One idea stretched very, very, very thin and ruined by overuse of a terrible gaming mechanic.
The cliché plot is stretched way too thin… the old explosive collar around the neck to ensure co-operation is one that has been done hundreds of times before… but rarely as bad as this.
First off you're not alone, there are other characters that you need to find and recruit to help you complete your mission of breaking into the famous Sierra Madre Casino… I chose to head for the Police Station first as this seemed to be the closest area… as you enter the voice of Father Elijah, the man responsible for your current position and the man very responsible for the natty neckwear, informs you that if you spend too long in the vicinity of a radio it interferes with the collar signal and will set the collar off.
So you really creep around the place in case you rush round a corner into a radio… this mechanic gets tired very quickly, annoying even… and that's the problem… this happens everywhere… if it's not police radios it's normal radio sets, or the speakers on the wall that Casino announcements are given through... and the one section it doesn't happen is heavily booby trapped and includes pockets of poisonous gas to work your way around instead.
So… you have one idea to make the process of recruiting longer, and that idea is used three times… well six times once you discover that you have to escort the three recruits to their designated areas to break open the Casino... well 7 times when you then have to get to your location… well 8 times when you enter the casino and have to make it recognise it has guests… well 11 times when you then have to reset the collars inside the casino else they all explode… well 12 or more times when you then have to get to the vault to open it so the famous Father Elijah can rob the place.
There is a decent twist if you can bring yourself to read through all the memos and reports on all the computer terminals in the casino and surrounding areas, but by the end you'll be struggling to stay awake, it's a horrific piece of work with one decent idea dragged out to torture you for 5 or more hours… save on a regular basis else you'll be replaying sections over and over again having been blown up because you raced past a safe area into a room with a radio playing in the corner.
The other characters are nicely created but wasted on this expansion, it's quite amusing meeting a character whose name you may recognise from a Casino poster during a loading screen, Christine is a very clever example of putting together a character you can't help but feel for… it's just a shame they've been wasted on an appalling piece of DLC like this.