Sadly, this expansion was a disappointing follow up to the exceptional Point Lookout.  Instead of having half a dozen significant quests, a healthy world to explore, and a dozen separate freeform quests to enjoy, Mothership Zeta traps you on a single alien space craft and hopes you’ll be happy with some new weapons.

That isn’t so say the new spaceship area isn’t cool.  It is.  Graphically, it’s a treat to walk down the polished chrome interior and blast small green-headed aliens away using blaster rifles.  As gameplay though?  It’s just not there.  Fallout 3 is and always has been a role playing game, not a first person shooter.  As entertaining as combat is in Fallout 3 it’s just can’t pretend to be Halo, it can’t even manage to be Mass Effect.  It’s Fallout and they really should have gone back to the core of Fallout for this expansion.

Positives: new guns, interesting interior, a pretty fun boss fight.

Negatives: too small, too linear, not enough ‘lore’, too much repetitive combat, bland characters.

Having finished all the expansions and all of the main game quests, there’s just not that much to bring me back to Fallout universe.  There are a few small things I might try and a couple of areas I never explored, but this is the end…or is it?  Fallout: New Vegas isn’t a sequel and it’s still a few years off, but it’s probably time to start looking at unofficial mods.  The Fallout team did a good job giving the community a ton of weapons and textures to modify, Mothership Zeta included.  I have no doubt the fans will create some very fun and in depth expansion.  By now someone has probably gone off and tried to remake Fallout 1 & 2 (which I’m playing in my spare time by the way.)

For anyone on the fence, Mothership Zeta isn’t quite as bad as Operation Anchorage and it is the last official DLC, at least so far.  It’s expensive for such a small return ($10), but for a Fallout fan…there’s always ways to get more caps, eh?

Point Lookout takes place in on a new map area accessible from a ferry that leaves near from the Capitol Wasteland.  It’s a swampy area that has the remains of an old tourist boardwalk, some old southern mansions, and thick swamps filled with mutated ‘natives.’

As a loyal Fallout fan I have and will continue to play pretty much everything they put out, but this expansion is easily the best of the bunch.

To give a quick summary: the first expansion was Operation: Anchorage.  It had some neat scenery, but it was extremely linear, had relatively little plot, and provided almost no backstory.  The attempt was to put the player in sort of this invasion cinamatic, but it didn’t come together well.  The Fallout Engine, as great as it is, is just not big enough to really set that kind of a scene.  Fallout will never be Call of Duty (or Vice Versa).  If they had put in some more color it might have worked better, but it was just too short and too straightforward to be that great.

The second expansion was The Pitt.  It had a new area beyond the main map.  (An old ruined Pittsburgh.)  The area was very cool looking and the story was interesting, but it was also too short for the world they had setup.  I wanted to explore pittsburgh and really immerse myself in this new area.  Instead, two or three missions and I had wiped out the bad guys.  There was nothing to keep me there and, once again, no story to follow.  It was a better expansion than anchorage, but still lacking.

Broken Steel had a small map expansion, but it was mostly a story expansion.  It continued the Lone Wanderers war against the Enclave.  Mission wise it was pretty cool and the new weapons were very fun.  (Heavy Incinerator…best!).  The final battle is pretty great and almost captured that epic feel that they attempted with Operation Anchorage.  It still felt a bit tacked on, the lone wanderer doesn’t launch wars, that’s not what fallout is about, but it was a welcome addition to the universe.  As always, I kept hoping they would flesh out the back story more even if it was the near-past.  Still, I enjoyed Broken Steel a lot.

This latest one, well, it’s hit the spot.  It starts off with a boat ride on an old Steamboat, which is great.

From there, it drops you off into a new map area and lets you go to town.  There’s a full wilderness to explore, a half a dozen side quests, a short but fairly satisfying main quest, and a whole load of little touches that make the world fun to be in.  I don’t want to drop too much, but going into the different hotel rooms was a blast.  That alone was worth the price of admission.  As always, I keep wishing they’d explore the history of the world or even the present.  The various stories are all one-offs with no lingering consequence or relation.  I keep hoping to find a town as big as Balmora in Morrowind, or Cheydinhal in Oblivion, something big enough that I get to interact with nearly everyone and actually figure out the town.

Alas, that’s not be yet, but this expansion got close.   As always the visuals are nearly perfect.  The sea side resort town has a sort of freshly abandoned vibe that quickly deteriorates as you near the desolate (and decidedly spooky swamp area).  Add in the swamp folk and a pair of old abandoned southern mansions and there’s plenty to work with.

Mothership Zeta (the 5th expansion) comes out in another month.  I’m not sure how I feel about aliens in the universe, but if they can keep up the good work of Point Lookout it should be fun to play.

Let me say, I am disappointed. The Pitt follows a slave rebellion in the burned out husk of Pittsburgh. That’s a vague but promising start. Three hours later I was master of the pit and the slave rebellion was over.

I’m a more aesthetic gamer than most. I can appreciate the game that burns bright and fast, but I expect the game to meet a certain level. Sadly, this expansion was infinitely forgottable. The story, as I’ve already aluded, was over quickly. It was a standard ‘free the slaves or help the slavers’ vignette, similar to a number of missions in the original Fallout 3. The download promised a morally vague world, but the macguffin thrown in and only realized at the very end, held far too little impact. Granted, as an experienced player with a maximimum level adventurer I didn’t expect a massive amount of challenge, I also didn’t expect it to be so thoroughly easy as well. Two or three quick jaunts through the burned out husk of Pittsburgh was not enough to inspire in me any particular morale confusion.

Visually, Fallout 3 has always been gorgeous. Pittsburgh, however, was somewhat of a disappointment. The bridge was well realized and there was some new artwork in the city, but most of it was the same burnt out remains as always, with some added rust and the firey skeleton of a steel mill. The art work, while interesting, was less impressive that Operation Anchorage or the original Fallout.

Without much of a story, or visuals, the download just fell flat. The characters were only vaguelly memorable, but again, there was so little back story, so little time spent with them, that none of the characters came particularly to life. It is a complaint that could go to Fallout 3 in general, but it had enough other merits to recommend it. I wanted to like The Pitt, I really did, but aside from a few cool weapons and a rather exciting gladiator contest there just was enough to interest me.

I hope the third download adventure, coming soon, will be much more exciting!

Does this sound like a book synopsis?

It certainly could be, but it’s not. It happens to be my rough overview of Fallout 3, a computer game by Bethesda, known best for the Elder Scrolls games (which could be books in their own right.)

I’ve been playing Fallout for a little over a week now. I could review it as a video game and on those merits it’s safe to say that it’s fun, but for Servusamanu, I’d rather review it as a piece of literature.

Video games tend to have a bad reputation as a medium for story-telling. There’s only so much I can argue against that, but there are definite exceptions and Fallout 3 is one of them.

It’s a world, a huge world. The story is engrossing, but seeing a barren nuclear wasteland and getting to walk around is a haunting experience. Books can describe and movies can show, but only games let you explore. Running out of ammo in the middle of nowhere is frightening and dramatic. I can’t help, but come up with story ideas. Why is this school infested with raiders? Why are all these cars on fire? How many people have wandered into this wasteland and ran out of supplies? Could I start a new village here?

As a medium for ideas, computers games probably aren’t for everyone, and I can’t imagine anyone who already plays particularly needs an excuse to get or avoid Fallout 3, but if everything I write in the next few weeks has a dystopian bent, you’ll know why.