Fallout 3 Operation: Anchorage DLC Reviews
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Looking in the comments on the ShackNews story, I saw that it requires Games For Windows Live. Aha! Back into the game, and the (LIVE) option. Down pops the slick new interface, and asks me to log in or create an account. I have one, of course, so popped in the details. It needed to update. Good old Windows. Without asking my permission it quit out the game and downloaded its updates, then vanished without telling me it was done. Nice.Meanwhile, Will Porter reviews the DLC for Eurogamer and essentially hates it, giving it a 5/10.
So I restart Fallout 3 and DOWNLOADS is still greyed out. Go into Live, tell it my account details again, and this time it downloads my account. Ta-da! The DOWNLOADS option is there! I'm surely almost there. I click it.
I won't spoil the three missions that follow, but in all honesty there's little to taint. There are three prongs to the second half of Operation Anchorage: you can go left or go right with orders to blow further things up, and when you've done both of them there's a final assault that has you charge straight ahead through a variety of trenches, gun emplacements and worried Chinese folk. It's made fun by the fact you're allowed to pick a specific weapon load-out and take along a set of companions and/or robots, and the pyrotechnics are as impressive as ever, yet the whole experience feels simple and heavy-handed.
Sad to say, but remove the role-play dynamics from Fallout 3 and you're left with a slightly duff shooter (hey, even Todd Howard agrees). Operation Anchorage could have got away with it if it had been clever and more knowing, like the Tranquility Lane simulation in the full game, but as it is it just feels shallow. For example, expositional holotapes are found in dull, obvious closets directly on your path and behind the easiest of locks; hacking into computers never really goes beyond redirecting the attention of a gun turret; hardly anything can be picked up or ferreted around in. Just so much of what makes the Fallout 3 experience such a complete and all-encompassing one is stripped away, and if you've already spent a fair proportion of the past four months in the DC wasteland you'll feel like you're only playing half the game you love.
