Customer Reviews

Fallout 3 Game Add-On Pack: Broken Steel and Point Lookout

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In my review for the game itself, I stated how I felt the maximum level of 20 was absolutely ridiculous as you can easily achieve this level VERY early in the game. My other criticism pertained to the "good" ending where, unlike in other roaming RPGs such as Fable II, ends the game prematurely preventing you from going back to explore the rest of the wasteland.

Not anymore!

Broken Steel continues the story with a three primary quests and then allows the player to free roam afterwards. The level cap has also been raised from the low level of 20 to a not-so-low level of 30. This does present a problem for gamers that have beaten all the dungeons before installing Broken Steel as the expansion does not have enough quests to reach the level cap. However, that is where Point Lookout comes in, but more on that later.

Similar to previous expansion packs, such as Operation Anchorage and The Pitt, Broken Steel includes new and powerful weapons such as the Tesla cannon *evil grin*.

A lot of these features, most notably raising the level cap and the divergent "good ending," should have been in the original Fallout 3 game to begin with as it will cost the player however much money to purchase this expansion. However, Bethesda makes up for the cost with a few more entertaining side quests and another much needed expansion.

Enter Point Lookout.

Within the first hour of exploring Point Lookout, I scavenged more weapons, heal items, ammo, grenades, and various knick knacks (including a Swiffer(tm)) than I did in the first ten hours in the regular game. Weapons and ammo were extraordinarily plentiful (especially in the Calvert Mansion) as were the relatively tougher enemies, which very closely resembled the protagonists from Redneck Rampage.

Point Lookout is definitely a tribute to redneck survival in Fallout 3 as the game is bursting with hillbilly references including the introduction of a double-barrel shotgun, a level-action rifle, banjo music (sadly, there are no Deliverance references I could find), voodoo wackos, and a LOT of whiskey. The South will definitely rise again - whether to protest this game or embrace it I really do not know but it certainly takes a jab at them.

However, what really helps with Point Lookout as how the seemingly endless supply of enemies help fuel the player's experience to level 30 since many veteran Fallout 3 gamers explored most of the wasteland prior to the end of the game. The "tribal" warriors weren't exactly difficult to dispatch, the problem was there were soo darned many of them and they came at you in rushes.

The other great thing about Point Lookout is the introduction of a large new map to explore, namely the swamp wasteland. While not as large as the capitol wasteland, the swamp wasteland is big enough and will take a fair amount of time to explore and the rewards for doing so are very nice.

All in all, this expansion is a must have for any gamer with Fallout 3, although I do recommend you install it before you go on an exploration rampage since that'll make achieving level 30 that much harder. I only wish the primary features would've been added in the original Fallout 3, but, oh well. That's life.

Now, us gamers will anxiously await the next Fallout 3 expansion!!

Originally I had downloaded both of these off of the Xbox Live Marketplace when they first came out. Here's a little mini-review of each of the DLC's...

Broken Steel

Level Cap Raised to 30 (lots of new perks added with that)

Lets you play the game after it normally ended

Several new weapons added

Overall a fun bit of DLC, it made Fallout 3 what it should have been all along.

Point Lookout

Big Area to explore

A LOT of quests and side-quests

Not the best selection of new weapons but enough to mix things up a bit

Unlike any other location in the wasteland - a nice change in scenery

My favorite DLC by far, I highly recommend this bundle just for this

Which brings us to the bundle... it's 20 bucks and it comes with a disc you just pop in your 360 then in about 5-10 minutes you'll be good to go, and also to be noted THIS DOES NOT REQUIRE XBOX LIVE!!

So if you don't have live and you are bummed out you can't get the DLC this is a great deal for you!

A highly recommended item for any Fallout 3 plan!!

I am an ardent Fallout fan, and Fallout 3 was like a Godsend to the series, making it far more immersive than I anticipated that it would. I had purchased and played The Pitt/Operation: Anchorage DLC when it became available on DVD and loved that game as well as it adds to the existing mythology of the game so very well. This is the 2nd DLC (that's Downloadable Content to those of you not in the know), basically an expansion pack to the root Fallout 3 game.

Some Spoilers ahead! Consider yourself warned!

