Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

This time a man sends you a distress signal asking for your help and you need to go up North and help him out. After helping him from raiders, he'll take you to a tunnel leading to the Pitt and if you accept, you can never return until your work there is done.
The Pitt is a dark and grimy place filled with factories that perch up high into the sky letting little sunlight pass through. This time the expansion is more like fallout 3. The game world's sadly a lot smaller than it lets on horizontally, but vertically it makes up for it a little.The Pitt has a dark history and thanks to its deep concentration of radiation and gases it has developed a special kind of mutation called "Trog"(Ok so it's real name's a bit more complex). This mutation can make people look something like ghouls or turns them into Trogs.A man named Ashur's been enslaving people and forcing them to work on the steel mills and the slaves believe he has the cure to their troubles and so they need an outsider to sneak in, become like them and get to Ashur and get the cure.
When you start you'll be stripped of all gear(though you can get it back after you beat the arena). The game's story lasts about 2-3 hours so it's quite short but it turns from a completely 1-sided affair into something more (typical fallout 3) as you meet Ashur "Lord of the Pitt", a grimy old man seasoned by war and you'll discover why he's doing what he does and he'll even give you a job to do with some rewards creating a great moral dilemma, but once it's done, nothing changes even if you free the slaves, they'll still act like slaves(Though something will happen to Haven). You'll also have to fight in an arena to get to him though it's not really that great. Once your done with the story though(and even during the story) you can explore a bit of the small gameworld and do a few side quests. There are no major side-quests but there are a few small quests like looking for steel ingots for gear or looking for a man. The main place of exploration is the Steel mill which is infested with trogs and wildmen(just think of raiders) and these guys can be tough in numbers. The area is always dark and has some factories to explore and to help you out you can get some cool new gear such as the Auto axe.
The voicework here is great for the main cast(such as Ashur) and you will meet some interesting characters too, unfortunately the raiders and slavers, with a few exceptions, sound as stupid as they were back in the capital wastes. Unfortunately there's a few glitches such as one in which the Auto Axe disappears from your hand in FP and it even makes your hand disappear when you activate the PiP boy
Overall this expansion pack is good takes to some of Fallout 3's strength and has a good plot going for it but it's still a little too small and the story's a bit too short, also don't expect to find anyone to trade your stuff with, so if you find anything, you'll need back to the capital wastes. It's still good though and you can always return to the Pitt, just don't expect something big.