The Ramblings of a Grumpy Adolescent

Fallout 3 is unrivalled in the quantity and depth of DLC its put out thus far, putting out new content every couple of months since launch. Sure Oblivion had a lot of DLC but most of these added just an extra building or even the shameful horse armour, all of Fallout 3’s DLC has offered large new environments and compelling stories and quests.

The latest batch of Fallout 3 DLC came out today under the name Point Lookout. It is set in a small stereotypical southern town in America just down the coast from Washington DC where the main game take place and is accessed by the player through travelling on a steamboat, and unlike with previous DLC the player can come and go from this area as they please. The area that awaits you a short ferry ride away appears much more dark and sinister the Capital Wastelands you may be accustomed to, with the environment swapped from dusty plains and scrap piles to sprawling swamps and grand mansions. In the previous DLC unique creatures for the Vault Dweller to be pitted against have been added and Point Lookout is no different having gone more your hillbilly-mutations, of which one can be seen in the picture below.

Speaking of the enemies, one of the first things I noticed upon playing the DLC was that there appears to have been a steep incline in the difficulty of your characters foes, I often found myself having to reload numerous times to take down each individual enemy.

The quest arrangement of this DLC is different to that of the previous instalments and returns to the form of the original game with there being multiple quests that can run simultaneously as opposed to a central story quest. This allows the player more choice of what they do in the game then having waypoint after waypoint thrown at you.

The world of Point Lookout is of similar size to the previous DLC (read: small) but there is by far many more locations to find and loot. I have both positive and negative views of these locations. On the positive side the locations are incredibly atmospheric, and the constant fog and many voodoo totems scattered around make you feel like you are playing through a horror film rather than Fallout 3. However on the downer, a fair few of the locations are cave complexes that look like they are ripped straight out of Oblivion; can this really be a bad thing though? Oblivion was hugely successful after all.

New weapons and items can be added to the Vault Dweller’s arsenal as seen in previous DLC with at least 3 new core weapons added including the double-barrelled shotgun, the lever-arch rifle and for those that favour getting up close and personnel the axe and it’s rare to look in a container now and not find a Confederate hat. In addition to these, the so-called “legendary” weapon equivalents of these weapons have been added with me having found one already.

During my time playing this earlier there was a period where everything seemed to glitch up at once with a NPC becoming stuck within the body of a fallen enemy, doors opened but did not allow the character to pass through and also unable to open many containers, unfortunately this resulted in me having to load a previous save. Hopefully this will not be another glitch ridden DLC for Bethesda and just a one time occurrence.

If you have downloaded the previous Fallout 3 add-ons and enjoyed them you will not be disappointed with Point Lookout, if you have not previously downloaded any of the extra content for Fallout 3 don’t expect to get anything that will come close to rivalling the main game but if you have played the main quests to death and are looking to extend your time in the Fallout universe the DLC is a good way to do that although I would have to recommend that you go for the Broken Steel DLC which raises the level cap as well as adding fresh content to the game.