Leveling Down

Fallout 3′s Operation Anchorage – really worth $10?

cmfl3x asked me a little while back if I was looking forward to the Fallout 3 downloadable content. He seemed pretty excited about it and I felt bad telling him but no, I didn’t share in his excitement. In fact, while there are games I may fully enjoy, like Ninja Gaiden II or Fallout 3, I’ll never buy their DLC. To this day, I have not paid for downloadable content for any traditional game, and I don’t plan on ever doing so. Why? Because I don’t believe in what it stands for. Obviously if downloadable content is free, such as Burnout Paradise’s motorcycles and whatnot, or BioShock’s extra plasmids, then sure – it is always welcome. It’s when it starts getting charged for that it gets on my nerves.

I actually wrote up an entire article just knocking on it, but then felt it may come off as too much of a rant so I held off. I figure that if I could turn it into a discussion topic with cmfl3x, it’d be a little more civil.

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Players will probably spend half their time playing online and the other half just creating characters

I ended up picking up Soulcalibur IV last Thursday and sank several hours into it this past weekend. The thing about fighting games are that they’re simple enough in content that I can write a review for them without “completing” everything in the game. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I would get the game or not because I wasn’t quite happy with the single player feature. Against my better judgment (I guess the hype and advertising got to me), I ended up picking up the game and have been disappointed. For those of you that are more competitive with fighting games, you’ll appreciate the online play but I think I’ve turned into a casual fighting game fan at best. There isn’t enough for me to do in the long run with the game but maybe play it online against my brother from time to time. Still, worth a look if you’re interested but check out my review to be sure.

The Good:
- excellent presentation
- functional online play
- character customization system

The Bad:
- not enough of an update to feel like a true sequel
- boring bare-bones single player
- character customization system feels comprehensive yet constrained at the same time

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