The latest DLC for Borderlands, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, is designed to be TOUGH as nails. Gearbox seems to relish in punishing you in wave after wave of increasingly powerful enemies, and you got to survive up to 100 waves to get the good loot (an additional skill point.) You want to make sure you have the best strategy going in, otherwise, you got to replay the whole thing over again. That's enough to drive any gamer into fits of rage.

Based on 20 hours of play experience already with a full team, I've put together some key strategies on prepping yourself for this endurance challenge. Here are 10 tips that will greatly aid you in combat. For the sake of your flying joystick, and broken TV, please take my advice. [nextpage]

Top tips for surviving endless waves of baddies in Borderlands:

Having finished every last quest in Borderlands in the last add-on pack, I'm ready for more. And thankfully Gearbox came answering. Or rather, Moxxi is here to whip us all into shape.

This add-on pack is quite a bit different than the last one. First off, it's an arena style combat challenge. Waves after waves of enemies come after you, and you got to dispense them all. After 4 waves, there's a boss you tackle, which happens to be one of the boss characters brought back to life from the main game. Then another round happens, and so it begins again. Overall, there are three unique arenas, and there's a rather superficial central quest that ties them all together. For a game limited to just arena battles, is it worth $9.99 and a few hours of your life?[nextpage]

WHAT I LOVE
The atmosphere

As probably can tell from my nonstop forum postings, I’m a Borderlands freak. Not quite as freaky as the crazied midgets in the game, but it’s getting close. I love the game. Which is all the more impressive given that I was sure the game would not have lived up to my expectations due to all the hype. Luckily it does.

But now that I’m on my second play through having beaten the game and found the vault, I’m starting to hanker for some new things to kill. And more loot to find. Looks like my latest drug dealer, Gearbox, heard my calling.[nextpage]

So a new download pack comes out on Tuesday Nov 24th on XBLA and PS3, and I’m all over it like gravy on a biscuit. Dr. Ned is opening up a whole new location to explore, complete with new missions, enemies and

I’m probably one of the few people who love ads. It’s not that I like having marketing messages shouted in my face, but I do love hunting down clever ads that really hit home. There's something powerful when you can excite someone with just a tagline, or jingle, or 30 second spot.

So I wanted to start a new segment here on The Kartel that covers the best and worst print ads each month. Print ads seem like a dying breed, and I figure it was worthwhile shining a little light on this quickly fading form of creative expression. Generally speaking, the Nov issues of most magazines are PACKED with ads each year. This year, just about every game mag is thinner than an I Love Kanye West pep rally. Times sure are tough.

So here we go! We’ll start off with the best ads of the month.[nextpage]

It was Sunday morning, and while I typically try to spend my weekend away from games, since I work with games all week long, on this particular day, I was inspired to write a new feature for TheKartel.com. Here I was thinking that it was going to be a fun way to drum up some chatter on a particular game design challenge I was faced with, little did I know it was going get me banned from NeoGAF, and set on fire by the gaming community.

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The whole thing started because I wrote a rather controversial piece about how I think more games need to take lessons from Borderlands. I intended the piece to stir up some heated debate, especially since I used the headline “Why all games from now on MUST be like Borderlands”. Now, to be clear, I actually do believe “most”