After my last review of Operation: Anchorage I loaded up The Pitt with some trepidation. I was not looking forward to constant freezes and a rather dull story. But I loaded the game hoping that a new environment with the same basic pallet of colors that the original game had would have less problems.
I tend to play Fallout 3 with a slant toward stealth so that I can sneak up on enemies but it also allows me to slow down and enjoy the level of detail the designers put into each new area that I come across. I really enjoyed the initial crossing of the bridge into The Pitt and was impressed by the varying levels of height that were employed for enemy placement. The initial story wasn't that interesting. Although I have to admit that after spending so many hours looking at and helping ghouls I was defintely grossed out by the new diseased look that the slaves in The Pitt had been given.
Exploring the initial area of The Pitt I was a little disappointed. The new areas are basically just large squared off city blocks so exploration ends quickly. The second quest left me at odds. The quest simply asks you go into an area filled with Trogs (slaves taken over completely by radiation--losing skin and all human instincts) and retrieve 10 steel ingots. The first 10 come relatively quickly, so you can easily return to the quest giver and move on. My dilemma stems from turning the easy 10 or searching for all 100 hidden within the area for a silver trophy. Ah the trophy. Sounds easy right? Well...I've gotten 90 steel ingots and have decided to stop looking (for now). There is only so much time I want to spend in one area.
So I returned the 10 ingots and continued on with the story quest. As I previously stated I wasn't really excited about the quest story up to this point, but once you realize what the "cure" is to help the slaves I was immediately sucked in. This final trophy quest is what really brings out the best in all of the Fallout 3 quests. The ability to give you a choice to help one group or their opposition with an end result that leaves you feeling morally dirty at the end of either choice. This last quest brought me right back to the Tenpenny Tower quest and the Paradise Falls quest from Fallout 3. I don't want to spoil the quest for those who haven't played The Pitt yet but I have to say that the last quest is definitely worth paying for the DLC.
One thing that I have not discussed about The Pitt is whether or not I had any technical difficulties. As I mentioned in the beginning I loaded up The Pitt with some trepidation but found the game to run smooth throughout the entire experience. I had one freeze-up but I'll chock that up to a failure in the Fallout 3 engine and not the DLC specifically. Too many enemies and friends all battling at the same time on multiple planes seem to have choked up the game engine at one point late in the third quest. After a reboot the quest finished without any further problems.
I would definitely give The Pitt a recommendation after the disappointing Operation: Anchorage DLC. I'm still going to hold off on Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta for now, mostly because there are some other good games coming out soon that I'd rather save my money for.
Until those come out, I've rented (against my better judgement) the so far, disappointing Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes game. More on that after a thorough play through.
Showing posts with label Operation Anchorage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operation Anchorage. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Operation: Broken Anchorage
I can honestly say that I feel ripped off. Both by Bethesda and Sony for allowing Operation: Anchorage to be released with so many problems.
First off the story itself is only minimally interesting. After playing through Fallout 3 for close to 200 hours and seeing the slide during loads saying Alaska Liberated many many times, I was hoping that O:A would be a decent story and adventure. The first leg of the journey was fairly interesting. Traveling up a cliff face with potential enemies coming from above or below was neat. Seeing white rocks and snow was neat. Seeing how an enemy died--a cyber degradation similar to a kill from the Plasma rifle or Alien Blaster--was neat. Being able to heal and restock ammo from a different source was neat. Neat. For the first hour of play.
After that it got boring. Boring because the only enemies the DLC seems to offer are either flame throwers, missile launching troops, or stealth snipers. Any combo of these three could show up and attempt to ambush you, but you also have a companion and VATS. At the time that my character started playing through O:A I was at level 24 and Small Guns, Big Guns, and Energy Weapons are all at 100. Using VATS in O:A seems almost and unfair advantage when combined with the companion who seems to be a crack shot. Boring because there are healing and re-stocking ammo stations too close together.
