The Shitt

As can be seen on the bar to the right and as I have mentioned, Metal Gear Solid 4 is my personal pick for best game of 2008. The stealth play was great and engaging, as were the first play-through where I decided guns solved the answers to all questions. A very--and I mean very--close runner up was Fallout 3. I loved The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the thought of Oblivion with guns and post-apocalyptic goodness excited me to no end. I waited countless hours at the local game store--not even my store, mind you--to get a pre-street dated copy as their shipments came sooner in the week, but later in the day. When Operation: Anchorage came out, I gobbled it up right before my 360 red-ringed. And now, the latest DLC has been released and re-released because of glitching and I couldn't wait to dive in.


The Pitt takes you out of the wastes of Washington DC and puts you in the rubble of Pittsburgh. As with Operation: Anchorage, the quest line is started with a radio signal you picked up via your PipBoy, which while it seems to repeat a few times, it is infinitely better than the Oblivion method of adding DLC quests by "A messenger brought you a deed to a place your long-lost relative left to you." But you find yourself at the very top of the map buying some slaves, taking their clothes, and then taking a train cart to Pittsburgh which is now known as The Pitt and posing as a slave so you can eventually find a cure for radiation poisoning. It all makes sense in the game, I swear.

The game is still fantastic, as always, and the new DLC shares all the good graphics, writing, humor, and style of the rest of the original Fallout 3. Length-wise, it only took me about five hours and I could have done it significantly sooner if I didn't spend so much time looking for all one hundred steel ingots. Speaking of which, I am the kind of gamer achievements were made for, but I hate collection achievements. Twenty bobbleheads was a pain enough, but one hundred steel ingots was just stupid and unfair, even though they were all in the same area. But anyway, the length of the DLC was a bit longer than Operation: Anchorage, but not by much, and it has the added benefit of being able to be returned to at any time throughout the game despite what ending you choose. And the scenery of Pittsburgh, while doesn't offer the vastness of the Capital Wasteland, does give an appreciated change. But, as with most games you've beaten the hell out of, once it's over, it's over.

The DLC is definitely worth the 800 Microsoft Points ($10), and I would suggest it to anyone who has the game and Xbox Live. Now I just wish I had some MS Points left over so I could download Don't Stop Believin' for Rock Band this coming week.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor