Well, I spent quite a bit of time last month and this month playing Helldivers 2. I unlocked all difficulty modes and personally found eight to be my sweet spot for challenge and gameplay. But, despite its awesomeness, I did eventually get bored of the gameplay loop despite the gameplay itself never being dull. So, I’m calling that one done. I then moved on and spent the rest of this month so far playing:

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, which is also now done and dusted. I played this many times on console, but this was my first playthrough on PC. And for me, on an unmodded Steam Deck with the current version of Proton, and with no game mods, this ran immaculately.

In fact, this may have been one of the best games I’ve played on the Deck performance wise. Which is crazy to me considering how often the game would freeze stutter and crash when I played it previously (on console). I had one instance of stuttering in Operation: Anchorage during the final push and another instance of stuttering in Mothership Zeta, but beyond that, I literally had zero stability issues and it ran at a consistent 60 FPS on maxed settings with an average of around 25% CPU usage.

It took me forever to get around to buying and playing this on Steam due to its compatibility issues, but thankfully, those were nonexistent for me. The home screen for some reason wasn’t gamepad compatible, but everything else was and the default settings were fine.

So, with that out of the way, I want to talk a bit about the experience itself. For one, this game still looks great. Does it show its age? Yes and no. Things like character models actually look better than they do in Skyrim and Fallout 4 for some reason. But they don’t look modern of course. However, the world itself has aged very well. The audio is pretty legendary, and that will never change I’m sure.

The gameplay also holds up to modern games quite well. Gunplay is fun and VATS never disappoints. Early to mid game, I would recommend keeping a Dart Gun on you. It makes fighting things like Deathclaws much easier, especially if you use it to target legs. Once you get the Gauss Rifle though, you won’t need the Dart Gun or much else lol. It does great damage AND typically knocks enemies down as well. Nearly game breaking in its OP-ness, but it’s also incredibly satisfying.

Btw, special weapons aside, Deathclaws are still panic inducing and terrifying lol. They’re the fastest, strongest and meanest things in the game, and they have a sixth sense for being able to find you. You could be forgiven if you scream like a child when one leaps at you.

Exploring the DC Wasteland is quite memorable, and I went into this playthrough with a clear agenda for what I wanted to do and see outside of the main story. Given how well written a lot of the side quests are, there’s a lot of good times to be had.

As far as the DLC goes, I’d recommend doing Operation: Anchorage first. It’s the easiest, and although it lacks any nods to loot whores, the final payoff includes the other nearly game breaking piece of gear in the game: the Chinese Stealth Armor. Once you acquire that, the world is your oyster. Especially if you’ve leveled up your stealth. Takes maybe three hours to complete and is basically set up as a corridor shooter. If it weren’t for the armor, I’d probably skip this DLC.

The Pitt is probably the most heavily reliant on the morality system and the one with the largest grey area in that regard. The actual setting is cool and does feature the best melee weapon in the game should you be playing that way. You can roll through this in three to four hours, but it can also take longer depending on how thorough you are. Fairly easy overall.

Mothership Zeta is the quirkiest DLC. You get abducted by aliens, but you and some other abductees rebel and eventually take over the ship lol. Features some good weapons and some excellent healing/repair items. It’s probably the funniest DLC and is moderately challenging.

Point Lookout is the most difficult DLC, is at least partially inspired by Deliverance and Southern Comfort, has some good next tier versions of weapons you’ve probably been using a lot, has some cool story stuff including an important item for concluding a Cthulhu story arc in the base game, and is also the largest DLC.

Broken Steel is an endgame DLC, so once you’ve finished the main story, this one kicks off. I honestly wrapped this up in about two hours, maybe a bit less. But you could potentially get eight-ish hours out of it depending on how you handle certain situations and how much you explore and loot. Personally, I already had more ammo and healing stuff than I’d ever be able to use, so I took a more direct approach with this DLC. It does tie a bow on the Fallout 3 story, and is definitely worth experiencing.

So yeah, I was very glad to get one final playthrough in. It was still awesome in this age of gaming, and while not perfect, each individual aspect of this game holds up immaculately.