Maybe that's why Bethesda decided to release a buggy add-on. I had the game freeze up so many times when I entered VATS that I was ready to just give up playing. The worst part of O:A freezing up is that the only that I could get it to unfreeze was to restart the whole PS3. LAME! Of course if you restart your PS3 and then launch the game again any progress you made from your last save up to the freeze is completely gone. The worst part is that you can't really anticipate when your next freeze could happen, so you start to train yourself to save often--too often. This saving often is ridiculous for two reasons. First, the save process is slow and takes up unnecessary hard drive space. Second, the game shouldn't freakin' be this buggy that I have to RESTART my PS3 to unfreeze a game. Seriously how did this get passed through QA checks from Sony? Or is it because the game is set in a different environment that doesn't use the muted grays, greens and browns of the Capital Wasteland, so the rendering engine doesn't know how to handle what it is trying to draw? Or is it because the environments are mostly open areas with long view distances that the render engine is having a hard time trying to render all of the information in the viewing area and keep the AI variables all in check. Yeah. That must be it.
Wrong!
It's shitty ass coding. You know how I know. Because the game freaking locked up on my when I tried to access a computer terminal in the game too! A freaking computer terminal. What is there to render with a computer terminal? Fill screen with green and black. Run loop for cracking terminal password. It works all the time in the original Fallout 3 so can't it work in O:A?
Seriously. This is completely unacceptable. But Bethesda already got my money. They've also already got my money for Broken Steel and The Pitt. Will they get my money for Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta? That is questionable. If they fix the bugs and offer a patch then sure I'll pick up the last 2 DLC.
I love the environment and the game play that Bethesda has created in Fallout 3, but releasing really crappy code, game breaking code, is completely inexcusable.
If you enjoy Fallout 3 and want more, DON'T waste your money on Operation: Anchorage.
First off the story itself is only minimally interesting. After playing through Fallout 3 for close to 200 hours and seeing the slide during loads saying Alaska Liberated many many times, I was hoping that O:A would be a decent story and adventure. The first leg of the journey was fairly interesting. Traveling up a cliff face with potential enemies coming from above or below was neat. Seeing white rocks and snow was neat. Seeing how an enemy died--a cyber degradation similar to a kill from the Plasma rifle or Alien Blaster--was neat. Being able to heal and restock ammo from a different source was neat. Neat. For the first hour of play.
After that it got boring. Boring because the only enemies the DLC seems to offer are either flame throwers, missile launching troops, or stealth snipers. Any combo of these three could show up and attempt to ambush you, but you also have a companion and VATS. At the time that my character started playing through O:A I was at level 24 and Small Guns, Big Guns, and Energy Weapons are all at 100. Using VATS in O:A seems almost and unfair advantage when combined with the companion who seems to be a crack shot. Boring because there are healing and re-stocking ammo stations too close together.
Maybe that's why Bethesda decided to release a buggy add-on. I had the game freeze up so many times when I entered VATS that I was ready to just give up playing. The worst part of O:A freezing up is that the only that I could get it to unfreeze was to restart the whole PS3. LAME! Of course if you restart your PS3 and then launch the game again any progress you made from your last save up to the freeze is completely gone. The worst part is that you can't really anticipate when your next freeze could happen, so you start to train yourself to save often--too often. This saving often is ridiculous for two reasons. First, the save process is slow and takes up unnecessary hard drive space. Second, the game shouldn't freakin' be this buggy that I have to RESTART my PS3 to unfreeze a game. Seriously how did this get passed through QA checks from Sony? Or is it because the game is set in a different environment that doesn't use the muted grays, greens and browns of the Capital Wasteland, so the rendering engine doesn't know how to handle what it is trying to draw? Or is it because the environments are mostly open areas with long view distances that the render engine is having a hard time trying to render all of the information in the viewing area and keep the AI variables all in check. Yeah. That must be it.
Wrong!
It's shitty ass coding. You know how I know. Because the game freaking locked up on my when I tried to access a computer terminal in the game too! A freaking computer terminal. What is there to render with a computer terminal? Fill screen with green and black. Run loop for cracking terminal password. It works all the time in the original Fallout 3 so can't it work in O:A?
Seriously. This is completely unacceptable. But Bethesda already got my money. They've also already got my money for Broken Steel and The Pitt. Will they get my money for Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta? That is questionable. If they fix the bugs and offer a patch then sure I'll pick up the last 2 DLC.
I love the environment and the game play that Bethesda has created in Fallout 3, but releasing really crappy code, game breaking code, is completely inexcusable.
If you enjoy Fallout 3 and want more, DON'T waste your money on Operation: Anchorage.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)