Changing culture, one gamerscore at a time.

One of the DLC Ninja outfits. Bethesda must've confused "VATS" with "BDSM".

The first in a few bits and bobs of DLC for Fallout 3 is released soon, and reading through a scathing review on Eurogamer, I can’t help but feel all DLC is being slagged off simply because people had issues with the first game. I don’t really think something that’s trying to improve on original content should be tagged as bad because of the questionable quality of content already included in it as part of the main experience, but that’s just me. The new content explores a virtual reality simulation of content centred around the Chinese and their attack on the United States in a fictional war. While it all sounds absurd and entertaining in a Command and Conquer sort of way, I can’t help but wonder why war is the theme for anything entertaining recently, though I’ll cover that in more depth in my Plot Wholes column tomorrow.

In other news, Banjo Tooie is making its way to the Xbox Marketplace in the form of another 1200-point arcade title, further showing up its next-gen cousin as a complete failure to recreate the tradition of bear and bird. I’m not sure why they seem so keen to churn out their old games, but if the next logical step is Donkey Kong 64 then bring it on. Sadly, purely Nintendo content is never going to grace a Microsoft console, but I wait with baited breath nonetheless. Grow a pair, Rare.

A sad announcement, as Fable II has been confirmed as never coming to PC. Imagine the user created content that could have been created given an engine like Valve’s Source Development Kit or even the GECK engine for Fallout 3. Hours of new fun, dog runs, hidden items, new clothes, new armour, all wasted because they can’t be bothered to port a simply-made game. It’s a shame really, as something that has no statistics bar the number of prostitutes you’ve molested (mine will always reside at zero, the pointless addition to the game that it is) can’t be that hard to reconfigure for a platform that could run it on a variety of different specs, as graphically all it’s really got going for it is an absurd amount of bloom effects.

Satoru Iwata, the current Nintendo president, is making an appearance at GDC, it seems. Given that last year’s was an abundace of games for consoles wide in variety, but lacking any Mario or Donkey Kong, it’ll be nice to see Big Red making a saving grace announcement or two. Though, I’m still secretly hoping it’ll be eclipsed by a LEGO MMORPG running on the Crysis engine and asking a monthly fee of two red bricks. You heard me. It’s coming.