KUJOtheSLOTHMAN

I love Skyrim. There is so much to do and so much to explore and the quests are genuinely intriguing and exciting. The amount of quality content is absolutely staggering and sure to keep me around for a long, long time. One of the biggest things I noticed in Skyrim is that there is just enough familiarity within Skyrim to let you know that it's Oblivion's successor, but at the same time it adds and improves on so many things that it makes sure it's its own game. I can't wait to explore the College of Winterhold, the Dark Brotherhood, and the Daedric quests. If Bethesda can follow this game up with DLC on the same level as Shivering Isles and Fallout 3, This game is sure to keep me hooked for hundreds of hours.

This is the DLC Fallout fans have been waiting for since Broken Steel and Point Lookout were released for Fallout 3. In fact, it blows those two out of the water in nearly every aspect. A must buy for every Fallout fan. I picked up this DLC earlier today and even though I've only played it for about 45 minutes, it already blows away the previous DLCs from either Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. It provides everything a good DLC pack should - A sprawling, interesting area ripe for exploration, witty, hilarious dialogue (I found myself laughing out loud several times throughout the first few conversations) and an engrossing story.

Honest Hearts introduces a pretty cool new area with a few worthwhile areas to explore but suffers from lackluster characters and a boring, uninspired story. Outside of a few decent weapons, perks, the increased level cap and some new enemies to fight, there is not much in this DLC pack that the average Fallout player will be interested in. -------The story is easily the weakest part of this expansion. It consists of you getting stranded in Zion National Park in Utah and helping out the local tribes in order to return to the Mojave. While at first I was interested in this DLC because it included the Burned Man, they totally dropped the ball in including anything interesting or worthwhile surrounding his history and his background. Zion itself is the strongest part of this DLC. Zion is a unique area and quite large, though many of its locations are nothing more than barren campsites. For the dedicated explorer, there are terminals spread across several caves (I have not found all of them) telling the story of a survivor in Zion which is pretty interesting. There are a few new weapons, some of which may be as good or better than what you can find in the Mojave and Honest Hearts also sees the return of the Yao Guai.

The promos for this DLC made it sounds oh so cool. A lost casino in a city of the dead with ghost people and deadly red cloud? And you have to work together with 3 other people to break into the vault?! Cooool. Well, not really. The city of the dead with ghost people is little more than the claustrophobic streets of a small villa that look the exact same in every zone you go into. I frequently got lost, the map is hardly useful and the poisonous clouds spread across the area only served to intensify my irritation. The "working as a team" part of the DLC is very misleading. Instead of actually working as a team with each of the other 3 unfortunate souls who are also stuck in the Sierra Madre, you actually end up just dragging them to preset locations so they can complete a task. The story is semi-interesting. You'll need to go out of your way exploring all of the villa to find the information needed to understand the story completely, which is not worth the headache of traversing the villa zones. The atmosphere of the entire area is excellent, though. It is dark, silent and you don't have the protection of all the awesome weaponry you acquired in the main game. It appears the developers were going for a survival-horror theme in this DLC and they hit the nail on the head. Getting into the casino only furthers this great atmosphere with dark corridors lit only by inhuman, glowing holograms. Outside of the atmosphere, I was disappointed with this DLC. If you're looking for something quite a bit different than the rest of the Mojave wasteland and you don't mind a headache inducing map then this might be the DLC for you. IF not, I recommend saving your money for the next three DLC releases