Destructoid 6/10.<blockquote>By this point, I began to see a somewhat alarming trend. "Mothership Zeta" consists of you walking through corridors, fighting a few aliens, walking through more corridors, coming into a room, pressing buttons, more fighting, and finally tampering with cooling systems to open doors. This would be absolutely fine if Fallout 3 had a decent first-person shooter mechanic, but that simply isn’t the case.
(...)
As the last of the downloadable content for Fallout 3, I was really looking forward to "Mothership Zeta," and it kills me to say that it’s not up to par. Apart from the very end where you get to walk on the exterior of the ship in a spacesuit and one other cool section I won’t spoil, the gameplay is more or less you walking for long distances, fighting a ton of aliens, and then blowing up some section of the mothership. In other words, it quickly becomes repetitive, and doesn’t play to Fallout 3’s strength of allowing players to tackle quests in multiple ways.</blockquote>GameSpot 6/10.<blockquote>You aren't a lone captive on this bleak vessel. A few other unwitting hostages are there to keep you company, including a gracelessly voiced young girl who knows her way around the ship. One of them imparts a few different theories as to what the aliens are up to and what they want with their captives. His ideas are as good as any, as it turns out; you'll never know what the ETs are up to, what they want, and why they've got a death ray aimed at planet Earth. Nor does anyone seem particularly disturbed to have been abducted, as stiff animations and stilted dialogue make your cohorts seem more annoyed than traumatized. The only narrative elements likely to pique your curiosity are the various voice logs scattered about, which hint at the atrocities these aliens visit upon their unfortunate victims.
You may have cringed at the idea of Fallout 3 in space, and if you have, you already know Mothership Zeta wasn't created with you in mind. Carrying alien zappers from space around the postapocalyptic wastelands while wearing samurai armor (another possible bit of loot you can carry back with you) certainly won't appeal to every Fallout aficionado. Open-minded fans will glean some enjoyment from this sci-fi-skinned dungeon crawler, but by isolating its game's weaknesses without catering to its strengths, developer Bethesda Game Studios has ended Fallout 3's run of downloadable content not with a bang, but a whimper. </blockquote>GameTrailers 8/10.<blockquote>Does it live up to its predecessors, or is it an anal probe for your wallet?</blockquote>Boomtown 6/10.<blockquote>Computer says no
And it’s a decision taken by Bethesda that I can’t quite understand. There is no real reason given to stop you from travelling around the ship. You’d expect all of the aliens to have been defeated trying to save the ship from being taken over by you. Or at the very least, will have teleported away from the ship in an evacuation. Even if there is still the odd alien on the ship, it’s not a good reason to confine you to the ships Bridge.
It does slightly spoil the content for you as well, as once completed there is no real replay value. I made the mistake of not exploring the ship too much at the beginning of the quest due to the difficulty I was having killing the enemy aliens. I was also expecting to be able to freely explore the ship once I had completed the quest.</blockquote>SPOnG.<blockquote>Or am I just being paranoid? Certainly it doesn’t seem that difficult and, granted, I’ve had a few perks on the way to boost XP, but I feel under appreciated now, like I ought to be taking on swarms of Deathclaws to win a house or something. I ought to be carried aloft through the wasteland or hung, drawn and quartered after being found hidden in a hole or something. But perhaps that is the Bethesda message to us: life isn’t all “This was a triumph”, most of us bumble through it looking out for number one for the majority of the time, surviving, not crusading. Reality and verisimilitude, so longed for by the geek fraternity, isn’t a heroic victory or a cruel martyrdom, it’s endless corridors and faceless others. It isn’t entertainment. And neither is Mothership Zeta, sadly.</blockquote>GamePro 3.5/5.<blockquote>Another Fallout 3 DLC winner, right? Not so fast, Dogmeat. While the premise for Mothership Zeta sounds great, its execution is lackluster. MZ has all the ingredients but just doesn't cook up a good batch of UFO abduction intensity.</blockquote>Gamez Traffic 9/10.<blockquote>In conclusion I give Mothership Zeta a 9 out of 10. While it may not encourage adventuring, it is still a fantastic add-on, and the best gameplay wise out of the series.</blockquote>Gaming Heaven 7.5/10.<blockquote>Overall I enjoyed the game, and the graphics are still first class, but the one thing I took from the experience was the fact that nothing was very original or different from the previous outings. Sure, you are in a new alien environment but they could have gotten more from this than they did at the end of the day. It ends up basically a straightforward alien run and gun title.</blockquote>Big Download Blog.<blockquote>For the most part, the Mothership Zeta is one of the most straightforward content expansions to date. The pleasure in playing is found in exploring the ship, fighting aliens (which have never been seen alive before in Fallout 3) and using the new powerful alien weapons like the disruptors, all in a retro-scifi style. Other aspects fans expect from Fallout 3 like moral choices and a variety of branching side quests aren't covered quite as well. Trigger happy players will lose karma for shooting the red suited alien workers, since they don't fight back, but it comes off as an extremely arbitrary means of discerning goodness. After all, even the docile aliens are complicit in keeping you captive. Otherwise, there isn't much else for indulging one's dark side.</blockquote>
(...)
