Developer/Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: 360/PC (PS3 late 2009)
Genre: RPG
Price: 800MSP
Verdict: Mostly entertaining, but ultimately a shallow corridor adventure.
Pros: More Fallout, with occasional glimpses into Bethesda’s genius.
Cons: Unremarkable dungeon crawling makes up bulk of new content.
It feels like the end of a journey. Bethesda has taken us to the snow-tipped peaks of the Alaskan mountains, the decaying factories of Pittsburgh, an occupied Air Force Base, and the irradiated marshlands near Potomac River. We’ve been enslaved, had part of our brain removed, returned from the dead, fought alongside a giant robot, and driven back communism. It is hard to fathom that all of these amazing experiences are are just side-quests in an insurmountably titanic game.
The latest, and allegedly final batch of premium Fallout 3 content, beams the Lone Wanderer – after following yet another radio distress signal – to a sinister alien mothership. This is Mothership Zeta, we presume, and you awaken on an operating table, with vision blurred and two ominous 50s-style aliens poking all kinds of sharp objects in your direction. At this moment, the game gleefully posts a notice that you don’t feel quite as lucky anymore. After passing out, you regain consciousness (all equipment removed, as per usual) in a holding cell with your decidedly unamused cellmate Somah. You’re evidently not alone.
After watching a giant claw fly over and scoop up a nearby prisoner, never to be seen again, you and Somah hatch the oldest escape plan in the book: you beat each other up, forcing your extra-terrestrial guards to intervene. If you think that’s a bit trite, you’re not going to like what’s coming next. Unless you are mad about navigating a series of corridors and popping into V.A.T.S. every now and then to kill aliens, Mothership Zeta probably isn’t going to be the DLC for you. It, like Operation: Anchorage, reduces Fallout 3 into its most basic, and unsatisfying, component: dungeon crawling.
Split over three quests, you will find yourself spending much of your time exploring Mothership Zeta’s immense nooks and crannies. This delightful prospect is sullied by the banal reality of the ship’s repetitive architectural construction. Your four-hour trek through Zeta’s corridors will become repetitive before the first quest is even finished. The mothership feels eerily similar to navigating Fallout 3’s disappointing underground metro lines, only with better lighting and nastier aliens.
Before long, you will bump into a Sally, an abducted child who commonly breaks out of her cell and explores the ship via its ventilation system. Eventually, you will be coaxed into freeing her by overloading a nearby cylindrical structure. Sadly, this is about as far as Bethesda’s imagination stretches, and you’ll will be doing the exact same cooling-system trick numerous times throughout your trek.
The alien vessel is an intriguing concept left mostly unexplored. The aliens, unable to speak English, are nothing more than sadistic, malevolent buggers. You encounter waves of the same three enemy types, some with funky looking dome helmets, some with shields, and all with whizzy alien zappers. Naturally, the player can accrue this weaponry for themselves, with the rifle-like Alien Disintegrator, a svelte Alien Atomizer, useless Shock Batons, and a bombastic Drone Cannon all ripe for the plucking. Hidden away is also the MPLX Novasurge, a horrendously powerful pre-war laser pistol. As diverse as the new weaponry is, further additions to your now-bloated arsenal are the least of your interests once you have reached this point in the game.
As you progress further, you willl defrost a motley crew of abductees from cryogenic statis and come up with your ultimate plan: progress to the bridge and kill the captain. So you, along with a cowboy, samurai, and army medic – also dragging Sally and Somah in tow – get to work. Unfortunately, it is just more dungeon crawling though packed corridors, to deactivate more cooling systems. Adding insult to injury, instead of moving as one glorious ragtag bunch, you can only take one person with you at a time.
When all’s said and done, you finally find a way to beam yourself back down to the Capital Wasteland, but there is little sense that you have actually accomplished anything substantial. Bethesda’s talent at crafting excellent minutiae is virtually unseen in Mothership Zeta. This is partially caused by creating antagonists, who cannot speak English, and therefore, cannot convey any motivation to the player. There are no intricate characters to understand, no complex moral choices to consider, and no deeper story to unravel. You can also find audio logs from fellow abductees, that whilst entertaining, deliver very little in the way of satisfying exposition
All of the criticism aside, occasionally you will see little moments of magic that reignite your love for Fallout. These highlights come from travelling off the beaten path. Taking a quick trip to the alien’s cargo hold includes, amongst other things, a giant chasm the aliens drop cows into, and shortly afterwards you encounter a room filled with nothing but shelves of neatly arranged Giddyup Buttercup toys. Later on, you can inadvertently take a rambunctious, but delightful, trip through the UFO’s waste disposal facility.
It is unfortunate that these golden moments are few and far between. As it stands, Mothership Zeta is probably the most unappealing add-on for Fallout 3, which comes as a bit of a shock after the excellent Point Lookout and Broken Steel expansions. It is sad that Bethesda’s ambitious series of DLC packs end on an unsatisfying whimper instead of a well-deserved bang. We’ve come full circle, returning to where we originally started with Operation: Anchorage: Fallout 3 at its most humdrum.
Popularity: unranked [?]
