Take on the Chinese Resistance in this DLC
Operation Anchorage takes you on a quest that will put you in the pit of the Battle of Anchorage before the Bombs dropped, is this DLC sturdy or does it fall short?
While roaming around the wastes you receive a distress signal coming from the Brotherhood Outcasts, of course you go to investigate and find out that there is a small battle going on but once that’s said and done the outcast’s ask for you help. What they need you to do is enter a simulation of the Battle of Anchorage and your the only person who has a piece of technology (your handy dandy Pip-Boy) that will download data to unlock a vault full of goodies once you finish the simulation. Once your in the simulation, your character wakes up with an objective to take out artillery guns that are harming the military’s plans. This is just one of the quest’s that you start once the DLC loads up.
When playing the DLC you lose all items that you go in with because in the simulation it’s not necessary. That means no stimpaks, and no ammo and other items that you would use. Only what’s provided in the simulation is the only thing you can use and in order for you to get health you use health dispensers that are provided for you in the simulation as well as ammo dispensers. While doing quests, you can have a strike team to help you out and you can choose who you want backing you up, say two snipers and an assault specialist. If you strike team goes down and they will, you can call in another strike team and choose again so you can make the perfect team when they aid you in your quest’s.
Though it looks large, Operation Anchorage isn't as huge as you think
What I liked was a change in appearance, how you go from the capital wasteland to a snow filled area that is in the midst of a battlefield and your caught up in it. Instead of seeing the same old capital wasteland it was nice just to be somewhere else for once. Now gameplay is still the same as always and the score is still there to back up the action. Now there are issues and sadly there are a lot of issues in Operation: Anchorage. Once issues I had was constant freezing of the content and what I would have to do it reset my PS3 and boot is up again just so it can freeze once again and I would have to repeat this process until the DLC cooperated with me. Another issue is the dip in framerate just when your about to head into the action the framerate will drop to make the DLC barely playable and this made me furious because there were barely anytime where the content would just play right. Hopefully Bethesda can patch this up asap.
Operation: Anchorage is a nice piece of DLC that is interesting to see how the Battle of Anchorage went during the Fallout 3 era but, with the constant freezes, framerate issues and audio issues (dialogue would not be up to sync or there wouldn’t be any dialogue at all) made this one of the frustrating DLC’s so far.
Scores:
Presentation: 8.5
Nice to see a new area for change.
Graphics: 8.5
Snow looks great, and so does Anchorage.
Sound: 7.5
Audio bugs are around and it’s not pretty, and the Fallout 3 score is still in-tact
Gameplay: 7.0
Awesome to run around and take out the Chinese Liberation when your able to play without and issues.
Replay Value: 6.0
Sadly once you finish it you won’t be able to go back into the simulation which I found disappointing. But the weapons you gain make up for it.
Final Score: 7.5
Tags: Bethesda, Fallout 3, PlayStation 3