Holy mother of God… A review? From Ben? Believe it or not, it’s real. This time I’ll be tackling the two recent DLC packs for one of the best games ever, Fallout 3—specifically the PC version—although which version shouldn’t come into play too much here. We’ll do this thing chronologically, so I’ll start with Operation: Anchorage, and don’t worry kids—I’ll be sure to give you ample warning should spoilers appear.
Operation: Anchorage
Concept here is pretty simple, and you probably already know it: climb into a simulator, kill some Red Chinese, get some loot when you get back to the Capitol Wasteland. Easy as pie, and truthfully, I agree with most of the other stuff that’s been said about this particular expansion (see, that’s what we called these thing back in the old days; in the dark times, before the Empire), namely that it eschews a great deal of the Role-Playing part of the Role-Playing Game in favor of shooting dudes up. Which is more or less OK by me, since Fallout 3’s combat system is, in a word (OK, two words) Fucking Awesome. Still, even if the thought of doing a minimum of that talk-y shit and a maximum of slaying gets you hot, Operation: Anchorage does run into its share of problems.
Problem 1: No looting. 
Every RPG EVER has at least some sort of a looting mechanic. Perhaps you don’t literally loot the still-warm corpses of your fallen enemies, but you at least get some gil and a phoenix down or two when the victory music starts to play. Looting is a blast in Fallout 3, especially because of things like the repair mechanic, which encourages you to pick shit up off dead dudes to replace and repair your own junk. Unfortunately, when the Red Chinese fall to your onslaught in Operation: Anchorage, they get all blue and shimmery, and disappear with a noise like flanged static, leaving behind a fat load of nothing. This means that you have to wait until you get to these sort of checkpoint things before you can get more ammo, which brings us to…
Problem 2: Health/ammo dispensers and checkpoints. They’re not actually called “checkpoints” as far as I know—in fact, I don’t think the game gives them any sort of name at all—but every so often you get a chance to take a break from the slaughter and refill your health and ammo at convenient little stations scattered throughout the level. Each one will also have a couple “special” ammo units scattered around—some microfusion cells for your Gauss rifle, some missiles for your, uh, missile launcher, and some frag mines and grenades. In a way, the decision to place these ammo items here only highlights what’s wrong with the whole ammo/health dispenser idea to begin with: part of the fun of the game, at least when you start out or get your ammo and gear taken away, is finding ammo, weapons, and health, and then taking care to use them effectively. When you just have an ammo spigot and an Everfull Can of Health, some of the fun is lost. It’s not about survival anymore—it’s about slogging through enemies until you reach the next heal and re-arm station. I realize that, once you get to a certain point in the game proper, you are in effectively the same situation, where your ammo is so plentiful that it might as well be unlimited, but by then you’ve had plenty of fun hoarding it, and in the back of your mind you know that it COULD run out—and with some of the cooler, rarer ammo types it still does. Operation: Anchorage throws this out the window with the ammo/health dispensers in concert with the No Looting policy. I’m fine with doing nothing but shooting dudes—just give me the opportunity to loot their fresh corpses, OK?
Problem 3: Walls. And not the invisible or cleverly-disguised kind either. Big, shimmery, blue walls prevent you from veering too far off the beaten path, and constantly remind you that you’re in a simulation in a game, which is very post-modern but still kind of irritating. When the game area is pretty small to begin with, throwing these things in is frustrating and just seems lazy. Just dump me in a ravine, or something, OK? I realize you can’t build a whole Alaska for me to wander through, but at least TRY and make me thing there’s a good reason I can’t go Over There instead of just throwing up a blue fucking wall.
There are a few other problems, but they mostly have to do with scale, and this is just DLC, not a whole new game, so I’m going to let that sleeping dog lie. Of course, this thing isn’t all bad. If it was, why would I bother writing this?
Awesome Thing 1: Gauss Rifle. Near as I can tell, this thing is just a portable railgun. It uses an entire micro fusion cell for one shot, which should give you some idea as to its power. It makes an awesome noise kind of like an old-fashioned cash register (trust me, it works) when it fires, and it creates a nice little ripple effect in the air when it hits. Did I mention it’s a one-hit kill on pretty much all infantry, including guys in power armor? Yes, it is nice. It gets my stamp of approval.
Awesome Thing 2: Snow. Well, maybe not the snow itself, but even though it’s bleak enough in its own way, the snow-covered fields and windswept mountains of Anchorage make for a nice change of scenery from the dry, cracked Capitol Wasteland.
Awesome Thing 3: Shooting dudes. It’s pretty much all you do, but if you like Fallout 3’s combat, here’s some more. Plus there are little exploding drones to shoot.
