The Fallout series has sent our Lone Wanderer many places: to Alaska, The Pitt, and Point Lookout. But
your Wanderer has now set foot on parts in which you've never seen before: upon an Alien Spaceship. Will your Wanderer survive the alien abduction or fall to their unknown plot? With
Mothership Zeta costing its normal 800MSP, is the latest and possibly final addition to
Fallout 3 a piece to remember or a DLC not worth buying?
Zeta takes place via a radio transmission to a part of the Capital Wasteland, while searching the area you'll
be beamed up by a bright blue light. After what looks like a probing of painful proportions, you start your adventure within the Alien's ship.
Zeta's spaceship is a lot bigger than you'd think, and will take you through levels of the ship and fight a mass of aliens. And when I say a mass, I mean a lot of Aliens. If you opted to not grind to level 30 after
Point Lookout, don't be surprised if you pick up plenty of levels during
Zeta, since I went from level 26 to almost level 29 after completing. While completing will get you a handful of levels, the overall time of the main quest of
Mothership Zeta will only last you a handful of hours, I was able to beat it in one sitting, with the time running maybe 3-5 hours.
With all Fallout 3 DLC's, most people want to know if the new weapons/items are worth the price tag of the
DLC, and I'll admit: some of the weapons and armor are pretty sweet. I won't ruin any of the really cool stuff you can get, but there is a good amount of equipment you can get, with plenty of new Alien weapons to work with. The problem with the new weapons is that most of them aren't really new or unique weapons, most just feel like 10mm pistols with an Alien-type skin slapped on it, but some weapons are really fun to use. Ammo also comes a plenty, especially for your Alien Blaster if you've been keeping the ammo use scarce like I have; you'll definitely have more fun using it here when ammo is plentiful throughout the DLC.
Though Mothership Zeta has plenty of combat, it feels like it's almost too much. The amount of enemies in
Zeta dwarfs any amount of enemies you've seen on most DLC, and almost hits the point of how many
Broken Steel had. I believe this was the intention since
Zeta is quite possibly the last DLC, and it shows because there are a ridiculous amount of XP gains. Whether it's shooting the almost limitless Aliens and Drones or modifing heal stations: XP is everywhere in
Zeta.
Mothership Zeta's plot is pretty interesting and kept me going until the very end. In a nutshell: the Lone Wanderer must escape the Alien Ship, but Bethesda has done another fantastic job in making a simple concept very deep in detail and outlandish in nature.
But the biggest problem with MZ is the graphical and technical errors that have been plaguing the DLC of
Fallout 3 since they first started releasing them. Though it certainly has less than
Point Lookout, which was riddled with them, I had times where the game would have graphical errors like character's heads being almost completely gone. The technical errors were near game-breaking where I would have key moments in quests never appear, having me stuck entirely and being forced to load my last save, and times where the game would ultimately freeze: causing me to restart the entire game. This is terrible when you haven't saved in awhile and all of a sudden you're forced to do it all over again; it's just jaw-dropping how these errors are still present when they were there during the release of
Operation: Anchorage, and it still hasn't been revised and taken care of.
All-in-All, with an interesting plot line, sweet equipment to gain, and another chunk of gameplay to run
through:
Mothership Zeta falls short due to a short campaign, game-breaking technical errors and minor graphical problems.
- + More Fallout 3 Goodness
- + Sweet New Equipment
- + Fantastic Plot
- +/- Lots and Lots of Combat
- - Too Short
- - Minor Graphical Glitches
- - Technical Errors from Previous DLCs Still There
Before Microsoft and Sony do something regarding their future in the video game business, I wanted to write, and I've wanted it for a long time now, but other things kept getting in my way, and fearing that tomorrow might be too late, today will have to do.
Months ago,...
By:
