I enjoy Fallout 3 mostly for its expansive and involving story and not so much its DLC, though when I am offered to test out some of the DLC I can’t pass it up! My good friend Molotov Cupcake offered Point Lookout to me to review and now I’m bringing you, the readers of Spawn Kill my thoughts on what is Bethesda’s fourth entry into the DLC chronicles that are for Fallout 3. Interested? Of course you are, so read on for my Point Lookout DLC review.

Point Lookout places players in the midst of a very depressing atmosphere, with danger at every turn. On my first exploration throughout the Point there were quite a few mysterious discoveries to make. Deep in the swamps you’re never sure what you’re going to run up against. For instance upon examination you will see anything from crashed planes, trashed hotel rooms, and even a trapper’s shack that any explorer characters will make good use of. If you enjoy looking around at all, this DLC provides more than enough content with which to satiate that urge. This is the most unsettling piece of Fallout 3 to explore so far in my opinion. It wasn’t strange to find skeletons in bathtubs or even evidence of foiled drug deals. Nothing sunshiney here so you can expect plenty of broodworthy situations to occur. There’s also plenty to kill.

The world is just very mysterious with lots of little things to find. There’s a crashed pilot who apparently died in an axe fight with the swampfolk. There’s a hotel room filled with skeletons and bones along with the pint-sized slasher mask in the bathtub. There’s a drug deal gone wrong in another room. I mentioned the trapper’s shack already. There’s just so much to find, that an explorer character will be well rewarded.

To reward that need to kill off something then you’ll be glad to see feral ghouls roaming the area, as well as sentry bots and loads of smugglers. The entire area seems to swarm and pulsate with enemies, lending a very dangerous feel.

Speaking of dangerous, the new weapons in Point Lookout aren’t really anything all that cool. Compared to what we saw in the past three choices, your options to slaughter with here pretty much pale in comparison. There are only really 5 new weapons to choose from, and in that 5 two of them you don’t really need to use that much because they don’t do a whole lot. These are the axe and shovel. They sound like they could do some good damage but I found them pretty useless. You have a couple new shotguns that do little damage to tougher enemies, a rifle that seems like a carbon copy of Lincoln’s Repeater, and lastly the Microwave Emitter. You’d assume that a microwave gun would be a pretty darn cool weapon to use, but in reality it’s nothing more than a boring ripoff of the plasma rifle. Yawn! I guess I can’t complain though since the weapons in previous DLC packs like The Pitt were pretty awesome to start with. I was still disappointed.

And those weapons are pretty useless when it comes to some enemies such as the swampfolk get get +35 to any damage that they do in regards to their surroundings that can’t be negated! No matter what you can’t stop this attack bonus when you face a tribal or swampfolk monster. I found this really frustrating since I was using a higher-level character who shouldn’t have trouble with these enemies and here I was dying at every turn! It’s very cheap and it really changed how much I enjoyed this DLC.

As far as what you’re actually doing in Point Lookout, you run around. A lot. The main quest is very much a disappointment that starts out with an explosive battle and then all you do from there is run errands from point A to point B. It’s very unimpressive then that you can find at least three other side quests that consist of gathering and ghoul shooting galleries that are more interesting and unique than the storyline behind Point Lookout. In all I found the actual “goings-on” within the game to be pretty mundane except for some unmarked quests that are scattered for you to try and find. It would have been cool to see more of those, because this package was pretty lukewarm as it is.

Point Lookout is an okay addition to the Fallout 3 DLC collection. I have played and enjoyed each one since they came out and I have to say that so far I have liked it the least and it feels more like Bethesda trying to keep the cool pumping along and to keep good content being delivered but striking out. I hope that Mothership Zeta improves where Point Lookout disappointed.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - The atmosphere is creepy and interesting. - Should give you a few hours of good gametime. - It’s fun since it lengthens your Fallout playtime but it isn’t standout.	Doin’ It RONG: - Boring new weapons. - Enemies have unfair advantages. - There isn’t a whole lot of meat to the gameplay.
FINAL SCORE: 6 / 10

This review of Fallout 3: Point Lookout was written by Issiah, a guest writer! Thanks for contributing!

Tags: DLC, Fallout 3, Guest Writer, Point Lookout, Review, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.