Broken Steel succeeds because it caters directly to Fallout 3′s central plot without weakening it. There are no diversions or trips to less-important locales in this add-on—players are brought back to the Capital Wasteland, continuing the quest that led them out of Vault 101 in the first place.

Truly, Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt were fleeting crescendos meant to build up to Broken Steel. It’s just a shame it took two tries on Bethesda Softworks’ part to get everything right.

Before Broken Steel, Fallout 3′s major flaw was its ending. After successfully pumping fresh water into the parched landscapes of the Capital Wasteland the game cruelly fades to black. The decision makes little sense considering Bethesda’s track record with its Elder Scrolls series—in the games, players could continue exploring the surrounding world at their leisure. Thankfully, Broken Steel rectifies the disappointing ending and fulfills players’ innumerable hours of investment in the main plot.

The waters of life return to the ruins of D.C.

Players can now see the pay-off of chasing their digital father’s dream to offer fresh water to the people of the wastes. Barrels upon barrels of “Aqua Pura” are carted out to the surrounding communities by way of Brahmin caravans. No need to rely on a voice-over movie to fill-in the blanks anymore.

After finishing Fallout 3′s main quest, players wake up under the care of the Brotherhood of Steel and Elder Lyons. The aging leader explains that two weeks have passed since Project Purity came to fruition, and Enclave forces, outside of a few pockets of resistance, have been largely dealt with. For once in a Fallout 3 add-on there’s no distress signal to tune into—the new content begins right away.

Broken Steel’s first mission takes players to one of the remaining Enclave strongholds outside of the regular wasteland map. The combat starts immediately with full units of both the Brotherhood and the Enclave exchanging an array of bullets, beams and bombs. Along for the destructive ride is that shining beam of Democratic pride Liberty Prime, who shows up to vaporize what it (always) thinks are Communist Chinese forces.

Unfortunately for the Brotherhood’s robotic super weapon, an Enclave orbital strike makes short work of the propaganda machine. Funnily enough, Prime’s decapitated head stops just short of the player’s feet to gasp out its poignant last words: “Death is a preferable alternative to Communism.”

Thus begins the main quest of Broken Steel: find the Enclave command center responsible for ordering the missile strikes. This is how players end up in the brand new (and final area) map of Adams Air Force Base, reachable by a tram system located underneath the White House.

Battle at the Adams Air Force Base–the Vertibirds lose.

The Air Force base is a sizable chunk of land, though it’s mainly a bunch of hangars and fortified Enclave positions. If anything, Bethesda could have done more than offer an extremely wide and flat section of land. It’s also easy to fight through thanks to usable artillery strikes and tons of cover.

However, actually reaching Adams Air Force Base isn’t a simple proposition. Broken Steel is a difficult piece of downloadable content in most other areas thanks to new enemies like the Enclave Hellfire Troopers and Feral Ghoul Reavers, who aren’t pushovers even at higher levels. The Reavers in particular are quite challenging, but it’s a welcome shift in difficulty from otherwise being able to kill most enemies in one to two rounds of V.A.T.S.

Broken Steel’s main story, lasting around six to seven hours depending on the player, is a strong addition to Fallout 3′s core plot. At it’s most basic, Broken Steel is not much more complicated than letting players become Rambo, essentially going all-out to get revenge on the Enclave; even so, it’s a perfect fit with story threads left unwoven in the regular game.

The last mission objective in the DLC is to storm the Enclave’s gigantic Mobile Crawler, and what a finale it is. Special squads of soldiers, numerous Vertibirds and deadly turrets guard the outside and inside of the base. The interior of the crawler offers a vast treasure trove of supplies to plunder for those who can carry the load–scrounging has always been one of the most satisfying parts of the Fallout experience, after all.

Once players have shot their way to the control center and discovered the computer used to order the orbital strikes, they are once again confronted with difficult choices. One payload of missiles remains, and there are several targets to choose from, including the Citadel. As always, each choice has its consequences. But really, who hasn’t thought of bombing those righteous Brotherhood bastards?

Tesla Cannons don't take no mess

Broken Steel is enjoyable because it returns players to the Capital Wasteland and adds content without changing the overall cosmetics. The new weapons, the Tesla Cannon in particular, are superb. Enclave Vertibirds aren’t at all safe from a projectile beam of electricity, but it’s curious that players don’t receive XP from destroying the aircraft. Unfortunately any additional armor selections are quite lacking outside of the new Enclave units’ equipment.

