Well, here is part 2 of the Fallout 3 DLC, and boy, is it a huge improvement over the last one. I’m not going to explain much about Operation Anchorage, but it was linear, stripped away most features, and was kind of boring (check out reviews elsewhere). The Pitt actually adds a whole new city, which is post-apocalyptic Pennsylvania. You are to free slaves there and find a cure to the rad poisoning that’s getting to everyone and turning them into “trogs.”. Yes, trogs are a new creature you’ll discover and are even creepier than those ghouls.
The Pitt is fairly large, and you start out on a bridge that was once a freeway that led into Pennsylvania, so you’re right on the border. Once you cross the bridge, you lose all your equipment (don’t worry, you’ll get it back!). and talk to these poor people and fight in a gladiator arena to win an audience with a man named Ashur. I won’t go any further since this will spoil stuff, but The Pitt has an awesome new weapon and, mainly, a great story and new setting.
The Pitt is very industrial, with a huge steel mill and a steelyard that goes hundreds of feet above the ground. To get an idea of how big The Pitt is, you need to take the Citadel, Rivet City, and the whole area around the Capital Building (you know, with the Washington Monument and that huge lake), and you have The Pitt. While most of it is indoors and in the steelyard, you’ll spend a good four hours exploring this amazing place.
Thankfully, there are reasons to go back here (which I won’t reveal due to spoilers), so this setting isn’t a one-shot deal like Operation Anchorage. The Pitt is just very gritty, more dark and mature than the Capital Wasteland, and much more dangerous. The whole place feels scarier than the Wasteland (which just felt really lonely), and this place feels haunted. There are raiders everywhere, and there’s no way you can fight them all off like you can at the Falls. The new weapon added is the Auto Axe, and boy, is it sweet!!! This thing spins a deadly blade and will do almost a one-hit kill in V.A.T.S. I highly recommend buying this, but also buy Broken Steel for the level 30 cap!
Fallout 3 is just one amazing experience, one of the best games I’ve ever played, and one of my top ten for this generation. I’m not going to write a review for Fallout 3. This review is really for Fallout 3 fans who paid $10 for this addon and for those who are thinking about it.
Operation Anchorage is the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska, from the communist Chinese. You’ll be helping out the Brotherhood Outcasts and will have to travel a great distance from the downtown metro area to get there. Once you help some outcasts fight off some super mutants and help escort them to their bases, you enter a computer simulation of this liberation. This is where Fallout 3 goes weird and doesn’t really feel like Fallout anymore. Everything is covered in snow, first off, and second, it turns Fallout 3 into a linear FPS. You still have everything, like your Pip-Boy and your RPG bits, in tact, but there’s no looting or anything like that. You have health and ammo dispensers spread throughout, and you’re only allowed the weapons the simulation wants you to have.
You have to help these people infiltrate the Chinese base in the mountains and disable three AA guns. After this, you have to take out a listening post, a tank depot, and then a pulse field to finally get into the headquarters. The DLC feels very derivative, with only two new enemies and one or two new weapons. The only new weapons I saw were the awesome Gauss Rifle, which uses microfusion cells (yeah, you actually use those now!) and is a one-shot super sniper rifle. The other was a Chinese officer’s sword, but I think that might be old. You can get troops that can help you battle things out, but this was a weird turn of events for Fallout 3.
On the plus side, though, you have realized this is a simulation, and it helps ease the pain for people wanting to wander the Capital Wasteland. The whole purpose of this DLC is to unlock some pretty sweet loot (I won’t spoil it!) in a vault that can’t be accessed unless the simulation is completed. You can complete this DLC in about 3–5 hours, depending on your play style, and it’s not worth the $10. I would honestly skip this one and go get The Pitt and Broken Steel. If you really want more Fallout, then pick up OA, but Bethesda’s first foray into DLC wasn’t a great one.
The only way you’re going to like Fallout 3 is for two reasons. 1. You loved Oblivion, and 2. You love the Fallout series. Otherwise, you’re probably going to hate the game and think it’s “boring.” I say this because the game relies a lot on you finding out what to do and where you should take your next steps. The game is 100% nonlinear and features a perfect balance of FPS action and RPG stat building. The game is more than just “Oblivion with guns,” and the reason people say this is because Bethesda uses the Oblivion engine for this game. Just like in Oblivion, you take quests from people and complete them as you wish. You can be good, bad, or neutral in the world. You can find mini-encounters or free-form quests that are separate from the main and side quests to unlock achievements. I don’t want to spend this whole review comparing this game to Oblivion since it is its own game.
