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GamesRelay Score
Great
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Name: Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta
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A new radio signal directs you to the extraordinary sight before you - a smashed UFO! As you step tentatively closer, you are suddenly stopped in your tracks, your body awash in a sterile blue light. You are lifted from the ground, and you see the hills become smaller and the horizon grow wider as you are pulled away from the radioactive rock you call home. As a prisoner aboard an extraterrestrial vessel, a new downloadable quest begins!
In Mothership Zeta, you and five other survivors fight to escape the vessel that has taken you captive. The plot therein is nothing like anything else in Fallout 3, where character interaction takes a prominent role. An odd fraternity is formed with this cast of conflicting personalities, as you share in the pains of the journey through the orbiting spacecraft. One of these characters doesn't even speak English, yet you'll form as strong a bond with him as you would with any of the others. If death finds one of your allies, expect to feel a sense of loss - at least until you finish looting their corpse! The pack consists of three quests that will last you much longer than you would expect, and gives about six hours of new content. The pacing is quite peculiar, where you pass through section after section until you suddenly, with no lead-up, arrive at the final area. Once the conflict is over, there's no reward either. It all seems very abrupt, and with no accolades rewarded for your efforts, it eventually began to strike me as strangely pointless. As the last downloadable pack to be released, it's effectively acting as the end of the game, and in this regard, it falls short.
Nonetheless, there are a substantial amount of new items included in this downloadable pack. It must have taken Bethesda a lot of time and effort to design all the new décor and environments, since nothing has been recycled. You'll find plenty of odd machinery and tools lying about, as well as a very useful arch that heals some of your health as you walk through it, and can be modified to restore all your health for a limited amount of time. There are three new classes of weapons too, including a pistol-type called the Alien Atomizer and a rifle-type called the Alien Disintegrator. There are also advanced forms of these weapons hidden aboard that have very special qualities. The final weapon type is called the Drone Cannon, which lobs an energy ball in front of you that promptly explodes. Its range is very short, but when it comes to firepower versus ammo efficiency, there are few equals in the vast arsenal available. A number of other items can be found aboard, such as Alien Biogel, that heals 60 hit-points, quite notable compared to other health items. One of the survivors can also modify these to replace them as Adapted Biogel, which can recover an impressive 180 hit-points. Both have side effects however, ranging from an increase in your radiation level, to temporary bonuses or handicaps to your stats. Yet the most useful object by far is Alien Epoxy. This item, when used in the menu, significantly repairs your currently equipped weapon. For items that are normally non-repairable by scavenging similar weapons, such as the Tesla Cannon from Broken Steel, you'll find that you'll be able to save a lot of Caps in maintaining your weapons. In fact, I'd recommend that, despite the order that the DLC is released in, you should play Mothership Zeta earlier on, to truly benefit from the treasures available.
These items do become quite essential, as its Alien owners are not content to have you wandering through the ship with your cache of lifetakers primed and ready. As is pointed out early on, the Aliens themselves are quite fragile - but it's their technology that makes them a threat. The weapons they carry are powerful, but some are equipped with shields that can be seen by how they warp light around their user. These enemies can take an abhorrent amount of blows before succumbing to you, and there's very little you can do to make a significant impact on their stamina - other than a mini-nuke to the head, of course! Two types of robotic drones can get in your hair as well, called Security or Guardian Drones. With the retrieval of a special item, you are able to activate some to help you in battle. There are also some disturbing enemies called Abominations, but their origin is something best described by the game itself.
Special consideration should be given to the set-pieces that are used throughout the quest. There are some entirely unique situations that the game presents you with that have no comparison with anything else in the entire package. Without revealing too much, you are put into different defensive and offensive combat situations that have different interactions available that are worlds away from the standard shoot-outs that you become accustomed to.
Mothership Zeta has absolutely no sidequests, yet there are areas of the ship that the game doesn't point you to that allow good opportunities to explore to find weapons and ammo. There are also twenty five recordings of fellow captives to find littered throughout the vessel. While humorous in their own right, finding all of them will grant you a trophy/achievement. It's not necessarily easy though, since there are some areas of the ship that are impossible to return to, even after finishing the main quest. If you happened to miss even a single recording along the way and you progressed too far, you are unable to get the reward without restarting the the quest again. My advice would be to save often and overwrite little, but there is no reason why the ship couldn't always remain explorable when everything was over.
You're confined to the ship for the entirety of the quest, and while it's quite large, following the game's instructions will put you on a completely linear path. As a game that was acclaimed for its open-endedness, being led on a set path is quite disappointing, even if it is the caveat for well-designed set pieces. There is also a noticeable amount of slowdown on the PS3 version especially. It never gets so bad that it affects gameplay, but it is evident as you play.
Overall, Mothership Zeta is another excellent piece of downloadable fare, and includes a veritable trove of new items to consume and fire. While it may adhere to a strict measure of linearity, its story is all the better for it, even if it finishes poorly. Simply for the wealth of new, useful items included, many will be absolutely delighted with what is offered, and will be well worth any Fallout players' money and time.
Mothership Zeta is available to download now on PC, 360 and PS3, as well as being included in the Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition along with the four other downloadable packs all on one content-rich disc.
