[DLC] Fallout 3 - Mothership Zeta
The most creative of Bethesda's add-ons unfortunately ends up being the most tedious.
Published: October 10, 2009
Things started off so well with Mothership Zeta. The DLC transforms the alien crash site where you find a seriously beefy energy weapon and a dead E.T. into an abduction, pulling you up onto the ship and charging you with finding your way out and back down to Earth. Just the sheer fact that everything hasn't been blasted to cinders and rubble alone makes this reason to use it to take a break from the normal oppression of Fallout 3, but know that it comes at a heavy price: once you're on the ship, you'll be in for hours of scurrying through the bowels and blasting seemingly endless hordes of (mostly) dead easy enemies before you can return to terra firma.
That's not to say there isn't some redeeming qualities to be found here. If you've grown fond of the energy weapons in Fallout 3 (and who hasn't, it turns enemies into a pile of ashes, man), you'll find plenty of new way of dispensing the pew-pew here. Properly bolstered by your Energy Weapons skills (and perhaps a few of the alien-friendly Perks added), you'll be a vaporizing machine when you finally return to Earth -- to say nothing of your ability to bust heads while on the ship.
The problem is that it all starts to become a slog long before you finish up the DLC. There are definite breaks from just winding your way through the labyrinthine corridors, of course; a trip down to the trash section is neat and you'll actually free characters from different points in time than your own, but with the exception of a spacewalk that you get to do about mid-point, it's all just shooting, shooting, shooting, and unlike Operation Anchorage, which knew when to quit and stripped out some of the tedium of looting bodes and managing restoratives/ammo, this is basically one of the most enemy-thick areas of the game that also charges you with continually restocking your consumables -- a bad combo to say the least.
It is a nice visual change of pace, though, if nothing else. The 50's-style alien décor and weapons are clearly designed with love and despite being outside of the Fallout world as it's been established throughout most of the disc-based content, it doesn't feel entirely removed from that same universe, just... different.
Different may or may not be what you're looking for. Ironically, of all the DLC, this one probably performed with the least number of problems (though Operation Anchorage was relatively bug-free) with "only" a few hard crashes and some particularly nasty framerate problems when exploring some of the smokier areas of the ship. It's just a shame that one of the smoother experiences Bethesda crafted was also one of the most boring. There was tons of potential to do something really imaginative, and while the space walk is fantastic, the rest of the experience was just too monotonous to stay interesting despite the setting.
That's not to say there isn't some redeeming qualities to be found here. If you've grown fond of the energy weapons in Fallout 3 (and who hasn't, it turns enemies into a pile of ashes, man), you'll find plenty of new way of dispensing the pew-pew here. Properly bolstered by your Energy Weapons skills (and perhaps a few of the alien-friendly Perks added), you'll be a vaporizing machine when you finally return to Earth -- to say nothing of your ability to bust heads while on the ship.
The problem is that it all starts to become a slog long before you finish up the DLC. There are definite breaks from just winding your way through the labyrinthine corridors, of course; a trip down to the trash section is neat and you'll actually free characters from different points in time than your own, but with the exception of a spacewalk that you get to do about mid-point, it's all just shooting, shooting, shooting, and unlike Operation Anchorage, which knew when to quit and stripped out some of the tedium of looting bodes and managing restoratives/ammo, this is basically one of the most enemy-thick areas of the game that also charges you with continually restocking your consumables -- a bad combo to say the least.
It is a nice visual change of pace, though, if nothing else. The 50's-style alien décor and weapons are clearly designed with love and despite being outside of the Fallout world as it's been established throughout most of the disc-based content, it doesn't feel entirely removed from that same universe, just... different.
Different may or may not be what you're looking for. Ironically, of all the DLC, this one probably performed with the least number of problems (though Operation Anchorage was relatively bug-free) with "only" a few hard crashes and some particularly nasty framerate problems when exploring some of the smokier areas of the ship. It's just a shame that one of the smoother experiences Bethesda crafted was also one of the most boring. There was tons of potential to do something really imaginative, and while the space walk is fantastic, the rest of the experience was just too monotonous to stay interesting despite the setting.
