Mufasa reviews: Mothership Zeta

The final DLC for Fallout 3.

Let's say I was to make a DLC for my game. I have the player run around in stuff he's never seen before, have him going on a linear quest, throwing variants of three different creatures at him throughout it all, and then when he finally beats the DLC and wants to go look for all the goodies, I block him off so he can't get any of the good shit that he would have, if he had gotten them on the way.

That's where I feel Mothership Zeta has taken me.

Perhaps it's just my own personal retardation, but after finding out about all the unique weapons that made me desire them more than anything else in the game, AFTER I completed the mission, then when I went to look for them, I ran face first into "INNACESSABLE" doors, with the exception of the area that had absolutely NOTHING in it, other than my own stuff I had from before, that if I missed on the way through that place, I didn't deserve to get it back anyway.

Let me clarify by saying, while the scenery is VERY nice, a lot of it you can't do anything with. So, while I'm sure it took a long time for them to make, and I'm very impressed by it, it simply feels like it's all just shiny objects to distract you from the fact that there's nothing to do with them. Like all the stuff was made out of cardboard, and you're actually still in the capital wasteland.

I was all excited about the trailer, and the info about Mothership Zeta that we recieved before, painting the DLC as "At first it's just an escape attempt, but then when you figure out what the aliens are up to, you try to stop them." I'm not sure what that was all about. It sure seemed like the whole thing was just an escape attempt the entire time. I DID get excited when I met my first set of "Abomination"s. However, they never did anything with them plot wise. So they might as well just replace them with ghouls or super mutants or fire breathing lions. Though, it IS nice to see that earthlings aren't the only ones stupid enough to make some genetic experiment that crosses the line man was not meant to cross, and then they pay for it with their lives. I would imagine that the story of mothership zeta would probably be more interesting from the perspective of the aliens.

"Great, not only did our captives from earth break free, using our own weapons, they've now released our genetic experiments, which are running wild and killing us all, and now the humans are coming to the bridge to kill me."

Also, how are we supposed to use the Death Ray to kill the other alien ship, when we disabled it in order to prevent it from being used on us?

Also, does anything happen when you point the Death Ray at earth and accidentally hit the fire button?

I will admit that the holotapes are entertaining. It's funny to hear how different people from different cultures would react to being ubducted. And scary/saddening when someone gets eaten by someone who used to be their friend. I'll also admit that the explosion of the enemy alien ship was the most impressive explosion of the whole game. Megaton was good. The Enclave base in Broken Steel was rubbish. Liberty Prime was a bore. But the alien spaceship was crazy.

The new weapons are good. If you had the clarvoyance to know where they were before you ran past them. And there's a decent few of them. Though if you rush through the DLC you'll miss 75% of them. And you have to let Paulson die if you want his gun. (Which isn't that hard really. You could even shoot him yourself and no one will care.)

All in all, Mothership Zeta isn't bad. But it's certainly not as epic as it could have been. There's no moral choices like The Pitt, so you'll be playing the same thing whether your a Messiah, Devil, or Neutral faggot. There's no open wide spaces to explore like Point Lookout. There's no level cap increase and only one new skill unlike Broken Steel. In all honesty, it feels the most like Operation Anchorage. It's mostly about the combat and the visual aesthetic, with a couple of new gizmos attached. It's the last DLC, so there's nothing else after this. And honestly, after playing through this, I finally got bored with Fallout 3 and decided to play GTA4. At least it has a bunch of plot.

I WILL however, be looking forward to Fallout New Vegas in 2010 sometime. I expect that won't be out for a while though. March at the earliest.

Honestly I completely hated this cause I missed about 3 or 4 items didn't find the unique plasma pistol but got the atomizer and disentigrators unique forms, and my only surviving buddy was Sally and the Anchorage dude, and my ship is in horrible condition from the fight.

Well at least you get to loot all those people.

And Paulson and Somah leave the shitp anyway, so you never see them. And Toushiro you can't understand.

....Well, I can't understand him. You probably can Rozen.

And yeah, on my main file, since I played through with him first, I missed EVERYTHING. The Unique Disintigrator, the Unique atomizer, the plasma pistol, the Xenotech perk, the unique baton, EVERYTHING.

And it's fucking pathetic that they allow you to go back to the holding cells, where there's NOTHING but a freaked out rivet city guard, but everywhere else, where all the good stuff is, is blocked off.

And it's very glitchy DLC. Nevermind the fact that I got stuck in a wall three times on my first playthrough of it, but the Drone Cannon doesn't have an item icon when you go to pick it up, on my first playthrough, somehow the Death cannon objectives completed themselves, even though I had to wind up destroying it again anyway. The Alien Disintegrator's reload animation is the animation for when it gets jammed, so you're not reloading it at all, you just hit it and it magically reloads itself. And half the teleportation devices didn't work.

And the WORST thing, my number 1 complaint, even bigger than the innaccessable doors after you beat the DLC, was that there was absolutely NO OPTION FOR A WITTY REMARK INVOLVING ANAL PROBES! NONE AT ALL! WTF!?!?!

So, the DLC would have been great had they not closed everything off. It feels like I just got punched in the nose.

Toshiro died in the bridge defense and I could somewhat understand him, but really its a horrible download unless you GO SO FREAKING SLOW you want to fall asleep. My dad had a good glitch with the atomizers that prevented him from getting rid of them or using them.

Lol. Yeah, it gets very repetitive when you have only two different types of enemies, and of those two types you fight 4 variants of one, and then you fight 2 of the other.

The Drone Cannon is a load of ass. Maybe it's cause I'm not a fan of big guns, but I couldn't get it to fire properly.

It's a very glitchy download, and they should probably fix it. Along with being able to go back to the places you were before.

The space walk was prominently featured as one of the selling points. Why the hell can't we go back to it?

Also, if it makes sense that you would close off stuff after the quest finished, wouldn't it make sense for you to be able to go to places you HAVEN'T been too and look for stuff there?

Also, you should meet more people than just those four fucktards. I mean, they specifically mentioned that there would be 1000 people on board, so you'd think you'd meet more than 5. And Elliot's squad people don't count. Neither do the Abominations. Though every once in a while I found myself calling them: "Obaminations". I switched two vowels. Big deal.

So hopefully they'll come out with some sort of patch or something. Or another free DLC to make up for the shit. And then maybe they'll send free hookers and pizzas to our houses.

I thought that this would make all the other DLCS look like crap, but I've actually found a new like for Point Lookout with this. And The Pitt still holds my prize for the best one. Mainly cause they didn't block you off from anything.