As the last of the downloadable content for Fallout 3, I was really looking forward to "Mothership Zeta," and it kills me to say that it’s not up to par. Apart from the very end where you get to walk on the exterior of the ship in a spacesuit and one other cool section I won’t spoil, the gameplay is more or less you walking for long distances, fighting a ton of aliens, and then blowing up some section of the mothership. In other words, it quickly becomes repetitive, and doesn’t play to Fallout 3’s strength of allowing players to tackle quests in multiple ways.</blockquote>GameSpot 6/10.<blockquote>You aren't a lone captive on this bleak vessel. A few other unwitting hostages are there to keep you company, including a gracelessly voiced young girl who knows her way around the ship. One of them imparts a few different theories as to what the aliens are up to and what they want with their captives. His ideas are as good as any, as it turns out; you'll never know what the ETs are up to, what they want, and why they've got a death ray aimed at planet Earth. Nor does anyone seem particularly disturbed to have been abducted, as stiff animations and stilted dialogue make your cohorts seem more annoyed than traumatized. The only narrative elements likely to pique your curiosity are the various voice logs scattered about, which hint at the atrocities these aliens visit upon their unfortunate victims.
You may have cringed at the idea of Fallout 3 in space, and if you have, you already know Mothership Zeta wasn't created with you in mind. Carrying alien zappers from space around the postapocalyptic wastelands while wearing samurai armor (another possible bit of loot you can carry back with you) certainly won't appeal to every Fallout aficionado. Open-minded fans will glean some enjoyment from this sci-fi-skinned dungeon crawler, but by isolating its game's weaknesses without catering to its strengths, developer Bethesda Game Studios has ended Fallout 3's run of downloadable content not with a bang, but a whimper. </blockquote>GameTrailers 8/10.<blockquote>Does it live up to its predecessors, or is it an anal probe for your wallet?</blockquote>Boomtown 6/10.<blockquote>Computer says no
And it’s a decision taken by Bethesda that I can’t quite understand. There is no real reason given to stop you from travelling around the ship. You’d expect all of the aliens to have been defeated trying to save the ship from being taken over by you. Or at the very least, will have teleported away from the ship in an evacuation. Even if there is still the odd alien on the ship, it’s not a good reason to confine you to the ships Bridge.
It does slightly spoil the content for you as well, as once completed there is no real replay value. I made the mistake of not exploring the ship too much at the beginning of the quest due to the difficulty I was having killing the enemy aliens. I was also expecting to be able to freely explore the ship once I had completed the quest.</blockquote>SPOnG.<blockquote>Or am I just being paranoid? Certainly it doesn’t seem that difficult and, granted, I’ve had a few perks on the way to boost XP, but I feel under appreciated now, like I ought to be taking on swarms of Deathclaws to win a house or something. I ought to be carried aloft through the wasteland or hung, drawn and quartered after being found hidden in a hole or something. But perhaps that is the Bethesda message to us: life isn’t all “This was a triumph”, most of us bumble through it looking out for number one for the majority of the time, surviving, not crusading. Reality and verisimilitude, so longed for by the geek fraternity, isn’t a heroic victory or a cruel martyrdom, it’s endless corridors and faceless others. It isn’t entertainment. And neither is Mothership Zeta, sadly.</blockquote>GamePro 3.5/5.<blockquote>Another Fallout 3 DLC winner, right? Not so fast, Dogmeat. While the premise for Mothership Zeta sounds great, its execution is lackluster. MZ has all the ingredients but just doesn't cook up a good batch of UFO abduction intensity.</blockquote>Gamez Traffic 9/10.<blockquote>In conclusion I give Mothership Zeta a 9 out of 10. While it may not encourage adventuring, it is still a fantastic add-on, and the best gameplay wise out of the series.</blockquote>Gaming Heaven 7.5/10.<blockquote>Overall I enjoyed the game, and the graphics are still first class, but the one thing I took from the experience was the fact that nothing was very original or different from the previous outings. Sure, you are in a new alien environment but they could have gotten more from this than they did at the end of the day. It ends up basically a straightforward alien run and gun title.</blockquote>Big Download Blog.<blockquote>For the most part, the Mothership Zeta is one of the most straightforward content expansions to date. The pleasure in playing is found in exploring the ship, fighting aliens (which have never been seen alive before in Fallout 3) and using the new powerful alien weapons like the disruptors, all in a retro-scifi style. Other aspects fans expect from Fallout 3 like moral choices and a variety of branching side quests aren't covered quite as well. Trigger happy players will lose karma for shooting the red suited alien workers, since they don't fight back, but it comes off as an extremely arbitrary means of discerning goodness. After all, even the docile aliens are complicit in keeping you captive. Otherwise, there isn't much else for indulging one's dark side.</blockquote>