This second DLC (Broken Steel) pack takes you on a no holds barred battle to wipe out the remnants of the Enclave still populating the DC Wasteland area. Despite President Eden's demise and the terrible pounding that the Enclave took at the end of the first game, they're still around in large numbers and are determined to take control of the DC area by force. Broken Steel allows you to pick up where the end of Fallout 3 left off by allowing that you were put in coma by the effects of Project Purity's activation rather than dying. Actually in my game I just sent Fawkes in since he's completely immune to radiation, but the end result is the same. The Brotherhood of Steel now has cleaned up much of the tidal basin area's water of radiation, although strangely my geiger counter still registers small amounts of the stuff (usually around 4 rads worth), but that's a minor quibble. Now the Brotherhood is spearheading the effort to cleanse the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave once and for all. And Liberty Prime is still in play! Hoo-ah!

BS will take you through never before seen parts of DC's underground, specifically the transit system used by politicians before the war, and ultimately to the Enclave home base at what I'm assuming to be the Fallout universe's mirror of Andrews AFB. Players are given several new weapons along the way including the Tri-Beam Laser Rifle and the Tesla cannon. This latter gun is so powerful that it can actually destroy Vertibirds with one shot, and it's a heckuva lot of fun to do so! In addition to this the level cap is increased from 20 to 30, which gives one the potential to really max out all of their various stats and several attributes, as well as getting a few of those Perks you always wanted but never could get.

Lookout Point takes the player to a secluded national park area of the same name along the coast of Maryland, an area which was not directly hit by any nukes during the war but has sank into a radioactive quagmire despite this. The locals can only be described as a melding of the characters from The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance. They're stout, burly, and pretty hard to kill. Other areas you get to visit include sunken ships, a lighthouse (which you can even reactivate), a boardwalk/carnival area, the Calvert Mansion (which is based upon a real historic structure), and an old US prison camp for housing Chinese spies. This portion of the DLC was definitely the superior in my opinion and provides ample opportunity to crank up your exp and get some levels. LP is unusual among the DLC packs because it allows a fully open and explorable terrain like the base game, and while the map itself is considerably smaller than the Capital Wasteland there is still plenty to look around at. New weapons are also added including basic Axes, double-barreled shotguns, a Civil War repeating rifle (basically a 10mm variant of the Lincoln Repeater from the first game), bio grenades, and a handheld focused energy pistol which can turn enemies into piles of dust like the Laser Rifle. The shotgun was something of a disappointment because while it's very powerful you have to be practically standing next to your target in order to inflict damage. And if you're dealing with Swamp Folk' you want to whack em' from as far away as you can. And even then the thing isn't guaranteed to kill your target in one blast, which really bites because lesser weapons can do far more damage with a simple aimed shot at the head.

Because the terrain is so sprawling and open PL is a veritable playground for Sniper-minded folks, and if you have a Gauss Rifle or Reservists Rifle you'll have a field day with it here. One can nail targets from *far* away and it's gratifying to watch any survivors run around in panic, unsure of where the attack is coming from. The plot also expands upon the storyline of some Chinese spies' exploits in the weeks before the war and players are given an option to complete these missions and net the rewards that come with it (piles of ammunition, stimpacks, and a pretty cool rifle).

At the end of the day though, PL and BS are mostly the same old stuff from the original game. What players need are totally new environments to explore (which PL does contribute for the most part). I found myself beginning to groan audibly when I started to see the same overused graphics for sewer/tunnel system in place over and over again, as well as largely the same advertisements. Again, PL mitigates this substantially, but once you've cleared out the missions there's simply little reason to stay around except to harvest Punga fruit and ammo/weapons to sell back to vendors. And at that point in the storyline I already had piles of money and had no need to do so. I rate the game at 4 1/2 stars (Amazon still only allows for full number reviews and not fractions). Grab yourself a Confederate Hat just for the fun of it. It gives +1 to Perception (which helps with sniping and enemy locating) and looks great to boot. If you're a Fallout 3 fan you'll definitely enjoy what this DLC has to offer, although like me you'll probably start wanting to see some radically different stuff in the near future.

i love fallout i got over 130 hours of my life in to it lol but then again i be playing it for over a year so its not that much broken steel is long and fun point look out is not that long but you get some cool weapons and armor out of it so i recommend this

The original Fallout 3 was, flat out, a fun adventure. It had it's own style, riffing on old cheesy 1950s era horror and monster movies while mixing it up with a gritty futuristic post apocalyptic world fiction. The game itself wasn't entirely original coupled with these facts, along with it using Bethesda's original "Oblivion" engine and mechanics, but it was refreshing experience thanks to the addition of guns, skill perks and the ever enjoyable "Vats" system, that allowed the player invulnerability just to shoot people in the face (or any other body part!) and watch them blow up into a million pieces. It wasn't exactly fair for your opponents and seemed pretty cheap to any hardcore RPG fan, but hey, it was undeniably entertaining to watch. All around, Fallout 3 was a damn fun game.

