Sarah Palin Is My Operation: Anchorage

I bought Operation: Anchorage, the new downloadable content for one of the best games of 2008, Fallout 3. Tycho from Penny Arcade does a great job of complaining about the Games for Windows interface needed to buy and download the add-on, so I won’t dwell on how counter-intuitive that mechanism is. Except to say I find it unbelievable that Microsoft couldn’t come with something better FOR THEIR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM.

It’s also pretty lame that Operation: Anchorage costs 800 Microsoft points, but Games for Windows only sells the points in 500 point blocks. In other words, if you’ve got a zero bank of points, you’ll have to spend $12.50 for 1000 points rather than $10.00 for 800. $2.50 isn’t a deal breaker, but it’s pretty clear that Microsoft’s marketing scheme is to get people to buy excess points they don’t need or want. That doesn’t do much to improve my opinion of Microsoft; I’m sure the company is wringing its hands with guilt and worry over my displeasure and drying their tears with wads of cash.

But the add-on itself is hella fun. Not long after you resume your game, you start to receive a radio distress call that summons you to the southwestern DC metro area. There, you meet some Outcasts battling super mutants and defending a curious military installation. Inside the base, a pod hooked up to a super computer shines brightly. You climb inside the egg and the computer runs a simulation of the battle for Anchorage, the major offensive to push the Chinese out of Alaska.

The simulation plops you down in the middle of an Alaskan mountain range. You have a partner that abandons you in favor of climbing the side of a mountain. He promises to meet up with you later and I have to admit I enjoyed watching him scale the cliff face. Like watching Stallone in Cliffhanger, without the melodrama.

The goal is to take out some artillery guns the Chinese have strewn throughout a mountain base complex they’ve built. The graphics are stunning, mostly because the sky is blue and the complex appears relatively shiny and new. It’s a stark contrast from the usual devastation of Fallout 3.

As a simulation, you still take damage and you can still die—something about going into cardiac arrest, blah blah blah. But your Chinese enemies fade to a blue glow when you kill them and metal dispensers instantly replenish your ammo. It’s a computer game within a computer game, so you can backtrack and hit health and ammo replenishers as often and as much as you like.

I don’t know how far I’m in yet, having just rendezvoused with my fellow soldier. I can say I love the new Gauss rifle. Ammo for it is scarce, but for good reason, as I one-shot just about everything I aim at. However it ends, I’d really like to see an appearance by my favorite Alaskan hottie, Sarah Palin. I know it’s set 77 years in the future, but it’s also a simulation; Bethesda could go hog wild and plop her in there no problem. Like maybe on a frozen mountain peak, clad in nothing but a bikini and a smile.

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.