Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Finally a Fallout: New Vegas DLC that’s actually worth playing. This one takes you to the blasted remains of a huge research facility, populated by zany scientists and the results of countless mad experiments. It was billed as the funniest of the DLC and it certainly qualifies. It’s solidly entertaining and quite challenging to boot!

• Like the other DLC, the main plot feels contrived, consisting of a series of fetch quests that culminates in a final showdown. Luckily, it is saved by a cast of characters that are actually fun to talk to. It also ties in with the Sierra Madre storyline as you get to retrace the path of Father Elijah and Christine across Big MT.

• I had a great time exploring the place. Big MT consists of a large number of science labs, each dedicated to the study of a different subject. This leaves plenty of room for inventive and interesting locales. And once you bring virtual reality into it, you get locations you don’t expect either.

• Exploration is further rewarded by offering a good variety of interesting equipment as loot. There are some very cool gear in this DLC, including a machinegun that’s controlled by a dog’s brain, a stealth suit that talks and a sonic weapon that can take down the ubiquitous force fields in Big MT. They’re powerful enough to be worthwhile but not so much so that they’re unbalanced. The stealth suit for example gives bonuses to stealth and after completing all of its quests, provides bonuses to your stats as well, but offers less in the way of protection than even combat armor, let alone power amor.
• The fights are challenging, even for my character who maxed out his XP while doing this content. There are a lot of enemies scattered around the crater and dealing with them is non-trivial. It felt great to feel afraid every time I had to step out of the security of the Think Tank. The downside is that the DLC achieves this by spawning enemies constantly, sometimes right in front of you. Is the coast clear here? Nope, here are a couple of Lobotomites materializing right in your face.
• The Sink makes for the perfect homebase, putting the Presidential Suite of the Lucky 38 to shame. There is a long series of quests to upgrade all of the facilities in it but once you’re done, it can offer literally anything that you could want in a home. The best thing is that unlike the previous two DLC, you’re expected to return to Big MT often to make use of your new base even after you’ve completed the DLC’s main quest so you’re given a teleport device that allows you to easily move between Big MT and the Mojave Wasteland. Too bad you still can’t bring your companions from the main game to check out your new digs.
• I am disappointed that the climactic fight against the giant Roboscorpion turned out to be so easy, mostly because the game provides you with so many options to deal with it. Ah well, at least it looks spectacular, being the largest enemy you can fight in any Fallout game.

No quibbling about it, this is a great DLC and much more like what I wanted all along. Too bad the next and last one, Lonesome Road, probably won’t be as good as this one.