Five Biggest Game Fails of 1Q 2009

The Gaming Site has put together a list of what they feel are the five “biggest game fails” released during 2009’s first three months. Bethesda’s The Pitt DLC for Fallout 3 is one of them:

After playing through the linear and therefore rather disappointing Operation Anchorage, I was eager for a Fallout DLC experience in line with the title’s open world style. The Pitt was supposedly the answer to my prayers. Another barren city in a new locale with new characters, plot lines and enemies? Yes please!

When the day finally came that I could download The Pitt I was ecstatic, only to be disappointed within minutes of starting the game. The following is a paragraph taken right out of my Pitt review: (To start off with, you will immediately notice hitching and frame-rate problems not present in the main game. Sadly, things only get worse. Screen tearing will plague your view several times a minute and audio problems will be a common occurrence. Worst of all, the expansion runs so poorly on Xbox 360 which is ridiculous, the console is more than powerful enough to handle the action on screen that I actually had to restart my console TWICE during my time with the add-on. Yes, I said twice. The game froze completely on me two different times.)

Even worse than The Pitt’s technical problems was the save system. After reaching certain points of decision in the storyline, up to an hour of saves would be immediately erased. Unless you wanted to replay over an hour of what you had already done it was impossible to go back and take a different course of action. To this day I do not understand Bethesda’s reasoning in taking away my ability to make different decisions in a game supposedly designed to respond to your choices as a player. With numerous visual and audio bugs, a poor save system, and Xbox 360 freezing issues, Fallout 3’s The Pitt has been one of 2009’s biggest gaming let downs. Such a disappointment is made all the worse considering that Fallout 3 was hands down one of the best titles of 2008.