Opinion// Fallout 3: The DLC - Mothership Zeta

Little green men might be hard for a true devotee of science to swallow, but what about the entertainment, ey? That’s what we’re all here for, despite the protestations of some that aliens are cheap, a gimmick, another piece of shit to be flung in the hopes that it will stick somewhere other than the craws of the rational.

As a true Fallout 3 disciple, one who got and enjoyed all the expansions and saw levelling to 30 as an enjoyable bonus rather than the reason to get Broken Steel, I was initially just grateful that there was more to play, especially after the unmissable, insane, incredibly original Point Lookout had whet my appetite for more killing and new places to wreck up.

Fortunately, I had no trouble with actually downloading MZ. It must be said that troublesome DLC downloads seem to have become, like bugs, glitches and surprise lag, par for the course with Bethesda games. I have suggested playing a drinking game where one has to do a shot for every piece of floating rock or teleporting Yao Guai – surely the consequences would be slightly less devastating than the Oblivion version which resulted in eviction, forced marriage, tattoos and hospitalization.

After beaming aboard the eponymous mothership and joining up with a rather moody woman and a little girl, we’re back to corridor fighting. We're dipping in and out of steaming vents to blast the bubble helmets off some very generic looking aliens in an attempt to return to the wasteland. The aliens are pretty tough and whack off a large amount of HP for every laser gun zap or Taser baton they fling about. There are new alien weapons that turn enemies into piles of sometimes floating ash or shoot sticky bouncing missile grenades, new comrades to fight against the aliens with and new armour, including the Samurai suit which divided players – all wet knickers, but some unwillingly so. “Why not just bung a pirate or two in as well? Some chocolate rain? A banana phone?” the inner geek cries, wringing out their pants.

It’s obvious that thought has been put into the average player’s experience though. Most items in space weigh almost nothing, which is handy if you’ve decided to keep Asher’s power armour or much of the other accretion from the other packs, and the enemy is tough enough to be challenging even at level 30. There’s a ton of XP given for every killing too, none of your nipping in to grab a pathetic 5 XP after someone else has done the dirty work; but perhaps there’s a little too much. Like an over-enthusiastic teacher giving the thick kid a lollipop for effort, the game seems to be saying “This is your last chance to get to 30 like all the other kids; I’ll just give you a little boost, don’t mention it, I know you’ve done your best.”

Or am I just being paranoid? Certainly it doesn’t seem that difficult and, granted, I’ve had a few perks on the way to boost XP, but I feel under appreciated now, like I ought to be taking on swarms of Deathclaws to win a house or something. I ought to be carried aloft through the wasteland or hung, drawn and quartered after being found hidden in a hole or something. But perhaps that is the Bethesda message to us: life isn’t all “This was a triumph”, most of us bumble through it looking out for number one for the majority of the time, surviving, not crusading. Reality and verisimilitude, so longed for by the geek fraternity, isn’t a heroic victory or a cruel martyrdom, it’s endless corridors and faceless others. It isn’t entertainment. And neither is Mothership Zeta, sadly.

Vegas, the next Fallout setting, looms on the horizon, buffeted by heat haze, the most surreal of all our dimension’s realms.Mothership Zeta’s proved, listlessly, the truth is out there. Now let’s hope a bit of Vegas unreality can inject some fun back into the series.