The first thing you’ll notice is how amazing the graphics are. The Oblivion engine has been refined, and everything looks amazing. Step out of Vault 101, and your eyes will adjust from the dark, and you’ll witness a beautiful yet desolate wasteland that leaves you wondering, “Now what?” Don’t be scared since the game does guide you a little bit, so you aren’t completely lost. Just wander around to find Megaton and just talk to people, and you’ll get quests eventually. Of course, you always know where to go for the main quests, and every quest has arrows on your map that point to where to go. You may see places on your map, but you can’t fast-travel there unless you actually walk around and discover them yourself. This forces players to explore the vast world of DC and really get to know the place. There are two sections to the game: the Wasteland, which takes up about 70% of the game, and DC, which is cluttered with metro stations, fallen buildings, and all the main landmarks like the White House, the Library of Congress, the Pentagon, etc.
The only way to travel around in DC is through the metro tunnels, and I found this kind of annoying since it may be tough to figure out which tunnel goes where. I just really can’t express how amazing the game feels, and you really do feel alone and empty when you go through stores and buildings that are completely trashed. With the melancholy music, you sometimes get a bit depressed since it’s just so amazingly surreal. Thankfully, Bethesda injected a bit of dark humor to keep you from feeling this way, and one way is with VATS. The Vault-Tec Automated Targeting System is one of the main gameplay elements. Hit RB, and you’ll pause time and zoom in on your enemy, and there will be parts of his or her body you can hit. The percentage is your chance of hitting that target, your AP is your action points, and each weapon takes a certain amount of them every time you queue up attacks. If you do enough damage, you can cripple a limb and either make your enemy drop the weapon, lower their accuracy, or make them walk slower. Once you get to higher levels, a few shots and you can blow their heads off in a heaping gory mess, and it never ever gets boring. Sniping someone from 200 feet away, watching the camera follow the bullet, and having someone’s head fall off their neck is just so satisfying. I played for 54 hours and never got bored with it.
Of course, you can fight in real-time combat, but you don’t get the advantages of VATS like critical hit strikes, etc. The game has many weapons, from mini-nuke launchers to rocket launchers, 10mm pistols, combat shotguns, sledgehammers, hunting rifles—the list just goes on and on. You can also make your own weapons by finding schematics and collecting the items you need to build various weapons, like the Rock-It Launcher, which lets you shoot anything you find, and the Railway Rifle, which lets you shoot railroad spikes and impale limbs on walls. The game is huge, amazing, and awesome, and all of the combat is very satisfying, and there are endless ways to approach a situation. Don’t you like fighting? Use a Stealth Boy to sneak your way through places, plant live grenades in enemies’ pants, and watch them explode! Like fighting with your fists? Walk around with a power glove and bash your way through the wasteland. Now that combat is out of the way, let’s get to stats. Your menu is your Pip-Boy, which is attached to your arm, features an easy-to-navigate interface, and makes it really easy to find what you want. You can level up to level 20 (which is lame since you’ll get to level 20 way early in the game and be maxed out), and you have several options once you level up.
You can add points to yourself for things like your medicine, small guns, big guns, explosives, speech, barter, energy weapons, lockpicking, science, etc. Then you get to pick a perk (say that five times fast!) and these are another unique gameplay idea in Fallout 3. There are over 40 perks, but you can only pick up to 20 throughout the game, so choose wisely! Perks range from giving you more health, increasing your regular abilities, automatically giving you another level, making animals in the world your friends, revealing every location on your map, making you a law bringer, and if you bring every finger off a bad enemy to a special HQ, you get caps (currency in the game) and good karma. The stats are also affected by items such as Buffout, Jet, Mentats (post-apocalyptic drugs!), etc. These have temporary effects and will get you out of a tight situation. You can trade and repair your items with people around the city and become rich. You can also just shoot everyone in the cities and get bad karma, so as you can see, there are no restraints.
You can also pass time by “waiting,” which skips hours. You can heal your crippled limbs by sleeping or going to a doctor. Getting too irradiated? Take some Rad-Away! Getting addicted to a certain drug? Go to the doctor! You can eventually get your own place in Tenpenny Tower, and you can buy things like a workbench, doctor stations, etc. I just can’t express how HUGE this game is, from its vast size to being able to pick up anything you see to use as ammo, trade, or sell. You really do feel like you’re struggling to survive in a hostile wasteland, and that feeling never goes away, even after 100 hours of play. Of course, you’ll eventually conquer the wasteland and not be afraid of even the strongest enemies in the game.
Now there are issues with the game, but they’re minor. There is loading between each section of the game, such as going from the main world into buildings, etc. The level 20 cap is extremely annoying and makes you quit trying really hard to find places to fight in. The game is really similar to Oblivion, and people who played the F out of that game will feel too familiar here. That’s why this game didn’t get a 9.5 from me like Oblivion did because I’ve kind of “been there, done that” with this engine. While there are so many subtle things in the game, like having followers (including a dog!), the many types of weird enemies, and all the different people you can talk to, it’s insane. I could spend hours telling you about every location and person you meet. Just stop what you’re doing and go play Fallout 3, and you’ll spend dozens and dozens of hours surviving the vast wasteland! Go grab an Ice Cold Nuka-Cola and watch out for the hostile factions (Raiders, Talon Company Mercs, Slavers, etc.), and good luck out there!
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.