without owning or ever playing the game...

no.

 

I never bought any of them, but I hear they are pretty good. I believe the alien one just warps you to the alien ship, so it's not like it follows the story or anything.

 

Broken Steel and Point Lookout - yes
The Pitt and Mothership Zeta - maybe
Operation Anchorage - no

 

One of them raises your level cap from 20 to 30, so it is most assuredly worth it.

 

I think they are all worth it, though Broken Steel is almost a necessity IMO.

 

im currently playing through them. i agree that anchorage is not worth your time. But the others are all very good. I recommend getting broken steel first and going from there.

keep in mind these add ons add about 5-10 hours of gameplay.

 

Played them all. Definitely worth it.

 

broken steel is the only one that continues the storyline.

The rest of them all branch off and tell their own story. Point Lookout has you get on a ferry and travel to Point Lookout, Maryland. Which is basically a swamp with a lot of crazy redneck characters. Its the best of the DLC IMO.

Mothership Zeta has you get abducted by aliens. The Pitt is where you travel to pittsburgh and take down a slave driver.

 

Just finished all 5 of them and enjoyed them all. As others have said Operation Anchorage is easily the poorest (but you get an awesome gun from it) and the rest were really enjoyable. Broken Steel continues the main story and also raises the max level to 30 with some decent perks available.
I got them with the GOTY edition, paid £18 for everything. Complete bargain for 106 hours of gaming pleasure.
It may be cheaper to pick up a 2nd hand copy of the GOTY edition as the DLC's come on a separate DVD which you just install to the HDD.

 

I wasnt too thrilled about OP:Anchorage either, but the outdoor scenery was spectacular and a nice change of pace from all other locations in the game/expansions.

Also, since I picked up the GOTY edition and ventured my way into that expansion, I ended up getting a spiffy Power Armor set that I wasnt expecting. So it is definitely a practical expansion if you want to get access to Power Armor earlier on.

My favorite thus far is Point Lookout...the yokels were awesome. :lol: I have yet to do Broken Steel yet because I tend to take detours from the main story line, trying to delay the end of this behemoth of a game as long as possible.

 

Have you had the training yet to wear it?

Point Lookout was really good. The "locals" are really hard to kill as well, they seem to have a ton of hit points. I didn't explore that as much as the others as it was the last DLC I did, I may go back to it sometime in the future and have a better look around. I didn't find a great deal of good loot compared to the others.
If you haven't levelled up that much, if you do Mothership Zeta, with the loot you get from that you can lay waste to just about anything in the Capital Wasteland.

 

I'm getting my butt kicked with the mansion mission in Point Lookout. I've almost maxed out my small weapons points and these guys are taking multiple combat shotgun headshots sometimes and still coming at me.

 

I know what you mean I had better guns than the combat shotgun and they were still taking multiple hits. I was expecting them to be just like Raiders but they were way tougher.
They also seemed to do a lot of damage to me when they hit me.

 

yeah that kind of pissed me off. They aren't wearing armor, why are they so strong?!

had to use like 15 stimpaks for that mission. The rest of point lookout is considerably easier however. Though the random rednecks are pretty strong too.

 

Even when I switched to the double barrel shotgun they were taking multiple shots. That's not good when you have to reload after every shot and their hits are brutal. I thought they'd be like raiders too. The only weapon so far that can take them out with one hit consistently has been bottlecap mines. Too bad I only have about four of those. This is the first DLC I've played, I had no idea they would be this hard. Hopefully it's just this one mission.

 

It does get easier as you don't encounter that many of them together again. If you have an alien weapon it is easier, especially the Alien Blaster.
I also found having a weapon that is easy to fire outside of VATS was useful, especially the Lincoln Repeater or Blackhawk as they are deadly accurate.