Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

I'll admit, I was a little excited if not a bit nervous to play Dead Money. I went through literally everything else I knew about in the game on my main playthrough before buckling down and getting to Dead Money. When you start off, you get all your equipment taken away (yes you get it back after you beat the DLC) and you are told to find 3 certain individuals. If you don't comply or if one of these individuals die, the man (unnamed to avoid spoilers) calling the shots detonates an explosive collar around your neck. Also, radio frequencies can interfere with the collar and make it go off prematurely after about 5 seconds. Some radios you can destroy or deactivate, but sometimes you just worry about high-tailing it out of there. This is because there is a lack of healing items, and the enemies (Ghost People) have high amounts of health and come in packs of 2-4 per encounter. After you find all the "people" you were supposed to and position them, you get to enter the Sierra Madre Casino. Eventually you get to a point where you can take about 35 gold bars for around 10,000 caps each, but they are very heavy and with all the equipment you accumulated throughout Dead Money, you'll likely only take a few. Anyway, due to the tough enemies, traps, collar, lack of healing items, and the like, playing through this DLC can be very frustrating and monotonous. But you also get some cool weapons and equipment, not to mention some cool characters and story, so it balances out a little, which is why I give Dead Money a 5.0/10.