I know. Most of you were probably hoping to see a full review of the latest DLC, Broken Steel, that hit today but alas your intrepid writer hasn’t quite made it there yet but plans to have the full review done this week so stay tuned for that. Being that I originally owned Fallout 3 for the PS3, I was a little late coming to the party on the Xbox for this game so that’s why it’s taken me so long to get this out but I’m glad that I decided to get Fallout for the Xbox specifically for the DLC. Operation Anchorage was the 1st in the 3 planned expansions for the Xbox 360 and Windows based platforms.

Operation Anchorage begins with a radio broadcast from the Brotherhood Outcasts seeking help in acquiring some advanced military tools that are locked away. To accomplish this task, you enter into a virtual reality simulation of the US led forces as they liberate Alaska from the invading Chinese Army.Once in the simulation, you’re completely stripped of all items except for the ones that are tied to the simulation. This can make for a tough start to the game because you’re only equipped with a hand gun and a stealth boy. From the beginning, the “Reds” heavily outnumber you as you try to infiltrate a Chinese base in the Alaskan mountains. When that’s done, you’re moved to another locale later in the year and are tasked with 4 different operations.

At the end of it all, you get access to a variety of new items which are pretty cool:

Gauss Rifle
Trench Knife
Chinese Stealth Armor
Winterized T-51b Power Armor
Jingwei’s Shock Sword
Neural Interface Suit
Outcast Specialist Robe
And a special perk: Covert Ops – obtained by gathering 10 Intel Suitcases in the simulation

While I enjoyed Anchorage for a variety of things such as, seeing some of the events that would inevitably lead to Nuclear War, the extra weapons and new locations, it did feel slightly out of place and would probably have been better suited for a complete prequel to Fallout (which is something I hope to see sometime).

For only 800MS points, you get somewhere to the neighbourhood of 3-4 more hours of gameplay but very little to none of it takes place in the Capital Wasteland. The environments look fantastic and the level of detail is consistent with the the rest of the game, the new weapons are fun to use and the mini story is fun(I still think it should be part of an all out prequel). Would I recommend this to other gamers? Absolutely. Any extra time playing this game is a good thing. I have to admit that I enjoyed The Pitt better and I have extremely high expectations for Broken Steel which I hope to get into tonight when I get home.

Feed Your Console gives Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage: 8 out of 10