Fallout 3: The Pitt & Operation Anchorage (Xbox 360)

For those not already aware, Fallout 3 is a first/third-person RPG set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. It was developed by Bethesda in 2008 and uses the same engine as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It has received critical acclaim and a number of Game Of The Year Awards.

This package contains the first two add-on packs for Fallout 3, "The Pitt" and "Operation Anchorage." Both include vast new areas of land ...
...is easily the most stunning Fallout 3 level of them all. The enormous flame-emitting furnaces of the steel mill and monolithic industrial structures are incredibly well-rendered and designed, giving a real sense of fear of the industrial prowess and intimidating height of Ashur's work-camp. Sadly, this is probably its best feature.

Despite its excellent premise, The Pitt falls short in many of the ways that Fallout 3 does. First off, ... more

For those not already aware, Fallout 3 is a first/third-person RPG set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. It was developed by Bethesda in 2008 and uses the same engine as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It has received critical acclaim and a number of Game Of The Year Awards.

This package contains the first two add-on packs for Fallout 3, "The Pitt" and "Operation Anchorage." Both include vast new areas of land which are placed through "Portals" at the edges of the Capital Wasteland in a similar vein to Oblivion's expansion; The Shivering Isles.

***THE PITT***
Having picked up a radio distress call from a man named Wehrner, The Lone Wanderer (The player) is given the opportunity to travel to a vast slave-driven steel mill, and colony, ran by an idealistic tyrant named Ashur. To pour salt into the wound, a radioactive virus is slowly causing the workers to change into animalistic troglodyte cannibals, who crawl around on all fours, clawing, biting, and disemboweling their way through the steelyard, barely held at bay by Ashur's ragtag band of raider sharpshooters.

Ashur's wife, meanwhile, is working on a cure and vaccine for the 'trogg' virus, the key to which seems to be her daughter, Marie, who has built up an inexplicable immunity, but the slave underclasses are becoming desperate. As you might expect, it's up the Lone Wanderer to redress the balance in whichever way he sees fit.
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Graphically, it is easily the most stunning Fallout 3 level of them all. The enormous flame-emitting furnaces of the steel mill and monolithic industrial structures are incredibly well-rendered and designed, giving a real sense of fear of the industrial prowess and intimidating height of Ashur's work-camp. Sadly, this is probably its best feature.

Despite its excellent premise, The Pitt falls short in many of the ways that Fallout 3 does. First off, the whole thing has a half-finished feel to it, as the player does a hell of a lot of running around from one objective location to the next, with little distraction in between. The instances are too big and ambitious for such a small and conventional quest.

Chracters are a little weak as usual, (it even seems pointless to give most of them names.) and despite there being a few unique shop vendors, there's really not much of a reason to return to The Pitt, once you have finished the short-lived, if relatively non-linear quest associated with it. There are no side quests and few ways to make the story your own. You can either join the good guys or the bad guys, and neither will make a great deal of difference, not to mention that it is far too easy, with the troggs going down in one or two hits, and giving out far too much XP. Also, the player must fight in "THE ARENA," a Mad Max style fighting pit, against various opponents who look intimidating but are a piece of piss to kill, even if your skills are incredibly low. This cant even be rectified by using the already flawed difficulty options in Fallout 3 (if you set combat difficulty to low, XP is scarcely given out, and if you set it to high, much more XP is given out.) - Doesn't work at all.

Basically, they should have put a lot more work into this, and despite there being a lot of new weapons and unique raider apparel to take back with you (Including the 'Auto axe,' a huge industrial steel-cutter perfect for eviscerating the most threatening of foes,) the characters, and quest is so half-baked that alone it wouldnt really be worth paying for. Also its buggy as hell, and the constant reloading of savegames to surpass programming errors gets really, really tedious.

***Operation:Anchorage***

Upon installing this expansion, the player once again receives a radio transmission, this time from the Brotherhood of Steel Outcasts, requesting backup. Exploring the source of the transmission will reveal that The Outcasts are in need of an interface device in order to access a virtual reality system in an underground bunker. The only way the Outcasts can retreive the locked hidden technology inside the bunker is by successfully completing an ancient virtual reality-based military training program, - The liberation of Alaska from the Chinese. Your signature pip-boy computer serves perfectly as the interface device, and you must enter the virtual reality program and help defeat the chinese. Donning the Neural Interface suit, the player plunges into the VR simulation and becomes part of the team partaking in Operation Anchorage.

The levels are full of "recharge stations" for health and ammo, and guns cannot be picked up from enemy bodies, which detracts from the RPG element, but really throws you into the simulation effecively.
Once again, the graphics here are excellent, and running across snow-capped mountains really shows the diversity of the Fallout 3 graphics engine, as the setting is incredibly different from that of the Capital Wasteland.
First off, the player must navigate his way across a network of Chinese patrol outposts, in order to attach explosives to their artillery cannons and run like hell. This works really well as it is probably the best way to stretch the stealth aspects of Fallout 3 to their limits, sniping off Chinese troops as you creep from post to post via flimsy bridges is a lot of fun. (But of course you can always just run in with all guns blazing!)

There's no safety parameters in the simulation so game death means real death.

Having destroyed all the cannons, you recieve a promotion and are debriefed, before being given your next and main mission; The assassination of a Chinese general.

The player gets to outfit his own team of 5 troops, arming them with the arsenal of his choice, Assault, Sniper, Heavy Weapons etc, and this does add to the expansion's re-playability value, but, as we have come to expect with these expansions, there remains one gaping flaw:
Throughout your primary mission you are accompanied by an army lieutenant who you can give orders to (again adding to re-playability) but is for all intents and purposes, utterly indestructable. So to finish this very long quest, you don't even have to fire your gun. Its far too easy with this character on your side, and there's nothing you can do about it.

About the only element of non-linearity in Operation Anchorage, is that you can do sub-objectives in the order you wish, in the main quest you have to destroy tanks, disable a pulse field and invade a compound, and you can do it in any succession you see fit.

Characters are pretty likeable here, and the level design is a bit samey across the board, but there's some really nice textures and models, as well as a lot of cool-looking new technology here that's definitely worth a look. Also, having completed the simulation, you are granted access to an armament cache, which contains many really cool and unique artifacts - weapons and apparel, from the Operation itself.

This expansion is very playable if you just forget about your invincible companion, and the fact that if your team is killed, you can requisition a new one. So once again, difficulty is what really lets it down.
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Although both games are only mediocre overall, two expansions for this price for a relatively recent Game of The Year is probably worth it.
Over the last few days I've seen this game for various prices, the best being around thirteen pounds on Amazon. If you've finished Fallout 3 and need something new, try and get it for around this price or second hand. If you're into torrenting, these expansions are remarkably easy to find free on the internet, and incredibly easy to install if you're playing it on PC. The box itself doesn't really come with anything other than the data. So its up to you.

MUST HAVE FULL WORKING VERSION OF FALLOUT 3 INSTALLED.

Minimum System Requirements:
XP with service pack 2/ Vista
1gb RAM
DirectX 9.0 compliant graphics card with 256gb of RAM
*NvidiA 8600 or greater.

Summary: Both okay expansions which excel in some ways, but largely fall a bit flat.

 

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