Download This #5

There are some great DLC packs coming out now and our series of Download This continues this week with just two of the DLC packs that you can nab. First up is the really awesome Fallout 3 DLC: Mothership Zeta.

Bethesda have been making these packs better and better, hot on the heels of Point Lookout this DLC is solid. It's bound to be of an interest to those who are looking to explore the more alien side of Fallout 3 and introduces a bunch of new weapons and items, including the most useful: Alien Epoxy, a gel like substance that repairs weapons like there's no tomorrow. Very cool for getting the Alien Blaster and other alien toys back to full strength.

Set aboard a giant Mothership, known as Zeta, you are abducted and then experimented on (probed) until you escape and have to explore, kill alien scum and turn their weapons back on them. What's great about this pack is that it introduces high powered and fun items into Fallout 3 as well as new armour/clothes and suit options. Whilst Mothership Zeta isn't immediately as satisfying as Point Lookout, the stark interior alien corridors and sparse decoration are a welcome change from the blasted wasteland and wreckage of Fallout 3's main game.

There are NPCs to interact with and things to do, some tasks can be completed in any order...but there's not as much free roaming exploration as the other pack. This isn't really a limitation since it's only to be expected as part of the claustrophobic corridors of an alien ship orbiting from miles above the Earth, just don't expect to be able to explore every nook and cranny of Zeta as you play the story.

All in all, the pack is better than Operation Anchorage and whilst the story side of it isn't as complex and intriguing as some of the earlier DLC and main game missions, it's still a decent addition and rounds off the Fallout 3 experience for a reasonable amount of msp.

800 to be exact.

Two months later and Volition have released Demons of the Badlands for Red Faction: Guerilla. This DLC stars Samanya and focuses on her ties with the Marauder faction. If you haven't learned this by now, then you should probably stop reading the article and finish the game! Demons makes you use a new save and is set in the past, in the Mariner Valley and has new weapons, vehicles and new side-missions to undertake as well as a completely new storyline based on Sam's time with the Marauders.

You'll learn a lot of prehistory to the game and Sam is a more approachable, likable character than that of Alec Mason. Sam must help her faction free themselves from the EDF oppression and the missions are structured just like those in the core game. Destroy a bunch of key targets and do jobs to lower control, take story mission, and rinse and repeat. It worked fine in the main game so there's no need to change the formula at all. The main story here is set 20 or so years before events that took Alec into the Red Faction and as a result the new weapons and vehicles are not accessible in the main game once you complete the DLC. Just like the Lost and the Damned for GTA IV.

In many ways the new missions and Marauder Actions are better than the core game, there's a lot of variety and the new timed challenges are viciously hard in places. Try doing Chain Reaction at the Pro Time to see what we mean. THQ assured us it was possible and even passed on a few tips, serious gamers only should apply for those Pro Time challenges.

The new DLC pack also allows you to earn some more achievement points.

At 800 points it is definitely worth the download and adds/extends the Red Faction: Guerrilla experience. It is the first of three planned DLC packs and we can't wait to see what THQ and Volition have in store for us next time.