Consolation Prize

I can quite easily lose myself in Fallout 3. Happily immersing myself for hours at a time concerned only with the adventures of the lone wanderer and not worrying about real world stimulus - like the need to eat and drink. However, there always comes a point where you have to decide that enough is enough, it’s time to move onto other games, and this was the case a few weeks ago as I left my companions Dogmeat and Fawkes to fend for themselves. I knew I would be back at some point, and Operation Anchorage provides the perfect excuse to journey back into the Capitol Wasteland.

Operation Anchorage is the first of a trio of planned downloadable content from Bethesda to be sequentially followed up by the forthcoming The Pitt and Broken Steel. The new content fits in seamlessly with the existing lore of the game, and is best viewed as a side quest – albeit a fairly large one. It does however at least provide some welcome relief from the irradiated wasteland, swapping the desolate nuclear blasted landscape for the barren and frozen vistas of Alaska via the wonders of virtual reality simulator that has been unearthed by a group of Brotherhood of Steel outcasts.

The simulator is where you, the lone wanderer, fit into the equation. The outcasts have been unable to complete the simulator missions in order to gain access to the technology locked behind the associated vault. As the envious owner of a PIP Boy 3000, you’re able to interface with the simulator and enter the virtual world, complete the tasks therein, and as a reward get a percentage of the loot found behind the reinforced vault doors.

The simulation is based upon the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska, from Chinese invaders by the United States Army. Upon entering you’ll find that you’ve been stripped of all your kit and are now wearing a set of winterised combat armour with only a silenced 9mm and a knife for company - although all your skills and perks do at least remain intact. The game play is quite different from the norm you may have come to expect from Fallout 3. There’s no role-playing as such, conversations are limited, and there’s no need to loot bodies for weapons, health, or ammunition as all that you need to survive within this reality can be found, or dispensed, at convenient intervals throughout each mission.

Whether or not you rate Operation Anchorage really depends upon your stance on combat in Fallout 3. The content is, without a doubt, completely combat orientated – it is a military simulator after all. The crux of each mission is really just about getting to an objective point to disrupt the enemy; whether the aim is to destroy some artillery positions, sabotage a tank facility, or to deactivate a sonic field that causes havoc with T51b power armour, the net result is that along the way you will be shooting at a lot of communist Chinese soldiers who don’t really care for casual conversation.

There are some attempts to diversify the game and add some tactical decision making into the simulator, like the ability to choose squad members from predefined types, but as you can quite easily call upon “reinforcements” when a team member has gone to silicon heaven, then these elements don’t really add much to the experience – the men are just convenient cannon fodder.

Operation Anchorage provides a nice little distraction for the four or so hours it takes to complete, and as a boon there’s some pretty decent kit at the end of the quest when you finally emerge from the cocoon of the simulator. It may have got a fairly lukewarm reception, and it’s debatable whether it’s worth the 800 points asking price, but I genuinely enjoyed my sojourn to Alaska. At least it’s no Horse Armour.

Operation Anchorage costs 800 Microsoft Points (6.80 GBP / 9.30 EUR / 10.00 USD) and is 369 MB to download.

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