This patch for Fallout 3 includes the new achievements for Mothership Zeta the latest DLC for the roleplaying game.

US: http://www.filefront.com/14165105/Fallout3_1.7_English_US.exe/
UK: http://www.filefront.com/14165103/Fallout3_1.7_English_UK.exe/
French: http://www.filefront.com/14165107/Fallout3_1.7_French.exe/
German: http://www.filefront.com/14165109/Fallout3_1.7_German.exe/
Spanish: http://www.filefront.com/14165111/Fallout3_1.7_Spanish.exe/

The Fallout 3 DLC has definitely demonstrated that Bethesda learned from the Elder Scrolls Oblivion experience. There’s been absolutely no Horse Armor parallel, and while the first releases – The Pitt for example – were a bit anemic on content the last two releases – Broken Steel and Point Lookout have been excellent. Well today we got official word that the 5th and final downloadable content add on for Fallout 3 will arrive on August 3rd, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and on Windows Live for PC at a cost of 800 MS points.

The last release – titled Mothership Zeta will add some new weapons to the game as well as new alien adversaries. Those unfamiliar with the previous games in the series may not realize that Aliens and Fallout go way back – including a mention and random crash site location in the first game and a ray gun that make obliterating enemies that much more fun.

I’ve included the full details as well as some newly released screen shots after the jump.

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In the past year or so, we’ve seen some big mergers and acquisitions in the gaming industry. Activision and Blizzard’s merger was the big news, but there have been others. Today, another newsworthy acquisition was announced.

ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, has acquired id Software. This acquisition puts franchises like Fallout 3, Oblivion, Doom, Quake, and RAGE under one roof. The best news out of all of this is that all of the principals at id Software have signed long term contracts, meaning that id will continue to operate under the same management going forward.

In discussing the deal, id Technical Director and industry icon John Carmack said, “This puts id Software in a wonderful position going forward. We will now be able to grow and extend all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward looking research to be done in the service of all of them. We will be bigger and stronger, as we recruit the best talent to help us build the landmark games of the future. As trite as it may be for me to say that I am extremely pleased and excited about this deal, I am.”

So, what sort of speculation can we make because of this deal? Bethesda games driven by id engines? That would seem to be a logical step, wouldn’t you think? What do you think this news means to the future of the two companies?

You can read the full text of the press release after the break.

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Fallout 3 is one of those games I can’t stay away from too long.. like Oblivion before it I seem to find myself wandering the DC Metro Wasteland listening to Three Dog’s howl whenever my game review plate thins out a bit. So far Bethesda is keeping up its usual excellent job of supporting their games in the post release cycle with expansions and new content. While the nightmare of Horse Armor may never be forgotten, the content for Fallout 3, including the Broken Steel add-on which removed the games original ending and raised the character level cap, is going a long way toward expanding the game in different ways while not really diluting the core experience of its scripted story.

The latest expansion, Point Lookout, concerns a rural Maryland area in the post apocalyptic world and invites the players to uncover a smaller scale story surrounding some swamp dwellers, cultists and even a steamboat. While the overview for the expansion sounds a bit “Call of Cthulhu” like, another licensed world Bethesda has played around with in the past, one of the most striking thing is the encroachment of more plants and trees into the Fallout 3 setting. Joel Burgess and Nathan Purkeypile, the add-on’s Lead Designer and Lead Artist respectively detailed the evolution of the Point Lookout concept in a recent blog post on the official Fallout website.

With Point Lookout, one of our primary goals was not to create just a quest, but a whole new region for players to explore. Straight away we knew that we wanted to focus on what we felt was one of the great strengths of Fallout 3 –a world too full of stories and surprises, ripe for exploration and adventure.  For us, the world is a main character, and choosing our location was intrinsically tied to the tone of the content.

We knew what kind of geographical features we wanted to showcase, and began scouting real-world locations. We stumbled across the perfect place: Point Lookout, MD. This rural location is situated on the southern tip of Maryland where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The coastal lowland offered the setting that we wanted, and the area has a rich history that we were able to pull inspiration from. The founders of Maryland landed here, a Civil War camp held over 50,000 confederate prisoners, and the Point Lookout Lighthouse is purported to be one of the most haunted places in Maryland.  All this just down the Potomac River, which runs through the Capital Wasteland.

I’ve included some of the recently released screenshots and frankly while Broken Steel might have been about expanding the ending of the game, Point Lookout seems to promise an interesting side trek with some content aside from generic feral ghouls and armored Enclave drones.