The new level cap of 30 introduces some fantastic perks. “Puppies!” prevents Dogmeat from really ever dying as his offspring spawn outside Vault 101 to take his place. It’s little additions like that which show Bethesda’s commitment to improving their game. Another useful perk, “Quantum Chemist,” converts every 10 Nuka Colas into one Nuka Cola Quantum—a very desirable option for high-level explosives experts.

On the surface not much has changed in Broken Steel, but that’s what makes it Fallout 3′s greatest DLC. It’s all about preserving the feel of the Capital Wasteland while opening up an endless story for players and their personal Lone Wanderers. The quests, weapons, armor and level cap are just bonuses. And while it may sound unfortunate to have to pay $10 for the simple luxury of continuing characters’ journeys, Broken Steel is worth it.

Hopefully Broken Steel will be Bethesda’s model for future Fallout 3 content. It might have taken the development team a few attempts to deliver a quality gameplay experience in-line with the best parts of Fallout 3 proper, but what matters most is gamers and fans finally have an add-on worthy of the Fallout name.

Now if we can just get Liberty Prime up and running again, that would be great.

Recommended for:

• The best Fallout 3 DLC Microsoft points can buy; a significant value as well over Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt
• Being able to play past the original game’s ending
• Fun weapons and entertaining quests
• By buying this, hopefully you’ll encourage Bethesda to make better and better DLC packs for Fallout 3

Not Recommended for:

• $10 for new content still sounds high to you
• Fallout 3 doesn’t mean anything to you…you savage!
• Low-level characters not close to the end quest really don’t need to purchase this content until they’re at that point

Read our policy on reviews here.

This time around, Bethesda Softworks ditches the virtual reality pods and simulation gimmicks seen in Operation: Anchorage; instead, the developers have crafted their interpretation of a post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in the process manage to create a locale as equally nightmarish as any seen in the Capital Wasteland.

It’s a satisfying return to the best parts of the Fallout 3 world, and despite The Pitt’s technical flaws, it’s a significantly more impressive experience than Anchorage.

Just like in the last DLC, players begin The Pitt’s content by receiving a broadcast distress signal from an unknown source. After reaching the source of the message, the DLC introduces its quest-giving main character, Wernher. This mysterious new character recruits the player into saving his people–slaves forced to work for Ashur, the boss in charge of the Pitt’s foundries and building projects–by infiltrating the slavers’ town and stirring up some trouble. To do that, the eye patch-wearing rogue asks for help stealing a rumored cure to the genetic mutations running rampant across the slaver-occupied town.

Precioussssss…

Although Pittsburgh wasn’t nuked during the war, 200 years of three separate rivers drumping in other cities’ radiation mixed with an incessant cloud of industrial toxins have created a special kind of degeneration for humans in the Pitt. When exposed long enough, people begin to morph into “Trogs,” which look like Fallout’s version of Gollum. Trogs are also the new Super Mutants of The Pitt, replacing them as the main flavor of enemy, and it’s actually a welcome change.

The story and setting are clear tonal shifts from Anchorage’s vision of American wartime prosperity, and though the plot is still razor-thin (it’s hard to believe even evil characters would care enough about a town of slaves for a few lousy caps), players are likely to accept The Pitt’s content because it feels like Fallout 3.

Pollution's never been so pretty

If Operation: Anchorage was a serene landscape of blues and whites, The Pitt is a hellhole colored with oranges, reds and yellows–both inside and out, Pittsburgh’s ruins look like one continuous foundry pumping rust, blood and smog into the air. It’s a perplexing (and cool) sight to gaze upon active industrial smoke stacks in what’s supposed to be a de-industrialized waste of a world.

Reaching the new area is as simple as activating a railroad handcart located outside of a train tunnel, though players are warned they will be stuck in the Pitt until the main quest is finished–a nearly five hour commitment. Travelers will want to be sure they’re ready for the Pitt before taking off. Once inside, Wernher informs players that their equipment will be temporarily taken from them. Wernher does offer to hide either a gun or knife on the Lone Wanderer (don’t ask where), so players won’t be entirely unarmed.

The first and last time you'll see the word "welcome" in The Pitt

Getting to the slaver camp requires traversing one of the more impressive pieces of architecture in The Pitt: a bridge leading into the ruined city. And although it’s technically nothing out of the ordinary, the haunting “Welcome to The Pitt” sign along with the husks of cars, dozens of frag mines and a new type of rabid dog make for a superb introduction to the new content. The experience continues to be largely solid throughout, though the occasional technical problems hamper an otherwise more-improved example of DLC.

Twice during the first mission alone the game froze in the middle of using V.A.T.S., and it crashed again a handful of times during various loading screens. It’s been widely noted that The Pitt had significant problems at release, but many seem to persist.

