Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues

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Ever wanted to be a lab rat, undergoing tests for the amusement of psychotic robot overlords? If you answered “yes”, then Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues is the DLC for you! It puts you, the Courier, in the middle of “The Big MT” (pronounced “empty”, not mountain) trying to rescue your own brain which has been stolen by the evil Dr. Mobius. “Big MT” is a bit of a misnomer, however, as the actual landmass is not really all that big, but it’s so densely packed with places to see and things to find that it could hardly be called empty, either. Each of the main missions involves you taking some sort of test, whether it’s making your way through an abandoned high school to steal student grades or sneaking around in a talking stealth suit without being detected, the main missions are all quite fun and offer a good amount of variety. Unlike previous New Vegas DLCs Honest Hearts and Dead Money, there are quite a few side missions and places to explore even once you’ve completed the main story arc.

Also unlike previously released DLC, Old World Blues provides the player with lots of new weapons (mostly energy based, so be sure to stock up on Microfusion Cells, Electron Charge Packs and Energy Cells) such as the Sonic Emitter, Proton Axe and K9000 Minigun. It’s a good thing, too, since you’ll be doing a lot more fighting in OWB than in previous DLC offerings, fending off robo-scorpions, nightstalkers and fellow lobotomites, to name a few. You also have a residence to call your own, complete with talking appliances with various useful functions. One of the main sidequests tasks you with trekking around the Big MT looking for personality cores for said appliances, and soon you’ll be talking to a toaster bent on world domination, flirting with a light switch and listening to a neurotic mini-securitron fiending for coffee cups. They all have a purpose and can do things like let you grow your own hydroponic garden, implant yourself with upgrades, and fill empty bottles with purified water, for example, so it’s well worth taking the time to explore the Big MT for their upgrades.

Old World Blues is everything that the previous New Vegas DLCs were not – funny, content-heavy and fun to play rather than being ponderous and slow. My only real complaint is that the five extra experience levels are used up quickly thanks to the abundance of combat encounters, so giving us an extra 10 levels instead might have been preferable. Still, it’s far and away the best piece of DLC available for Fallout: New Vegas (hell, it beats a few of Fallout 3’s DLC packs as well) and should not be missed.

Old World Blues was released on July 19th, 2011 for Xbox 360, PS3and PC for 800 Microsoft Points, or $9.99. Review is based on the Xbox 360 version.