You can check out the shots after the jump.

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InFamous is an action packed trip into a familiar genre with an interesting twist. You start out as Cole McGrath, a poor schmuck who has a mysterious delivery package blow up in his face, leaving him with burgeoning electrical based powers and everyone else in a six block radius with a slight case of death. You emerge from your baptism by fire, crawl out of the blast zone and run for your life guided by your buddy Zeke as the police force hunts you down.

Once you reach the relative safety of your roof top penthouse, the game truly begins throwing you into a grand conspiracy masterminded by a clandestine mystical organization. As you unravel the mystery, you can either fight your reputation as the bringer of the apocalypse or revel in the new coolness that is you and start building your own evil empire.

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The Sims series has taken the next big leap forward with the latest full game, The Sims 3. Fans of the sims will find a lot to love about the game as long as they can keep in mind that Sims 3 is a new base game. Gamers who own every expansion and stuff pack for Sims 2 should find the new game mechanics fixes much of what wasn’t fun about the previous titles, but they’ll have to be patient as many of the luxuries they’ve come to take for granted will have to wait for expansion. Read on for the scoop on the Sims 3.

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One of the most disappointing problems with the video game industry is that we tend to churn through games so fast that a title released 6 months ago is likely to be overshadowed by newer releases. While in some cases this could be considered merciful in that really bad games fade quickly from notice, there is also a disappointing factor of forgetting our game history.

One of the premiere computer game historical archives, an abandonware website called Home of the Underdogs returned to life after going dark some time ago.

Gaming is a new hobby, it doesn’t have the legacy of other leisure activities but in many ways because of the evolving nature of technology and the cash driven nature of the industry it means that many games that could be considered foundational to the modern video game design are unavailable or obsoleted and incompatible with modern computing platforms. Consoles and computer games alike suffer from this and even though sites like Good Old Games (GOG.com) are stemming this trend with DRM free older titles like Fallout, Descent and Freespace there are still hundreds of titles that will never see the light of day because their publishers no longer exist or the rights are a mess.

I’m not a big fan of illegal activity but in some ways since the legality of older titles are in question often, I can only say I am glad to see that sites like Abandonia and it’s peer Home of the Underdogs served to preserve records and often copies of these faded titles for posterity. The Underdogs site was the victim of its own success for awhile, with the hosting fees and a lack of continued energy forcing the original founders to surrender the website to the eternal darkness of a 404 error.

If you’re a classic gamer looking to relive your halcyon days you might want to check out Underdogs.

This is the first time in 4 years that I’ve not been scrambling and hurrying to get things ready for my trip to E3. I wish I could say I was disappointed because there is the faint chance that this year E3 might be something more akin to a sane version of my first visit to the LA convention center in 2006.

However I can’t help wondering why E3 excites anyone anymore.

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Been playing Fallout 3 on your PS3 and wishing you could get your hands on the DLC? Well, wish no more.

Bethesda announced today that they are bringing all the current and upcoming Fallout 3 DLC to the PS3. Operation Anchorage is slated to hit the PlayStation Store sometime in June, with The Pitt and Broken Steel following along at 4-6 week intervals.

In addition to the existing DLC, PS3 owners can look forward to the two new DLC packs that were announced as well. First up is Point Lookout, a massive swampland full of new quests. Point Lookout is scheduled to hit XBox Live and Games for Windows Live in June, and on the Playstation Store after the first three DLC packs are available.

More DLC information, as well as a retail Fallout 3 announcement, after the break

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Gamesindustry.biz recently conducted an interview with gaming industry vet and managing director of Bethesda Europe, Sean Brennan. The interview, a first of many, discusses their (Zenimax/Bethesda’s) notable success in marketing Fallout 3 in the UK. While bragging about how awesome Fallout 3 did, Sean also took liberty at poking fun at some (at the time) competing EA titles that did not fair as well in that region.

Sean also unveiled Zenimax/Bethesda’s diabolical plan to dig its tendrils deep within the remaining European territories with assurances of eventual world domination… and, oh yeah, assurances that “we’re still going to focus on what we’re doing best, which is 360, PS3 and PC, triple-A products aimed at a more mature market place” (Although, Sean hinted that Wii titles were not out of question).

The most exciting part of the interview was Sean’s teasing us with news of Splash Damage’s next title:

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