It was also one of the buggiest Triple A games I've ever played.

The ultimate drawbacks were that it had a low level cap, small game world and ended (literally) at the end of the main story quest. So, it would seem almost impulsive (to anyone who enjoyed the game) to buy an expansion that would allow you to not only raise the level cap and continue your characters journey, but also includes a new game world to explore and adds to the main story quest. Such as I was when I picked this expansion disk up at a gamestop. Mostly everyone owns and have played the other expansions now at this point, but I already had the standard fallout 3 and didn't want to blow 30 dollars on the same game again just for some expansions, so I stuck to the much cheaper DVD that would at least let me continue my Fallout 3 save.

Is the expansion really worth it? Sort of. This DVD contains two separate expansions, one mandatory for the other to be used. "Broken Steel" and "Point Lookout." Sorry to say, one is 7 times better than the other, and the disk wasn't worth the amount of cash I paid for it.

Broken steel is the very expansion that includes the level raise and story continuation. This sounds awesome, and it is, but the character development suffers. Gone is the element of individualism for your character when you are forced to work for the brotherhood (if that's their name, I don't remember) taking orders by a generic commander person to kill off the remaining forces of the "Enclave." There is little to no story development during this process, but this is OK because Fallout 3 never had a great story to begin with. Instead, this expansion has you killing (and destroying) a lot of baddies, and combines all of the elements that made the third games combat and exploration fun, just in a canned experience. All of your fighting doesn't even take place in the ruins of DC, but in a separate environment and "dungeons" that the developers made just for the main story. All of this is enjoyable and challenging, so much so that I don't recall any bugs or difficulty spikes to speak of during my playthrough. However, it ends before you know it, and after you're done with the disappointing ending, there's nothing really new to see afterword since nothing was really added to the main DC environment. This means that if you discovered just about every quest, NPC and location in the standard game, you're basically screwed.

I would give the broken steel add on a four out of five.

This is probably where you would install the other Add on, "Point Lookout." It promises a new environment to explore and one that's a breath of fresh air compared to the wasteland. The big problem is that this is where Fallout 3 starts to show it's age in more ways than one. You see, Point lookout is HARD. This expansion is basically Diablo 2's hell mode for Fallout 3, even on normal difficulty. Why do I say this?

Because Point lookout follows the flawed philosophy that upping enemies health dramatically and their quantity in game makes for a good "challenge." While other games could pull this off, it doesn't work very well with the Oblivion's aging engine. Fallout 3 reaches a whole new high in bugginess here, and it effects the combat and VATS system heavily. My character is completely maxed with all combat skills, and has some of the most cutting edge "Small arms" weapons in the game. All of my perks either went toward combat benefits or skill boosts, and they all helped me kill highly armored human enemies and deathclaws with ease. Yet, when I reach point lookout, it expects me to believe that my character has difficulty with just a few mutated hillbillies and specially picked "ghouls."

When I use the word "Difficulty" there, I didn't mean a challenge. I meant, it's outright difficult. These enemies have ridiculous amounts of HP, and there's some other problems that have to do with the engine that contribute to trying to kill them. Since fallout 3 is an rpg, it relies on skills to determine how much damage you do, and how far you can shoot. This is viciously reinforced since PL is a big and swampy area. Often, what would be considered a too close distance to an average sniper is considered too far to land a hit by the game with the same weapon, to which your shots will usually just zone off somewhere or go right through the enemy, even when you're aiming right at them. Of course, when it comes to close or mid range situations, your first thought would be to use VATS, until you realize that shots don't do any damage for some reason! That's right, a lot of the time you'll shoot an enemy square in the face four times with a combat shotgun, and it won't do any damage at all! This, combined with the HP that enemies have, make for broken combat. Ok, so what about melee combat? Well that is also broken. There is a special baddie called the "Brawler" that mostly uses melee, but fighting him just isn't a fair experience. He deals massive amounts of damage with his bare fists, and the recoil that you would expect to inflict with a counter doesn't work with a block, resulting in a another hit by him. It also doesn't help that he can hurt you somehow when his attack is just a few inches away.

