I have a confession to make. When the AceGamez staffers were being emailed round for their pick of the best games of 2008, I hadn't played the masterpiece that is Bethesda's Fallout 3. Had I done so, it would have possibly pushed Left 4 Dead off the top of my list. It's atmospheric, involving, funny and makes Deus Ex look linear. Over Christmas I played it from start to finish, knocking most of the side quests on the head as well - and I enjoyed it so much that I picked up Oblivion (eighteen months after putting it down three hours into the main story, concluding that I'd come back to it later). So when it came time for the inaugural piece of Fallout downloadable content to be reviewed, it should be no surprise to hear that I was at the front of the queue, waving my arms around like a maniac. But who says behaving like a maniac doesn't get results? Here I am, three hours after starting Operation Anchorage, ready to write my thoughts down in for publication.

The mini-adventure focuses on an aspect of Fallout folklore that was alluded to during the main game: the liberation of Alaska from the Chinese. Bethesda has managed to get around the tricky fact that it happened before the game was set by asking the player to enter a computer simulation in order to unlock a cupboard full of goodies for a pocket of Brotherhood of Steel chaps. Although this is in effect a game within a game, your new friends are keen to point out that if you die in the simulation, you die in real life as well - a threat that only previously hit Fallout 3 players if they went too many quests without eating or forgetting to refill their water drip. With that introduction you're dropped headfirst into the military simulation and the first impressions are very nice indeed - mainly because they offer a change from the rest of the game's visuals.

Like the Oasis quest (worth hunting out in the north of the map), Operation Anchorage offers a complete change in its appearance. Gone are the post-apocalyptic wastelands and in their place are clean, icy peaks. Stripped of your normal inventory, you're forced to rely on the basics of the simulation - Chinese weapons (pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, etc.) and more traditional health points. There are no longer stimpacks to be carried and you have to fill up with ammo and health at regular points along the game's disappointingly linear route. Unlike the main game, this simulation limits your progress in certain directions, leaving it feeling curiously boxed in. Thematically it's sensible that a computer simulation wouldn't want you wandering off, just like it's thematically sensible that corpses vanish in a flash of light before you can loot them, but it does feel like you're losing a lot of the strategy, choice and freedom that made Fallout 3 great in the first place.

Likewise, if you've spent your entire stint in the wasteland avoiding combat then you're in for a rude awakening here; fighting is very much the only option and although you have buddies at certain points to help you out, the mini-quest is pretty much entirely about the first person shooting, which is unfortunately about the weakest part of the main game. Strip away all of Fallout 3's exploration, stealth and chatting and you're left with a slightly below par first person shooter - something that the Xbox doesn't really need yet another of. While all these elements are representing in some form or other, they do feel diluted in such a way that would be fine for a normal side quest but are disappointing to have to pay eight hundred Microsoft Points for - especially when the whole thing only runs to two to four hours for an experienced Fallout 3 player.

Assuming that the other two promised pieces of DLC both cost eight hundred points, the whole lot will come to twenty-four hundred points - the same price as Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion pack. The last of these promises to remove two bugbears from people who have finished the game: allowing you to level up past level twenty and letting you continue playing after the main quest is complete. Having now played through this DLC using a saved game just before I took on the final quest, I'm left wondering why on earth they didn't include these promised perks in the first pack, given that the game is now several months old and many people will have finished with it. A lot of gamers have commented that Fallout 3 loses a lot of its appeal as soon as you stop levelling up and I would imagine the upshot of this is that these folks will hold on until the full set of DLC is ready before they purchase - assuming that some other new game hasn't grabbed their +20 sword gene.

This is what I recommend you do, as well - Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage is a solid quest add-on, but little more. It concentrates on the game's weaker combat and leaves you feeling disappointingly steered, in a way that the main game always managed to avoid. Hold out for the rest of the DLC and use this to help you move towards level thirty, because without the RPG elements it feels like a short and bland first person shooter. Feel free to add a point to the overall score if you're still working your way through the game, but for everyone who has finished it, coming back in for this mini-adventure is likely to be a little on the disappointing side.

Reviewed by Alan Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).