Review: Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta

2009.08.12

Space really is the final frontier with the recent release of Bethesda’s final  Fallout 3 DLC titled Mothership Zeta.

In Zeta, the player is abducted by an alien spaceship and must fight his or her way out, or be cyrogenically frozen and tested on for all time.  The new DLC adds new alien weapons, characters, and an entire alien mothership for the player to explore.

Space: the final frontier...

Space: the final frontier...

The weapons and new characters are by far the best additions included in this DLC.  Every class of weapons has at least one addition here, from the melee Shock Baton to an Alien Disintegrator.  There is even a new .44 Magnum modeled after the old west pistols.  The new characters make the DLC worth playing.  As the aliens have been abducting people for hundreds of years, characters from different time periods show up to help the player.  These characters include a young girl who was abducted right after the bombs dropped 200 years ago, a cowboy from the old west, and a Japanese samurai from the 12th century, just to name a few.

One of the downsides to this DLC pack is the alien spacecraft itself.  Many of the interiors look the same, although in the familiar 1950’s style of the rest of the Fallout universe.  However, because the interiors look similar, it is easy to get lost while exploring between objectives.  The most interesting section of the spaceship is the exterior, but the player is only there for a short time.  Another bad aspect is the lack of fire power with some of the weapons.  Most of the alien technology is quite interesting in style, but lack the power to make them worthwhile to use.  This is disappointing as one of the best parts of the game are the effects of the weapons.

Overall, this is a great addition to the game, much like the previous DLC packs.  Although the interiors of the spaceship look similar, the new weapons and characters make it worth the purchase.