Fallout 3: The Pitt

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Zoombie

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But, wait, Zoombie, I hear you cry...you already wrote an exhaustive review of Fallout 3! Before there was even a game forum!

Ah yes...but this was before the DLC!

Down

Loadable

Content.

DLC was first used by Bethesda with their game Oblivion...and, well...it was a FFING RIP OFF!

The first DLC they released was ten bucks and guess what it added?

Horse.

Armor.

Barding. Barding for horses you never use in a game that does not even have horse combat, so WHY would you need to armor a horse you never use in combat! This is not Mount and Blade, for crying out loud! You're not going to be charging enemy infantry...a horse is just a way to waste your gold on! God, there were so many problems with Oblivion!

Which actually brings us to a very nice point about Oblivion and Fallout 3...Oblivion was trying to do a whole lot of things and failed at a lot of them. Fallout 3, however, managed to pull ALL of those things off well! So, I am still playing Fallout 3 long after I stopped playing Oblivion!

Examples!

Oblivion added traps to the dungeons. But they were wimpy, didn't actually hurt beyond a kinda 'ow', were easily spotted, and even easier to avoid and you could never 'do' anything with them beyond stepping around them.

Fallout 3 had hard to spot, deadly traps that were both clever and made sense in the setting. Trip wires that set off shotguns. Car engines turned into swinging death traps. Bear traps! Not only were they harder to spot and actually do damage. Also, you can disarm traps/use traps for your own advantage in clever ways. Like, say, taking the shotguns for your own use!

Oblivion added voice acting on a massive scale for the first time in a Bethisda game. Too bad all the NPCs were boring and had no character. Oh and they had only 3 voice actors. And they didn't actually have emotion...or inflection...or...anything beyond the sound of boredom. Well, they also had Patric Stewart, but he was around for about five minuets.


Fallout 3 had more voice actors but LESS NPCs, and the NPC's actually had character! And were likable! And the actors at least TRIED to act. And some of them even managed it! Three Dawwwwg! Awwwoooo! Oh, and they had Liam Nealson! And he was around for the first HOUR, and then he came back for another half hour! Whee!

Oblivion had more action based combat, rather than the boring click fest that Morrowind had. But it also lacked oomph and pizazzes...and it felt weirdly PG for a game involving people whacking eachother with swords. Swords are NOT made of foam, no matter what LARPers want you to believe!

Fallout 3 had more action based combat, but then added in an awesome semi-turn based VATS system to keep the Fallout feeling of targeting various body parts AND they added in an awesome set of sound effects, and amazingly gory and fun dismemberment and exploding heads and its all presented in glorious slow motion...<drools>

Oblivion tried to move away from the politic based (read, boring) main plotlines of the previous Elder Scroll Games. They ended up with a...well...mediocre main plot that had a few neat bits, but ended up being kinda lame at the end.

Fallout 3 actually managed to write an engaging, creative story that stayed true to the Fallout universe WHILE ALSO bringing in new ideas which prevented it from being another Fallout 2 (And I *hated* Fallout 2...with a passion...I wanted a sequel, NOT A BLOODY REMAKE!)


And lastly, Oblivion had super lame DLC.


So, of course...Fallout 3 has f**king amazing DLC!

There are three planned released. Operation Anchorage, which I have not played yet, and THE PITT...which I just finished playing.

The Pitt ozzes with awesomeness, despite a few cancerous sores.

The basic set up is that you detect a radio transmission from the northern edges of the Wastelands. There, you find a one eyed man who wants you to come with him to The Pitt, an ancient city that was spared nuclear devastation during the war but has not become a hell hole of slavery and horror and death.

His people, apparently, have been enslaved by a brutal warlord named Ashur and you are their only hope!

Sounds a bit hackneyed and cliched?

Well, don't worry! The Pitt is fantastically written. The set up also fixes a rather large logical error in the story of Fallout 3.

See, in Fallout, there are a LOT of slavers, and they are rightly feared, so they are not bumblingly incompetent...so one would assume that they are fairly good at capturing slaves...

So where *are* all the slaves?

The Pitt. The Pitt is an industrial city, where legions of slaves rip ancient cars up, then feed the metal into furnaces run with a brutal, concentration camp style disregard for human life. From this factory pours forth parts, armor, and refined metals...

You can already see the massive profits that can be made with this! And, best of all...you could outfit an army that way...

So, the writing and plot of The Pitt is fantastic, what about the thing us RPG junkies live on: The LOOT!

The Pitt adds some fun as all hell items...new armor that looks cool, and two new weapons.

Yes. Only two new weapons. But as they are the most kickawesome weapons I've ever seen in Fallout, I'm more than happy.

First, we have the Auto-Ax. Imagine a...

You know?

Lemmi just find a picture.

tn_565_128.jpg




Whenever I use this sucker, I have to fight the urge to scream the phrase: I just wanna AX YOU A QUESTION!

Its a hard hard urge.

The other weapon is the Infiltrator: An assault rifle with a silencer and a scope. I love it, as I happen to be a Small Guns/Sneaking/Speech kinda character.

The Pitt also adds new enemies. Er...one new enemy: The Trogg. They are mutants created by the pollutants in the Pitt...imagine Ghouls from Fallout 3, but faster, creepier, stronger, and they can climb on mutherf**king walls.

They made me scream more than once.

And so, the last and final and best selling point of the Pitt is this...its...AMBIANCE.

Its IMMERSION!

Its so amazingly atmospheric, I could practically feel my eyes water and my throat sting as my character walked into the fog shrouded Pittsburgh. And just wait till you see the Steel Mill! Its amazingly well done visually and aurally, with the sounds of the work ringing through the place constantly, along side the rough comments of the guards and the horrid despair in the eyes and voices of the slaves...

The ending has an awesome twist that makes the entire moral structure of the place shift from black and white to shades of gray...

And yes, the "villain" is, you know, a human with emotions and loved ones. Weird, I know!

And, to tie it all up in an nice little bow, its only ten dollars.

Ten dollars.

Ten dollars.

TEN DOLLARS!

Compare THIS...to HORSE ARMOR!

HORSE ARMOR!

God what were they thinking!?

Oh, there are a few problems with the Pitt: It is buggy. The bugs can range from game crashing to the mildly annoying.

But they're not enough to stop me from writing a long winded review!

And now, keep your eyes open for the next DLC: BROKEN STEEL!

Night
 

Zoombie

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And then I played Operation Anchorage: It was okay, but not as awesome as The Pitt...but, hey, it adds in the Gauss Rifle, which is always good for a laugh.
 
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