Besides a computer simulation that took you up into the cold of Alaska, fans of Fallout 3 have had their adventures confined to the Washington, DC area…until now. When an escaped slave comes looking for a warrior to free his people, it's off to Pittsburgh (now called The Pitt) to lend a helping hand. Is a visit to the land of steel worth your hard earned money?

Welcome To The Pitt

Much like how the first DLC opened, a message will come across your screen telling you of a new radio station, which will then point you towards a man near the very top of your map, where then after a quick quest on the already existing Fallout 3 map, it's off to The Pitt you go.

The greatest thing The Pitt has going for it is its story, which has you going undercover as a slave into this completely foreign territory, no weapons or armor to help you that you've amassed through the game, and it's up to you – with a little help from some other slaves – to find a way to come face-to-face with the man in charge and steal the cure needed to save the slaves from the mutation turning them into Trogs and help give them their freedom in the process.

The story has several points of interest, including a rather fun Gladiator-esque fight in an arena, as well as the ending of the story, which is one of the first times in the game I really had to think, "Hmm, what's the good ending?" Instead of clear black and white decisions, Fallout 3's The Pitt really makes you think about the greater picture and analyze those choices carefully. What happens when fighting for the right thing might not be so good in the end? The final decision goes a long way towards showing that every choice in life is one of gray. Also, for the first time, I managed to get some Bad Karma for my actions – that's how gray the finale of the DLC really is.

Players can finish the game in about two sittings (or in other words maybe two to three hours of game time at best), which frankly isn't all that great. I could understand the small map and short time of the first DLC for it being a simulation, but here you're given a whole new city – Pittsburgh – and there just isn't a whole lot of area to explore or things to do. The longest quest in the game, for instance, has you playing "Where's Waldo" with steel ingots that are littered about one area of the game. You only need to find 10 to move along, but there are 100 of these buggers scattered around and they are hard to find. Grabbing them all unlocks an achievement and you get special weapons and armor when you hand in ten each time, but I never found more than like 60 and that was after searching a great deal. I've heard turning in all 100 nets you some of the best armor in the game, but it just doesn't seem worth it. The rest of the game is go from point-A to point-B and then the next thing you know the game is over.

The Pitt itself is one of the most visually stunning areas in all of Fallout 3, so it sucks that it wasn't used more efficiently. The Pitt is even more Mad Max-esque than Fallout 3's Washington, DC already is, as it's filled with slaves, raiders dressed in all manner of pieced together armor, giant towering statues of metal, fallen girders, molten metal, protruding pipes, toxic waste, and tons of litter and broken fences and buildings scattered around. The environment itself is pretty spectacular, all the way from the bridge leading into The Pitt and the numerous cars abandoned on its road to the overlapping makeshift bridges that keep Uptown suspended over those in Downtown; overall a very striking and visually creative world.

Auto-Axe

Much like the first DLC, besides experiencing the new quest, the real draw is getting some new stuff for your continuing adventures back in Washington, DC. The first DLC gave you some pretty good stuff by just beating the game, but things don't come so easily here. Like I said, you get some weapons and armor by finding ingots, but if you don't take the time to do that, you won't get much. In fact, the only really good thing you'll get for just playing the game is the Auto-Axe, which is an axe you turn on to spin and then you just run into enemies to chop them up; in other words – awesome. I got several named weapons, but nothing I see myself using or that look all that great. Besides weapons, you do get two perks – one tied to the new weapon and one tied to radiation.

The Pitt is fun while it lasts, but an annoying fetch quests, short play time, and – in my opinion – a personal lack of cool armor and weaponry (outside the great Auto-Axe) make it a DLC more for the hardcore Fallout 3 fan than anyone else. It's good, but I just wanted more.

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