Virtual reality is always best when you have a chance of dying in real life. It makes it feel much less virtual and much more real when you know the lawnmower man will kill you for reals. It makes the agent’s desert eagle look even more intimidating when you know that your brain will fool your body into dying when you don’t dodge fast enough (and why don’t people just aim at the nuts when the agents do that dodgy thing?).
Operation anchorage puts you in that spot, matrix style. A new radio signal is sent out through the wasteland (sound familiar?) and if you heed its call, you fight your way through super mutants to a small outcast outpost. They need your help. Some one has to go through a VR simulation of the battle for Anchorage, Alaska, and beat it, to unlock a treasure trove of tech. Of course, you are the only one who can do it thanks to your pip-boy. You are warned that it is front line, heavy combat and if you die in the sim, you die in real life.
Agree to help, and with a change of clothes you enter the sim and into the battle. The fight begins with an opening level set in the mountains. The scenery is rather well done, although, contrary to popular belief, you cannot see Russia in the distance. In this level you must make your way to some artillery pieces that the chinese have taken over and are using to pound american lines. You must destroy them to help take the heat off the americans. Once thats done, you have a mission to accomplish. Three to be exact.
The set up is that you have to take out a couple objectives then rush the main chinese base. Once you finish that, you are congratulated, then booted out of the sim. Upon your return to the real world, the High Tech Armory is unlocked and the commander of the Outcast detachment tells you to take whatever you want. At this point a fight ensues and they all kill each other. Which is great for you, since you get all of their loot too. It’s a win all around.
So pros and cons? Well on the con side, you can’t replay the mission if you want to. I would have liked to, but then again, you can’t replay through any other quest once its finished, of course, so thats no big deal. Also, as you will see in my later reviews of the rest of the DLC, there are some design trends that seem to be rehashed for some of the other add ons.
As for the pros, you get alot of good XP vs the chinese. The gameplay has a few new features that add a couple cool features to the game, one of these being the limited command of NPC’s, to aid in the fight. Also, while playing the VR sim, you don’t heal or replenish ammo by the usual means. Instead you find health and ammo replenishing apparatus scattered along the way. This makes it feel like a fight to the next health/ammo drop, but its a nice departure from the need to worry about the limited supply of those things constantly. However, the real win is in the tech. Some of the stuff is game altering, and the rest is still worth caps.
This DLC is definitely worth downloading, just for the tech alone. There is also some cool back story and history revealed with this one. The only thing it doesn’t do is increase your level cap. You still max out at level 20 with this one. If you want to level higher than that, you have to also download Broken Steel, which will be my next topic. —RHL
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