Last week Bethesda released the first of three content packs for the post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3. Entitled “Operation Anchorage” it promised to somehow hurl you into the past to relive an important battle in the liberation of Anchorage Alaska from invading Chinese communist forces (it seems Sarah Palin’s worries about the Russians were unfounded).

I’m here to tell you that if you love Fallout 3 and just can’t wait to get your hands on more (or haven’t played the game yet at all), it’s definitely worth shelling out the cost for the content pack as it’s an interesting experience that provides you with more game time. If you’ve since bored of the game and have moved on to other things I wouldn’t advise it, since it doesn’t add any new features, simply a new quest and a handful of new content. Still interested? Read on.

Although it adds a new location you discover the beginning of the content pack quest in a way that they’ve used before. In traveling the wastes your pip boy will pick up on a radio signal. As you might expect, it’s calling for reinforcements. Going there on your map you will encounter the outcasts from the Brotherhood of Steel. Despite their slightly shabbier-looking power armor they’re no less arrogant and condescending. Help them out with some centaurs and super mutants (or just stand by and watch if you’re not quite tough enough yet since the Outcasts seem in no need of reinforcements) and they’ll invite you back to their headquarters due to your pip-boy.

Once inside they’ll brief you on why they want you: inside their base is a substantial armory that lies behind a locked door. Unfortunately the means of opening it is beyond them for in order to unlock this door someone needs to go into a simulation pod and complete its program. Of course you need a pip-boy to do it, and there is a substantial risk as the pod’s safety measures are disabled, meaning that if you die in the simulation you flatline in the ‘real world’. Of course that’s not too much of an issue since it’s just a video game.

You are of course free to refuse, but where’s the fun in that? When you inevitably accept they’ll give you a neural interface suit and you’ll enter the pod. You’ll find yourself on the rocky coast of Alaska in the company of a single other soldier, who will conveniently remind you of the objectives (blowing up some artillery guns) and head off on his own. Unfortunately for anyone fond of the charge-in with guns blazing approach your only weapons are a trench knife and a silenced 10mm pistol. With a little bit of sneaking around you’ll be able to eliminate the small handful of soldiers along the way. Unfortunately due to the ‘video game’ idea behind it the enemy corpses disappear in a few seconds, and even if you get close enough to them you’re unable to loot better weapons from them.

As you work your way through the simulation health comes in the form of ‘health dispensers’ which look like red propane tanks and ammunition is dispensed by green bins, with the exception of grenades and mines which are plentiful enough to encourage you to use them. You’ll also discover briefcases, often behind locked yet easily opened doors. These contain intelligence data and if you collect all ten of them you’ll get a bonus reward. Destroying the guns is fairly straightforward, quite literally: though you can go in shooting, sneak around and lay traps or what have you but there’s generally only one physical path. After you destroy the guns it’s over.

Or maybe not. You reload in a US Military camp and are instructed that you’re going to assemble a strike force and destroy several objectives. You can assemble your team from up to three members, including three humans with different arsenals or two robots. Choose your team and your own weapons and then you can head out. Eventually after accomplishing all your objectives and eventually defeating the leader of the Chinese forces you’ll be booted back out into the ‘real world’ and after one final twist you’ll have your pick of the armory’s contents, some of which are normal items, and others are unique items that you saw virtual copies of in the simulation.