At the time of this review, a few textures and random geometries noticeably stick through buildings and the odd clipping of character models appear here and there. That said, The Pitt is still a fantastic-looking piece of DLC thanks to Bethesda tweaking the engine’s lighting effects. The characters may still look rather lifeless, off-colored and poorly textured, but gamers have been dealing with Bethesda’s style of modeling since Oblivion.

What The Pitt does best is adhere to the example set by Fallout 3′s main content: force players to make tough choices and give them ambiguous answers. Without spoiling it for readers, the “cure” referred to by Wernher and his accomplice Midea isn’t just a simple item to steal. In fact, if players don’t listen to some key holotapes they might believe they’re making the right decision, only to regret it later. The Pitt is by no means a masterpiece of emotional storytelling, but it does a much better job of providing complex options to problems and offering realistic consequences. But, who really cares about “feelings” when there are things to kill, right? Right.

The Auto Axe: A favorite of the post-apocalyptic Tim "The Toolman" Taylor

The most impressive piece of weaponry found in The Pitt is the Auto Axe, which is basically what a mad scientist would create if he fused a lawnmower and power saw together. Non-melee characters might not replace their projectile weapons with the brutal Auto Axe, but weed-eating a few dozen raiders and Trogs to death is grotesquely satisfying nonetheless. Unfortunately, no type of additional damage modeling for characters made it in into the DLC, as limbs still come off like they do in Fallout 3 proper. It would have been a great time to introduce more complex dismemberment animations with such an excessive weapon available.

Clothing in The Pitt receives better tending to than in Anchorage, as there are 18 new wearable pieces ranging from headgear to body armor. It’s great that characters have more opportunity to explot the “role-play” aspect of Fallout 3′s RPG side, whereas before the costume choices felt limited to a few decent options that weren’t post-apocalyptic belly shirts.

Perhaps the Pitt wouldn’t be this enjoyable if it wasn’t preceded by Operation: Anchorage’s weaker content. Still, on its own The Pitt simply works because it’s a faithful extension of the Fallout 3 world’s gritty fantasy.

With a larger and more interesting area to explore, better quests to complete and an overall impressive experience to be had, it’s not hard to recommend The Pitt, even when taking Broken Steel’s significantly more robust additions into consideration.

Players with Broken Steel will still get a lot out of The Pitt. Outside of experience points, weapons and armor–equipment useful even in Broken Steel–The Pitt’s quests, while separate, compliment Broken Steel’s if for no other reason than they both act like Fallout titles are supposed to. And that’s exactly what any DLC should have done from the beginning, anyway.

Recommended for:

• Those burned by the other DLC’s content; The Pitt steps things up significantly
• It’s Fallout 3 presented in a new light, and that’s what makes it work
• New weapons, armor and a view of somewhere other than the Capital Wasteland
• One interesting quest involving a so-called “cure” for the Trog mutations

Not Recommended for:

• There are still bugs, and mileage will vary from gamer to gamer. Still, make sure you don’t rely on autosaves–corruption does happen
• Some shoddy design here, with textures being out of place, buildings clipping into each other and so on
• Gamers on a budget that have to choose between this or Broken Steel. The Pitt’s almost as good, but this isn’t so much a negative element as a practical judgment call

Read our policy on reviews here.

Somehow, even after three DLC releases, Vault 77 still isn't in the game

This weekend we’ll be running a three-part Fallout 3 DLC review feature in honor of the newly released Broken Steel, the third and supposedly final exclusive pack for the Xbox 360 and PC.

All three reviews will be self-contained and cover a specific add-on, but we’ll also determine whether or not Broken Steel’s increased level cap of 30 impacts the relevance of the other two expansions’ content.

Look for our first two reviews to hit this Saturday and Sunday, with the final one dropping on Monday.

And yes, what Ron Perlman says about war never changing applies to our dates as well.

• Saturday, May 9th: Operation: Anchorage — Are the FPS-leanings and winterized weaponry worth the rather short playtime? Take a break from your hangover woes this Saturday to read our answer.

• Sunday, May 10th: The Pitt — A vicious ax that’s part chainsaw, all murder? Check. One pointless collect-a-thon for an achievement? Check. Some bang for your Microsoft space buck? Visit the site on Sunday to find out.

• Monday, May 11th: Broken Steel — Liberty Prime, everyone’s favorite Commie-hating robot, is back for an appearance, and Dogmeat can’t really die anymore. This is supposed to be the biggest and best Fallout 3 add-on yet, but that’s our job to decide come Monday.