Escape this dull world of horrendous blue and grey, you'll find yourself in. another horrendous world of blue and grey. Where Fallout 3 is pretty well stylised in this respect - it looks like a stereotypical barren wasteland - O:A is simply just horrific. The (squad choices) amount to little more than talking to that dull US soldier friend from the start of the simulation to choose what weapons they have. If you want squad control, go download the Enclave Commander mod. Hell, Bethesda even advertised it themselves weeks ago, clearly in anticipation of their failure. You then proceed to have the wonderful world of choice dangled in front of your eyes, only to realise you're basically choosing little more than the order in which you follow a small number of linear paths. There's a few nice touches along the way. It's nice seeing the T-51b's given their proper place once more especially. But nothing truly justifies either the financial cost. It's not particularly long either - there's a lot of people understandably annoyed at how short it is on the Bethesda forums. The rest are obviously having fun getting the darn thing running.

It's not entirely without redemption. I love the new weapons and equipment. Especially the Gauss Rifle's return. It's easily my new favourite weapon. The Hei-Gei armour is similarily excellent, and I can't wait to try it out a bit more in the main game. There's the occasionally brief satire - though never more than a few lines from the characters. It has no sense of bombastic jingoism that's so present in billboards and the like in the main game. It's a missed opportunity by all accounts.

Unfortunately, these guys also show off a slight lapse in gaming logic: while cloaked, the Dragoons can just about be seen as weird vision blurs - yet VATS is unable to target them. This results in a weird situation when you have to randomly spray at them until they show up. They'd probably be a bit easy if you could VATS them straight away, but it feels like a bit of a gaffe, nonetheless.

There are other things that don't make sense (a training simulator that kills you?), but the larger problem with Operation Anchorage is that it simply lacks the immersion-factor that makes Fallout 3 so addictive. The Alaskan scenery is admittedly very nice to look at - particularly the cliff-based sections - but the actual gameplay itself is pretty shallow. The battles are longer and larger in scale than your standard wasteland scrap, but they're far less involving. You're no longer playing a role, you're simply going through the motions of yet another FPS. The whole experience will last you about three hours, and once it's complete the simulator locks itself off. There's a minor perk you can gain by collecting intelligence files dotted around the maps, but if you're going for it you'd better do it first time, since there's no going back.

So while Operation Anchorage is a lot of fun and it's refreshing to be able to step into a completely new area in the game, a stunningly beautiful and stark mountain range, it will ultimately come down to value for most gamers and to be honest this doesn't have much. Bethesda did so well with Oblivion (after the horse armor debacle, of course) and its extra content- Knights of the Nine alone offered another 10 hours of gameplay, and don't forget about the Shivering Isles expansion pack.

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