Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues

The Good
Old World Blues involves a trip to a long-forgotten research base, where Real Scientists do Real Science - though the scientists in question are little more than bickering brains in jars. And speaking of brains in jars: your brain, spine and lungs all appear to have gone walkabouts, so you'll have to do a few quests for the scientists to get them back...

OWB is easily the most entertaining area in New Vegas; there's a very strong 50s pulp sci-fi theme running through the entire DLC, and for all that there's some fairly grim backstories and set-pieces to uncover, the characters (including a set of AI personalities inhabiting the appliances in your apartment) all manage to walk the line between being cliched and comedic, thanks in no small part to some excellent voicework. It also manages to be more visually varied than the other DLCs, both in terms of landscape and building layouts.

It's not a particularly easy area though, with a number of unique and tough enemies to deal with, from zombies in spacesuits to lobotomised, crazy workers and heavily armoured robo-scorpions. Thankfully, there's a wealth of new toys to be found, including some of the most powerful weapons in the game, and a new stealth suit which comes with some interesting new features, including a slightly neurotic AI personality!

Overall, of the four DLC packs, this is the one I'd wholeheartedly recommend to people.

The Bad
Alas, the Fallout 3 curse strikes again, as there's two fairly glaring bugs in this DLC.

The first lies in the "merchant" AI in your apartment; if you spend too much money on repairs with him, the game gets confused and won't give you any money back when you sell things back to him. There's a workaround of sorts (wait 3 days outside the apartment, then return; he'll then have 14,000 caps available), but it's cumbersome and only partially addresses the issue as you'll have to keep returning and draining his caps until he's back under his 14,000 cap limit.

The second lies in the conversation that you can have once you catch up with your brain; one of the main conversation trees is bugged and goes into an infinite loop. Thankfully, it's possible to achieve the desired result without going down that branch, but it's a fairly glaring bug!

Still, neither of these are show-stoppers, and the excellent writing and voice work more than compensates...

The Bottom Line
Easily the best DLC for New Vegas!