Rise of the Martian Bear is the recently released DLC for Iron Brigade (Trenched). It continues the story of Vlad and his broadcast, but this time moving the action to space.
The DLC continues after the game ends. Being that you pick up where you left off you still have all of your loot that you’ve managed to pick up through the original game. Trust me when I tell you, it will do you no good in the fist stage or two of the DLC. The expansion has a very increased difficulty and you know it from the first time you start to play. Rise of the Martian Bear starts off by the “Broadcast” starting to send a signal again and it’s not long before you realize that you’re going to have to travel to Mars to stop it and Vlad who you find out “bearly escaped” his fate by transferring his brain to his pet bear Boris. Far fetched? Sure it is, but this kind of humor is one of the reasons why I love this game.
The DLC has the same basic game controls and premise as the core game. One of the big issues I had with the core game was the selections of loot items like weapons, emplacements and chassis. There was also a less than satisfactory rank cap, as you could only hit level 10. This DLC fixes that issue by adding over 100 new pieces of loot for you to find in your playing. The new content also lets you ranks up to a higher level. As I only played through once I only got to 15, but the difference is noticeable and makes the game loads more fun. In the free update that changed the game from Trenched to Iron Brigade there was a Survival mode added, but only allowed for one level to be played in the new feature. Martian Bear also adds two new Survival levels into the mix.
As I stated before the difficulty is increased on this content. When I first started playing I noticed the increase and was kind of in dis-belief that is was so much harder than the core game. Due to the volume of the enemies that you have come to known in the core game like Resistors and Jacobs to the new enemies that have been added in. Enemies like Noids which are the new aerial enemy. I found myself using all new weapon set ups just to be able to survive. When I started playing the game co-op is when all the magic came back to the title. The new level of difficulty is still there, but like any co-op game it just makes it a little more acceptable. By the time you reach the end, the difficulty is no longer an issue after you gain some of the new loot items, but on the same hand reaching the end is one of the downfalls of this DLC.
Playing the expansion co-op myself and two other people were able to complete the whole story in about 2 hours or less. To me it just seems way to short. Even though the new content is a plus, I just feel that the new story ended abruptly and too soon. Not to say that this problem makes Martian Bear a bad expansion, because for the asking price it’s well worth the money.
As with the core game it has plenty of replay value. You will find yourself replaying going after gold medals and trying to find all the pieces of loot. This almost cancels out the issue of the DLC being too short. For just 400 MS points, the DLC is a definite buy if you’re a fan of the core game and if you’re not you should still try it out as this DLC really delivers in content is nothing else. From the opinion of a gamer, I think this game DLC is a buy.
