Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta DLC Review

Mothership Zeta is the fifth, and supposedly final, DLC for the massively popular FPS RPG Fallout 3. The add-on begins as you follow your compass to the UFO crash site originally uncovered in the main game. Once back at the unmarked location, you're abducted: beamed vertically into the titular mothership before everything fades to black. After being awoken, you find yourself deprived of equipment and sealed, via forcefield door, inside a cell aboard the hovering vessel. From here, you predictably escape, bash in some extraterrestrial noggins and then set about exacting full-scale revenge on your otherworldly captors.

The setup to the main quests is possibly the most enjoyable part of Mothership Zeta - the initial exploration, meeting fellow captives and listening to rather comical audio-logs of abductees all feels quite intriguing and exciting. Unfortunately, however, you'll soon find yourself running down the same claustrophobic corridors, shooting the same identical aliens and banging your skull against your increasingly bloody desk out of boredom and frustration. Weirdly, the ship just never feels genuinely alien. It lacks character, feeling contrarily more like some dull factory - at least the steel mill in The Pitt actually felt genuine. The levels are dull at best, with routes lazily blocked off by crates or the ever-reliable impenetrable forcefields. Exploring new locations is practically invalid, as there's nothing to discover except a boring mass of corridors, generator rooms and the standard operating/experimentation rooms. How about a room full of historic artefacts from Earth? What about some information on the aliens' background, mission or homeworld? Greater detail like this would've gone a long way to creating a more gripping experience. To their credit, the designers have put in a brief jaunt outside the ship which requires you to don a spacesuit but that, too, is ultimately disappointing.

There's a decent variety of items to collect on Mothership Zeta including alien crystals, wormfood and biogel, whilst the arsenal is largely made up of energy weapons and the frustratingly inaccurate drone cannon. The aliens themselves are simple, grey-like beings with a penchant for chattering gratingly in their native tongue. They're also extremely dull. If only the designers had included a better caste system, similar to that of the super mutants, then fighting the aliens would've been much more enthralling. There are a couple of original enemies to engage, but they too are pretty unremarkable.

The DLC does pick up slightly towards the end, but for the most part it is just too linear and repetitive. This is a shame as it could have been so much more. MothershipZeta is barely more enjoyable than Operation Anchorage, and that's only because it features a random samurai warrior wandering around wondering what the hell is going on. It will be a shame if Bethesda choose to wrap up their support for Fallout 3 with Mothership Zeta, especially given how strong Point Lookout was. Hopefully there's at least one more decent DLC in the works.