Fallout 3 Mothership Zeta DLC Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on August 4th, 2009

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The same applies to how you feel about the new enemies. You'll want to believe that Bethesda will do something interesting with this race of alien invaders, but it does nothing more than stick to the most obvious archetypes possible. They cannot communicate with humans, so react with ill-advised and unsophisticated aggression. Disappointingly, almost all of these little fiends are felled by a single shot, and any hope of tense firefights with intelligent foes soon fades. On occasion, the game throws up resilient variants, armed with shields and cloaking devices, but even these prove to be incapable of doing anything other than charging headlong into your line of fire. Often flanked by robot drones, and assisted by turrets, things can get hectic once they start to throw everything at you, but the outcome is never seriously in doubt.
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Where Mothership Zeta really falls down is the complete lack of inspiration in the mission design. Generally you can rely on Bethesda to intelligently weave complex scenarios around practically anything, with the key characters each having their own specific agenda. Once you've taken in the situation, it's entirely down to your own moral leanings as to which direction you decide to take any given mission. Never quite knowing who is really the good guy, or the least bad guy has made for some thrilling missions in past Bethesda games (and past DLC), but none of that applies here. At best, you can rope in some characters to help kick arse, but for the most part you're reduced to the most soulless of gameplay tasks - breaking machines by pressing buttons.

As an endcap to the DLC saga for Fallout 3, I admit that I'm a little disappointed overall in Mothership Zeta's return to linear, corridor-style FPS action, lack of choices for the player, and flashy but ultimately mediocre gadgetry to bring back with you to Earth. It's still a damn fine add-on that you simply must buy if you've already picked up the four previous ones, but just like before, if you feel burned by past DLC, this one's not going to become a sudden revelation for you. Aliens, cowboys, robots, zombies (sorta), and samurais are included and do spice up the experience, but if you really want to crank up the craziness, Bethesda, we'll need some pirates and vikings, too.

Fallout 3 is an awful shooter. It simply doesn't work played as a typical first (or third, but we can't imagine anyone plays the game in the poor third-person view) person shoot em up. But that's okay, because when combat is required, the brilliant VATs system does a great job of making the rampant destruction of your enemies fun and very, very bloody. And then, usually, there's some NPC interaction and beard-scratching decision-making for pacing. Mothership Zeta disappoints because it basically asks you to kill hundreds of aliens and other enemies we won't spoil in samey corridors and rooms for five hours without any role-playing to mix things up. There are so many aliens and guard drones to kill, usually at the same time, that it's impossible to use VATs and VATs alone to survive. You're forced, by sheer weight of numbers, to shoot stuff in first-person. This isn't a good thing.

Gameplay wise the overall experience is great as it is more of a first person shooter this time rather than a quest driven role playing action game. You will love the new weapons the aliens have and once you get your grubby hands on a few of them you will be blowing everyone apart. I was very happy with what I had and even left with around 4000 caps of weapons to sell to add to my bonus.

Overall Mothership Zeta DLC is definitely worth a buy for anyone who loves Alien blasters and wants to see a whole new look on the Fallout world and with around 4 hours of added content you cant go wrong!

Gameplay-wise, M.Z is the most challenging add-on out of the five released. I have never died so many times playing Fallout as I did while playing M.Z. It is tough. If you are one of those people who play Fallout through on Easy, and think you're the best gamer ever because of it, here's your wake up call. You will be tested.

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