The Pitt DLC Game Review–Not Quite Self Explanatory
Fresh, hot, and recent– it’s the expansion for Fallout 3 that I’ve been waiting for since it came out: it’s called The Pitt, and it’s easily the most story driven expansion yet.
For those of you not already familiar with Fallout 3, and heaven help you because this is easily one of the best games ever, you are a lone wanderer in a post-apocalyptic war zone doing various things to help the world or help yourself. And in this case, you’ll have that same dichotomy as you venture into the ruins of what used to be Pittsburgh. Yes, I know that’s something of a contradiction in terms because Pittsburgh in its normal state looks something like a ruin anyway, but that’s just me being snarky. Anyway, once you’ve downloaded this particular expansion you’ll receive a radio transmission directing you to head north. Once you reach the designated meeting point, you’ll find a man in the midst of a fight for his life against three raiders. But these are not ordinary raiders—these are subhuman wastes of flesh from a settlement of woe known as The Pitt (see, Pittsburgh? The Pitt? Get it?) who are using large quantities of slave labor to rebuild the city’s steel milling industry and use it to advance their own goals. You of course will have the option of freeing the slaves or siding with the raiders, as is fairly standard for this sort of game.
As I said previously I’ve been waiting for this expansion since the original game came out– I even went so far as to get a fully repaired and fully armed gatling laser, because I had every intention of walking into that town of human filth, cleaning it off the face of the earth in a shower of heavily charged ions . Or possibly protons–physics is not my strong suit. And picking the carcass clean of every scrap I could sell for a bottle cap, of course– I considered that my just reward for killing that many raiders.
So why was I disappointed?
Maybe I built it up too much in my mind in advance. Maybe my visions of frenzy were just too much for any one game to provide. Maybe I was irked by the fact that I’d have to work around slaves; no wandering in and blasting everything in sight, no sir, not for this boy… there might be collateral damage. Maybe I was really irked by the fact that I would temporarily be a slave to get into The Pitt.
By the time I got into that particular expansion, I was carrying enough armament to sink an entire battleship by myself, possibly even sink Rivet City itself. I had my gatling lase, I had the Gauss rifle from the Operation: Anchorage run, I had my alien blaster, and I had maybe fifty raiders to shoot.
And the looting opportunities were not the greatest, either. While I DID get some sweet new guns in the form of the Metal Blaster (which is basically just Protectron’s Gaze for laser rifle, sweet on all counts and blows Biwwy’s freaking Wazer Wifle right off the MAP) and of course, The Mauler (a refined version of something called an “auto axe”, which is basically a sawblade made from a hubcap mounted on a stick with a gas throttle), I found myself downright disappointed that there wasn’t A. more to use these sweet new weapons on and B. more places to loot dry. Half the fun of Fallout 3 was wandering into houses and such and turning them upside down in a quest for bottle caps and such. There just weren’t that many places in The Pitt, aside from the raiders’ quarters and an abandoned apartment building, which irritated me. I’m in PITTSBURGH, for crying out loud. There’s GOT to be more loot than this in PITTSBURGH!
Ah, but then, I’m looking at this the wrong way. The Pitt is merely PART of Fallout 3. It isn’t a new game…it’s just a piece. And as a piece, it adds a definite flavor to Fallout 3 that’s plenty enjoyable. And maybe if you play The Pitt first, you’ll have a lot more to use those fantastic new weapons on. But either way, The Pitt will provide plenty of extra fun to your copy of Fallout 3 for just a few dollars more.