Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty (Xbox 360) review: Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty (Xbox 360)

The planet of Pandora has no shortage of strange places to visit, hostile creatures to fight, and shiny objects to loot, a fact that the original Borderlands established with four downloadable content packs of generally high quality. Now Borderlands 2 is getting the DLC train rolling in earnest with Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty, a suggestively titled yet surprisingly tame add-on adventure. The new characters provide some mild entertainment, but most of the appeal comes from some feisty new enemies and some lush new environments. This isn't Borderlands 2 at its best, but there's a lot of fun to be found in the fairly lengthy search for pirate treasure.

The titular heroine is, as you may have guessed, a sexy pirate lady on the hunt for some legendary loot. She leaves most pirate stereotypes behind for a kind of peppy determination, and once you join her search, her casual mentions of how she will inevitably betray you make for some amusing moments. There are also two lonely weirdos with whom you converse, each consumed by his own obsession, as well as some entertaining audio-log-only personalities. There are hearty chuckles and witty moments, but Pirate's Booty's humor starts to run dry a few hours in, making it feel like a tepid scion of the main game.

Conversely, the environments don't start off strong, but they get better as you go on. The dried-up resort town of Oasis (the spot you must fast-travel to in order to start the DLC) is saturated with the dusty brown tones that grew tiresome during the first hours of the original Borderlands. You can shake off this sense of deja vu by skimming around the dry seabed on a new hover-vehicle, squishing angry worms, and getting ridiculously floaty air off of jumps. Then later, you journey underground to a lush, glittering cavern, and the vibrant color palette is almost palpably refreshing. Sparkling streams and colorful pools are a welcome sight for your weary eyes, and a few other places have a similarly novel appeal.