Martin Gaston, who originally penned our positively glowing review of Fallout 3, returns to hand over some critical analysis of Bethesda’s first dose of Fallout DLC. His report may surprise you.
Release Date: Jan 27 2009
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: ZeniMax Media
Genre: Role-Playing Game
***Post-release content is a somewhat different beast to full retail titles and as such we do not currently award fixed scores to such products.
Editor’s Note: We’ve implemented a simple scoring system: BUY IT/TRY IT/FORGET IT. However, DLC is somewhat of a different beast from regular ‘full retail’ titles so we’ve decided against giving it a final rating… since we make our own rules, we’re exercising our right to break them.
That’s what games journalism is all about.
It’s a safe bet that an average player willing to hand over 800 of their hard-earned Microsoft points for Operation: Anchorage has played a lot of Fallout 3 to begin with. They’re probably sitting on a cheeky little level 20 character, maybe one with the Grim Reaper’s Spirit perk, a few bobble heads craftily collected to boost their stats and, broadly speaking, the destructive capability of a Jack Daniel’s crate at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. This makes Operation: Anchorage a tricky bit of content to approach critically, because whilst the quest is not necessarily truly bad, at higher levels it’s just pitifully, inexcusably easy.
What you’ll get for your points, then, is a two-and-a-half hour trek through a computer simulation re-enacting the Anchorage Reclamation, which – as I’m sure you’ll already know – is a rather prestigious and significant part of Fallout lore.
Picking up a distress signal on your radio after wandering the Wasteland for a few minutes, you’ll be directed to Bailey’s Crossroads (only accessible via the new Bailey’s Crossroads Metro station, which the game is a bit unclear about specifying. It’s a bit south of the Red Racer Factory on the map) to meet up with a band of Brotherhood Outcasts. After helping them with a little Super Mutant problem they notice you’re sporting a Pip-Boy 3000, which turns out to be the missing link between them, a computer simulation and a locked door containing a whole load of lucrative loot.
So, in you go. After being tasked with ridding Alaska of the communist threat, it doesn’t take very long to realise that Operation: Anchorage is an extensively combat-orientated series of quests. Much like the Holodeck aboard the Starship Enterprise, safety mode on the simulation pod seems to be set irrevocably to ‘off’. But, of course, as a likely level 20 character you’ll be entirely unfazed by the Chinese army. Even being stripped of your real-world weapons, armour and restorative items is barely enough to stop the inherent destructive capabilities of your character, and as soon as you get your hands on one of the plentiful Chinese Assault Rifles strewn about the place you’re a one man commie-crushing army. Playing true to its simulation roots, enemies evaporate into pixels, leaving you no opportunities to loot corpses for additional health and ammo supplies. This is, however, made moot by the bountiful supply of ammo and health rechargers littered about the place.
And that’s basically it. You go down corridors, shoot people, and then keep going. The game peps up once you encountered the Chinese Stealth Suit, but after a few of them have been effortlessly dispatched it becomes quite routine again. At one point you’re allowed to choose if you want to go left or right to shoot some people, and then after you’ve killed them all you go back and take the other direction. You shoot a lot of stuff after that, too.
Shooting stuff isn’t the strongest aspect of Fallout 3.
It could work, though, if the quest was ingrained with some actual charm. Instead it all feels a bit lifeless. Gone are the posters, the propaganda and the wit of the universe, and the creative opportunities to satirize the American military and the build-up to the all-important Great War are left sadly alone. It’s the fine, exquisite attention to detail that makes Fallout 3 such an epic experience, and it’s their omission sadly results in Operation: Anchorage being an underwhelming bit of DLC.
When you’re done, too, it turns out the elusive loot container is only riddled with all the weapons and items you used in the simulation. Only, because you’re probably level 20 anyway, you don’t have any real need for them. Anything that might be of some serious use to the high-level players – hard-to-find bits of miscellaneous loot for crafting weaponry, or a few complimentary Nuka-Cola Quantum’s – is completely absent.
But maybe that’s the point? Viewed within a wider context, however, the mission pack gains a whole new perspective. It’s probably the biggest mission in the whole of Fallout 3, and certain moments capture the epic feeling that you got when trying to go about similarly huge quests in Oblivion. The blue sky and the non-scorched terrain add a very welcome bit of scenic variety to the proceedings, too. If you’ve got a character around level 14 it would take on a whole new meaning. The loot would be useful, and the XP usable. But you can’t rewind the clock on your character, and creating an entirely new one to play that for fifteen hours before you enter the simulation wouldn’t bring the immediate gratification that most players would want for 800 points. It’s also impossible to survive at the lower levels, so you can’t just create a new character and jump straight to the content.
Everything feels like it’s been done the wrong way round. Broken Steel, which is scheduled to come out last, should be out instead of Operation: Anchorage. Raising the level cap would have allowed all fans of the game to experience the joy of the new items and the hefty XP boost contained within the simulation. As it stands, Operation: Anchorage is better if you’ve never actually played the game before so you can consume it as part of your main quest.
But that’s not really the point of DLC, is it?
Popularity: 11% [?]
3 comments