of this content from a levelling perspective.
A successful round - and achievement of this trophy - will probably take around 45 minutes, but after around 20 runs of varying degrees of progress, that's a substantial accumulation of time for one trophy. Now to work out how I tackle the remaining 13 levels.