I apologize if I'm going on and on about the combat, but when you shoot an unsuspecting adversary directly in the back of the head with a sniper rifle and he doesn't even flinch with any amount of health stolen from him, you know something's wrong. Bethesda somehow SCREWED the gunfighting up in this game, and considering that's a major part of the game, it's a massive flaw, and reason I can't enjoy this as much.

To be fair, I haven't totally beaten many quests or found every location of PL prior to writing this review, but I feel I've played enough of it to get a grip on what it offers. The new setting is the "fresh breath of air," but it's somehow even four times SMALLER than the capital wasteland. It also continues the unfortunate choice of placing explorable areas right by the immersion breaking invisible walls that keep you away from the rest of the environment. Most of the inhabitants in PL either want to kill you or just live in random houses out in the middle of no where, and or send you on stupid fetch quests like finding hazardous materials to make alcohol with or killing things for a certain item. I played some of the main quest and immediately hated it. The person you save is a rude, condescending jerk and you don't really understand why you're killing his home invaders (called "Tribals") to begin with. None of it seems remarkable or compelling to play, especially compared to everything you just did in Broken steel. In fact, the setting and details of Point lookout grants major plot holes to the core of the original story, since there's wildlife and regular, sane people (A little child, a regular merchant, a random old man) living among the others that are pants on head insane. Out of the quests I played, the only one I enjoyed really was the one where you carry out the century or two old orders of a long deceased spy.

Overall, from what I've played, I would give Point Lookout a 2 out of 5. I pretty much hate this expansion, but since it's more Fallout 3, I'll probably play more of it anyway.

So with all this said, if for some reason you find yourself in a circumstance to buy this add on pack for cheap, just save your money and buy the GOTY addition of Fallout 3. Even if you do own it and just wanted to read this review to see what other people think of these add ons, I thank you.

(EDIT, Spoilers, Point lookout): Not even an hour or two after writing this review, I went ahead and played the main quest some more and actually beat it in less than a hour as well! It just left me saying "That's it!?" There were only about 4 or 5 things I did, and I was done. By the time you finally get to kill your quest givers, it would already be too late. It didn't feel as good because you should have been able to do that when they were trash talking you to begin with, and so it just feels like you're being told "Ok, NOW you can kill him." It just felt forced, and thus not satisfying. Also, GOOD LUCK if you're a pacifist, because the end of this pack forces you into violence, where usually in the original F3 you could smooth talk your way to peaceful resolutions. Maybe it is there if you don't harm Desmond, but I didn't see it, and as I said, "Too little, too late." I suspect it wouldn't end well anyway.

Also, I returned to the church area because I wanted to tell the brain guy's followers that I killed him, and there wasn't an option to do that! So, overall, you have a poor, unsatisfying story that isn't well developed at all with unlikable, one dimensional characters and >>another<< disappointing ending, if you can call it one. I guess some little things about this expansion were cool, but in no way at all original or unique. (That one trippy scene has been done in video games before) I know this is blunt to say, but I stand by my statement when I say this add on is a piece of trash.

If you didn't pick up the GOY edition FO3 but have the original and want to reenter the wasteland, you MUST pick this up. I got about 15 hours of playtime with Point Lookout (lever-action rifle makes use of 10mm ammo) and already have 2 hours in Broken Steel.

If you do all the extra missions and just wander around getting experience, etc.. This add-on pack gains a few dozen extra hours of gameplay fun. New enemies, some are a big pain to kill.

The best part about point lookout and broken steel, is that they aren't linear like the other expansions. That really bothered me about the others, fallout is a sandbox game, yet mothership zeta forces you to go down tiny corridors in order, operation anchorage is more 'open' but still extremely linear, and the pitt was fun, but again... linear!

Point lookout gives you a map if i had to guess about 1/6 the size of normal fallout, explore to your hearts content. And there are a few different quest lines across the lands.

The main complaint is the lack of variety of enemies, two different kinds of hillbillies is basically all you will see during this expansion.

Dont have much to comment on broken steel - never finished it, but it was definitely more in the sandbox idealogy compared to the other expansions.

After countless hours of playing and blood shot eyes i actually ran out of things to do. With the addon pack its a nice refresher to the epic game.

I got this game for my son, and he loved it and said it was a great expansion pack and a much needed one. Also the game was in great condition for a used game, and came VERY quick, like within 2 days (4 days before it was supposed to come) I am VERY pleased with it.