Fallout 3 Downloadable Content for (sigh) PS3

Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic action RPG FPS… ugh, who cares… it’s a game where you can talk to NPC’s, buy stuff, and aim a sniper rifle at radioactive ghouls (because “zombie” is politically incorrect in the Waste) who look like the melty-face nazi at the end of Raiders if that guy was Agassi-on-meth fast and desperate to claw your face off.  Fallout 3 was my preferred form of procrastination for months.  I love the environment.  I love that Liam Neeson is the voice of my daddy, be he white, black, Asian or Hispanic.  I love turning Super-Mutants into sprays of day-glo green goo.  I didn’t even mind the original ending.  But, like all PS3 owners reduced to second-class citizen status by Bethesda (the new content started rolling out for the PC and 360 several months before it did for the PS3), I was frustrated by the delays for the DLC.  Still, I’m willing to suffer through delays for the sake of higher quality.  I certainly didn’t want Fallout to be as glitchy as Oblivion was after the Shivering Isles pack.  Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I finally started buying the DLC, confident the game would remain stable… but I was wrong.  It’s a mess; physics problems, freezing, stops and starts, interminable load times and crash after crash after crash.  No more Bethesda on PS3 for me.  Microsoft wins, I surrender.  If you are planning on buying one of the Game of the Year editions, I’d stick with the 360…or if you have a decent PC, that’s really the best way to play Bethesda games.  I haven’t owned a PC ballsy enough to run a decent game since I bought a PS2…but didn’t get stuck with half a decade of Vista either.

The DLC itself (I’ve played four of the five… I’m waiting for my blood pressure to go back down before I attempt Mothership Zeta), particularly the vast Point Lookout, is fantastic.

Broken Steel offers a more traditional but still satisfying ending to the main storyline while allowing players to bring an already existing character to level 30.  The new perks offered at the higher levels aren’t spectacular, but it’s good to be able to go back and get some of the original perks.  I hated having to choose between Grim Reaper’s Sprint and Explorer at level 20.  Now you can use VATS until your weapon crumbles and find Agatha’s House (and Tacoma and the Clifftop Shacks and…) without a guidebook.

Operation Anchorage is short but satisfying and includes an entirely extraneous squad mechanic that I eventually abandoned… probably because I was at level 30 and could have handled the entire Chinese invading force myself by then.  If nothing else, it was unusual to play Fallout with bright blue skies.  When I go through the DLC again (with baby aspirin close at hand) I’ll do Anchorage first, if only because it offers as a reward the some of the best, and best-looking, gear in the game.

The Pitt is the only one of the four that I might call disappointing.  Unusually linear, the game creators tried to create Fallout-Kobayashi Maru.  What they’ve done is to prove that the way to win the no-win situation is to maintain a high level of ignorance.  The shoot first, loot the body, never ask anybody anything player will entirely bypass the no-win decision that is meant to be the chapter’s central theme.  The Pitt also replaces the feral ghoul with a new mindless enemy; a reinvention of the ghoul called a trog.  I can’t imagine why they did this.  The episode would have had more gravity and been more cohesive with the core game if they’d stayed with the ghouls. What redeems The Pitt is the Steelyard, which, with it’s catwalks, rooftops, and extreme verticality, is as much fun to explore and scav as any environment in Fallout 3.

Point Lookout is the best of the four I’ve played.  It includes several separate, multi-part missions that can be played one at a time or concurrently.  Most of the missions are meaty and satisfying; if you’re really into scavenger hunts you’ll love them all.  The environment is filthy, creepy, massive, and overpopulated with evil, mutated in-breeders and ignoble savages designed to put up a fight before you turn them into a fine red mist.  Best of all, unlike Operation Anchorage or The Pitt, you can leave and return as often as you like.  This effectively makes Point Lookout a part of the core game (if not the central plot), not just an ancillary component.  It even has a puzzle.  Well… it isn’t much of a puzzle.  Remember the Witchwood Stones puzzle in Fable?  It’s kind of like that only with X-Ray specs.

I’ll update this post when I finally play Mothership Zeta.  Until then, I wouldn’t hesitate to grab the Fallout 3 DLC or the GotY edition… as long as you are willing give the boys in Redmond their cut.