Reviewing the latest Fallout 3 DLC – Mothership Zeta – is bittersweet, as it's such a fun download it's disheartening to hear that Bethesda doesn't have anymore planned content for the game. It's a quest that will enrage fans for supposedly being outside the realm of the game's mythology, but ultimately it's a rewarding experience thanks to a number of epic moments and some gear that isn't too shabby.

Space Cowboy Indeed

Most fans have found the downed alien spaceship and looted its body, but now you'll be heading back – only this time before you can get too close to the ship, you're beamed upwards in a haze of blue light. As you wake to find yourself imprisoned with another woman from your time, will you be able to escape the capture of your alien overlords and somehow make it back to the world you left behind?

In terms of story, Mothership Zeta features a pretty good yarn, though you have to put some time into it. As you play the game you find these people who have been abducted from all these different points in time, whose stories are only told by either chatting with them or finding the audio logs scattered about in the game. You've got a young girl like Newt from Aliens, your imprisoned cellmate, a samurai, a cowboy, and someone abducted from the Operation Anchorage DLC timeline. The only disappointment is that – unless I missed something – there really is no closure as to why people are being abducted. Some people offer theories and there is a death ray to stop, but mostly the narrative seemed more like an escape adventure than featuring much in the way of a story being completely wrapped up.

On the plus side, the story of your escape is very well told, and will have you completing a number of tasks. You'll mostly be running through corridors blasting a number of aliens and robots, but there are more inspired moments that standout as the best. Performing a space walk on the hull of the ship to get a transporter working. Accidentally teleporting a cow up to be shot…only to call up three more just to watch it all happen again. Using an experimental spaceship to play pinball with aliens. Engaging in a ship-to-ship battle like those in Star Trek.

The pinball and spaceship scenarios are the best moments for breaking out of the box when it comes to what Bethesda has done so far with Fallout 3 content. The pinball scenario actually happened by accident for me, as the game floods you with aliens and robots at one point, which proved just too much for me. After experimenting around with the ship, however, I saw that if you pressed the right button when the aliens came close enough to the support structures, you could do damage to them and send them flying. The ship-to-ship battle is also fun as you take on the role of a one-man crew. You've got to juggle your energy output from your shields to your laser, fire, run around to repair damage when it happens, plus you're defending your bridge from an onslaught of aliens at the same time. It's hectic, but a blast and one of the best moments out of all the DLC.

The Last Samurai

Besides a story, however, people need more content in general to be satisfied; Mothership Zeta delivers in some aspects, but not so much in others. The game's weakest aspect is the amount of new enemies, which boil down to basically three, with two of those having slight variants. First up are the aliens, who look like the Roswell grays, which come in three forms: no helmet, helmet, and cloaked. Non-cloaked aliens are really easy to kill, as I most always killed them with one or two shots. The cloaked aliens are a lot harder, as they just take more damage; they shimmer like the Predator. You've also got the drones, which come in security and guardian flavors. The security drone is easily dispatched – as is the guardian drone for the most part – though the guardian has a high impact cannon that it luckily drops for your use. The final creatures are the Abominations, but they sadly don't make much of a presence since you see them very little.

The game does fare better when it comes to weaponry and armor. You'll get the shock rod very early on for a melee weapon, plus you can earn a samurai sword later on. There are also three different guns of various sizes; there's the small arm alien atomizer, the rifle-sized alien disintegrator, and the heavy weapon drone cannon. The drone cannon is especially interesting, as it fires a circular ball of energy, which you can shoot to bounce of the ground or off objects. As for armor you can nab a full set of samurai armor, which looks very nice, but still not the best armor. I don't know why, but the armor from Operation Anchorage is still the best in the game in terms of defense that I've found.

Overall, Mothership Zeta is a great package of DLC. It's short (that's to be expected of Fallout 3 DLC) and there aren't too many new enemies, but there are several new pieces of weaponry and armory, plus an imaginative setting and interesting narrative to keep you compelled and constantly moving towards that finish line. If this indeed is the last Fallout 3 content ever, at least it went out with a nice bang.

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