If you ever found yourself getting turned on during the movie Deliverance when a man is told to squeal like a pig, you'll be right at home with Fallout 3's latest DLC content – Point Lookout – that was just released this week. It's time to leave the battleground of DC and head towards the swamplands of Point Lookout. Inbred monsters, magical fruit, and shotgun toting action await you on your visit.

Much like the other DLC Bethesda has released, Point Lookout begins with a message popping up on the screen, informing you of a new riverboat that has docked nearby, which will take you to Point Lookout – a once upon a time Coney Island-esque boardwalk/carnival area on the outskirts of a swampland that once held Confederate soldiers during the time of the Civil War.

He Isn't Chopping Wood

The main quest of Point Lookout details the struggle between a ghoul mansion owner named Desmond who is at odds with a group of tribals who want to claim the mansion for their own for one reason or another. After successfully defending the mansion from attack, you'll find yourself infiltrating the tribals, trying to learn why they're after Desmond and his home. The story of Desmond is regrettably short, as it's only really comprised of a few quests, which won't take longer than a couple hours to complete. It is a pretty interesting story, however, so at least you'll be entertained and want to see it through to completion. Also, the main quest features a few scripted moments, which are pretty cinematic and a welcomed addition.

Now, while the quest involving Desmond is the bulk of the narrative, the main character really is Point Lookout itself and the microcosm contained within its boundaries. You'll run across a group of tribals who worship a magical fruit. You'll stumble across inbred mutant swamp folks that look like Sloth from The Goonies. You'll search for buried treasure within shipwrecks off the coast. You'll explore a detention camp while investigating a Chinese spy. All in all you'll meet a bunch of different subcultures, experience a variety of new terrain and set pieces (an area with coffins hanging from the ceiling entangled in roots was a nice touch, as is the number of hanging voodoo dolls and skull monuments), and experience a few new enemy types too. There are also a number of landmarks to trudge around for those who like discovering every single map marking on the page.

A handful of new enemy types await you within Point Lookout. When it comes to inhuman creatures, you've got Swamplurks (a new, more human looking Mirelurk) and Swamp Ghouls. It's the more human characters, however, that put up the biggest fights. You'll run across tribals, smugglers, and swamp folk. The tribals and smugglers are basically normal looking humans, but the swamp folk are deformed inbreds, either appearing as extremely skinny freaks or large mutant egghead shaped weirdoes. One thing you'll learn early on is that Point Lookout's enemies are very difficult to fight and bring down. Perhaps I'm used to having Fawkes as my assistant, but since you can't bring any allies into the area, it's all up to you. The enemies of Point Lookout – especially the humans – are often armed with the new power packing double-barreled shotgun and take a considerable number of bullets before being brought down. I actually found that I needed to adjust my usual killing techniques, relying on weapons I don't typically use, such as mines. If you're looking for a challenge, Point Lookout certainly delivers, as I died a number of times attempting fights.

Shotgun In Action

Whereas the world and enemies are great, the one area the downloadable content fails in is the introduction of new armor and weapons. The main two weapons are the double-barreled shotgun and lever-action rifle, both of which have a great deal of power and some excellent reload animations, but it takes so long to reload after only a shot you'll quickly find yourself getting damaged and with you not being able to dish it back out. The axes are pretty nice and the new bio-gas canisters are a cool new grenade, but neither are weapons I find myself using often. There also isn't much in terms of armor besides a few goof pieces that increase some stats, but otherwise not the greatest in overall defense; there are several special named weapons too.

Besides my overall disappointment in the lack of new weapons and armor that I'd personally use, I had several instances where weapons broke since I had to use them more than often. The weapons often had to stay broken for periods at a time, since there's only really two people to repair them, and one of those people seemed to inadvertently die without my knowledge (whether an accident or on purpose during the game I'm not sure). Also, my armor puts my holding limit almost to the max as it is, which means that there were often a lot of guns and trinkets I could've sold, but they're so far away from civilization that I often just left anything I didn't need since I couldn't carry it or bother to go out of my way to sell it.

Despite my few list of cons, I still really enjoyed Point Lookout (my second favorite of the DLC – Broken Steel still best), most notably being able to experience this new terrain unlike anything else seen before in the game, and just soaking in the world and its history. It's not perfect, but Fallout 3 fans will still get a lot of enjoyment from their time spent in Point Lookout.

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