Right on the heels of the Fallout 3 review, here’s a rundown of the five downloadable content packs released for Fallout 3.  Which ones are worth your time, which ones are best ignored?  What do they add to the Fallout 3 world?  Let’s take a look.

Overall verdict: Broken Steel is a must have for any Fallout 3 fan, while The Pitt and Point Lookout are superb expansion packs with more of what made Fallout 3 great.  Mothership Zeta feels out of place, but it still retains some of the game’s humor.  Operation Anchorage, unless you’re a hardcore combat fan, feels like the expansion to another game.

Operation Anchorage

The first expansion pack for Fallout 3 has an interesting setting, but the overall premise is contrived and the gameplay feels strangely out of place.  The idea is that the Brotherhood of Steel Outcasts need you to run through a virtual reality simulation in order to obtain a code necessary to unlock a weapons cache.  I understand that we need to work in order to get more valuable weapons, but an entire expansion pack feels excessive.

The simulation itself takes place during the Great War, where the player helps liberate Anchorage, Alaska from invading Communist China.  Alaska might sound like an interesting setting, and it would be if it allowed as much freedom and exploration as post-war D.C.  Unfortunately, despite the beautiful, snowy environments the simulation is extremely linear.  You’ll generally be walled off from any potential exploration because of “virtual simulation walls” and confined to this mission alone.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the expansion pack took advantage of the setting, but all we’ve essentially done is swap out a barren brown landscape for a barren white landscape.

The actual gameplay also feels confined.  The mission to reclaim Anchorage will include infiltration, tactical strikes, and engaging the Chinese general.  It’s almost purely combat based, which feels strange relative to how open-ended Fallout 3 itself was.  It’s as if the developers tried to make an FPS game using an action RPG control scheme.  The result, while workable, doesn’t hold the same captivity that Fallout 3 does.  This almost feels like an expansion to another game, although the term “expansion” is used loosely.  I finished Operation Anchorage in less than three hours.  You’re essentially paying for some (admittedly nice) weapons and having to spend three hours to get them.

The Pitt

Now this is more like it!  The Pitt allows you to travel to the remains of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has become a raider town plagued by radiation poisoning.  A man named Wernher asks you to liberate the slaves in The Pitt, so you’ll enter The Pitt as a slave, be stripped of your inventory, and be forced to do dangerous, grueling labor.  There’s not much else that can be said without giving away spoilers, but it’s a very worthwhile experience.  Even though the expansion only takes around three hours to complete, the quest line is intriguing and surprisingly thought-provoking.  You’ll be forced to make some choices that will really test your morality, and the best part is there’s no karma penalty for what you do.

The Pitt is also a lot smaller than the Capital Wasteland, but the environments are vivid, grisly, and downright chilling at times.  There are hideously deformed creatures known as Troggs that litter the filthy, decrepit landscape, and with all the skyscrapers there’s a lot to explore.  Depending on your level it will take you about three hours to complete the main arc of The Pitt, and you’ll get a superb bounty of rewards for your work.  Chief among these is an excellent Auto Axe, special armor, and two great perks among other rewards.  You’ll be able to return to The Pitt whenever you want, and there are a few side quests to do.

The Pitt feels much more like a Fallout 3 expansion than Operation Anchorage, and the best way to sum it up is that The Pitt is very worth purchasing if you want more of Fallout 3.  Bethesda put very admirable detail into a filthy, post-apocalyptic slave town with an intriguing quest line to boot.

Broken Steel

Broken Steel is easily the best of all five expansion packs because it changes a particular element of the main story itself.  If you’re a benevolent hero, you have to make a heroic, ultimate sacrifice at the end of the game for the sake of Project Purity.  The problem is that doing so warrants an automatic ending, even if you wind up with the highest karma level.  Broken Steel starts off on a high note by fixing this.  If you choose to enter the chamber yourself you simply fall into a coma for a few weeks, or you can also send a radiation-resistant mutant follower into the chamber at no risk to yourself.

The quest proper begins after the main storyline is complete and deals with eradicating remaining Enclave forces in the Capital Wasteland area, with you tagging along as a member of the Brotherhood of Steel.  The quests themselves are a blast to partake in, partly because you get to enjoy some incredible new weaponry, with special kudos going to the Tesla Cannon.  Other perks include the level cap being raised to 30 and some other interesting secrets, though it would spoil the fun to give them away.  In some ways Broken Steel feels like a very satisfying epilogue, and the additions of the new level cap and weapons make Broken Steel an expansion that gives you a lot for your money.  The biggest bonus is being able to see the Wasteland after you’ve beaten the main story if you’re a high karma hero like I am.

Point Lookout

The fourth expansion pack takes place in what used to be Point Lookout State Park, Maryland, but the area has degraded into a highly hazardous swampy wasteland as treacherous as the Capital Wasteland.  It’s a large area with much more explorative opportunities than previous DLC packs, but the real charm behind Point Lookout comes from the environment itself.  The atmosphere is eerie and foggy yet strangely laid back, feeling more relaxed than the Capital Wasteland.  In a way, it almost parodies a rural swampland setting.  This idea is reinforced by one of the chief enemies of Point Lookout.  The Swampfolk are a largely hostile faction of mutated hillbillies who are as dangerous as they are hilarious.

Point Lookout is also home to some very interesting quests, most notably a longstanding feud between two inhabitants, Professor Calvert and Desmond.  There’s also an interesting quest involving a deceased Chinese spy.  Without giving too much away, Point Lookout feels like a genuine expansion to Fallout 3 – more territory to explore, more monsters to kill, and new quests within the new plot of land to discover, rather than one central story thread being the idea behind the downloadable content itself.  All that’s changed is the setting, and it’s nice to have a change of environment after so many hours in the remains of Washington D.C.  Like The Pitt, if you want more of Fallout 3 then Point Lookout is definitely for you.

Mothership Zeta

The fifth expansion represents a strange departure from the realism of Fallout 3, and whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you personally.  You might have noticed the crashed alien mothership at some time during your many treks throughout the D.C. wastelands.  In this expansion pack you’re actually beamed aboard an alien ship as a prisoner, joining numerous other captives who have been abducted from different time periods.  It’s your job to escape, commandeer the ship, and even take control of it and battle with another alien ship for your freedom.

To its credit, Mothership Zeta is extremely attractive both aesthetically and artistically.  The use of alien technology and settings offers a fascinating vacation from the usual grittiness of the real Fallout 3 world, and it’s satisfying to wield the high powered alien technology against its inventors.  Mothership Zeta also includes some hilarious logs from abducted humans from over the years that make the treks through the ship satisfying.

On the other hand, Mothership Zeta falls into the same trap as Operation Anchorage.  It’s far too linear for a Fallout 3 expansion, and for the second time too much focus is placed on combat rather than the myriad of opportunities that give Fallout 3 its appeal in the first place.  Mothership Zeta is a step up from Operation Anchorage but it’s really not as worthwhile as Point Lookout.