So in the final analysis, what’s it like? Well, it’s more Fallout 3, which means I’m automatically sold, but for anyone else, you might want to weigh your options. If you like Fallout 3’s combat, there’s plenty more of it here, and the Gauss rifle is loads of fun—I never get tired of just firing it. The whole place is nice and pretty, and it is nice to go somewhere that isn’t completely worn-down and destroyed. The first portion of the game, where you’re tooling around in the mountains, is especially visually impressive, and quite a bit different from what you’ve seen in the game so far. The story is pretty weak (you shoot dudes) with no surprises (spoiler: America wins), but at least you get a couple new characters to talk to, and it’s interesting to get a look at the inside of the war that shaped pretty much the entire Fallout universe. In the end, I’m not sad I bought it, but it would have been nice to get a little bit more.
I played through to the end of the main storyline, but didn’t do all of the side stuff (i.e., collect all the pieces of Intel).
The Pitt
As you probably know, the concept for this one is that there are slaves in Pittsburgh, and the place really blows. A guy wants you to help him make it blow less. There’s plenty of killing to be done in this installment too, but there’s also plenty of story, or at least a lot more than you’ll find in Operation: Anchorage. So let’s get started!
Problem 1: The Pitt is kind of small. I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, so maybe it’s actually like that, but the Pitt seemed…tiny. There’s only one house in Downtown for you to visit (at least as far as I could tell), and there are no shops or much interesting to do aside from the main plot. There are a few side things you can do—tell a snitch what’s going on, tell a girl you’ll find her friend (one guess as to whether you find him dead or alive)—but not much, and the things you can do aren’t very interesting. Again, I know this is just DLC, but I would have really liked to see a larger city to explore and more people to interact with.
Problem 2: Easy. I’ll admit, I was playing on Normal, but it still seemed easier than it should have been. In playing through the entire DLC, I think I died…once? They go to the trouble of [POSSIBLE SPOILER] taking away all your gear the moment you arrive at the Pitt, but it doesn’t take very long at all to build up a VERY impressive array of weaponry that makes the rest of the thing more or less a cakewalk. [END POSSIBLE SPOILER]
To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of beef with this particular chunk of DLC, so we’ll just move on to what was awesome, shall we?
Awesome Thing 1: Plot. I’m not going to go into too much detail, ’cause of, you know, spoilers, but the story in The Pitt surprised me a couple of times, and in a good way. One of the decisions you have to make near the end of the story probably gave me the most pause, in terms of morality, of anything I’ve run into in Fallout 3 up to this point. I probably spent fully ten minutes trying to decide what would be the right thing to do, and even then I went back later and re-loaded my save to do it the other way and see what happened. Actually forcing me to think about my choice is something I don’t see very often in videogames that tout themselves as “allowing you to choose between good and evil”.
Awesome Thing 2: New stuff. Trogs are basically ghouls, but with new models, and I always like new models. There are a couple new armors that look pretty damn awesome as well, and the Infiltrator gun is a badass piece of steel.
Awesome Thing 3: New look. Not as extreme a change of scenery as Operation: Anchorage, the Pitt still has a very distinctive look that differentiates it from the Capitol Wasteland. Smoke and grime fill the air, and the sun is permanently covered by the haze pumped out by the steel mill. Fire belches from damaged pipes in the steelyard. The Capitol Wasteland feels like the surface of a dead world where people have to struggle desperately to survive—the Pitt feels like a Hell made of smoke and steel.
So what’s the final analysis? The Pitt is pretty great. Sure it’s a little small, but for what’s essentially a single quest string, it works fine. It looks good, and, perhaps more importantly, looks subtly different enough to make it clear that you aren’t in the Wasteland anymore. The new weapons and armor you acquire are cool-looking, dangerous, and have some nice names (”The Man-opener” being my favorite). Unfortunately, it is still cut off from the Wasteland in much the same way as Operation: Anchorage in the sense that once you enter, you can’t leave until you’ve completed the story, and you can’t just walk to it from the Wasteland—you have to take a handcart along abandoned train tunnels. Still, I’m darn glad I picked it up. It gave me a weekend of good fun.
So there you are. Hopefully I’ve informed your purchase or soothed your buyer’s remorse. If not, well, hopefully you just enjoyed reading all of that.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Totally agree with you. I wish they would have more DLCs, which of course they will, but I only know of one left in the series.
A good idea for them to do is to make the Capital Wasteland upgraded to something new. For instance, it lets you turn on the machine to clear up the water, but it really didn’t stop some outside badasses from coming in and taking over the place.
Add a bunch more items that are re-scattered all over the wasteland and make new buildings.
If they are just making improvements to the existing landscape, it would be awesome and pretty fast to do rather than creating whole new lands.
All in all I love the game and there is talk about making it become a MMORPG… I think that’s how it’s spelled.
Keep up the good fight-
Kc
March 30th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Nice nod to postmodernism there sport.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I try and keep it classy.