There are two types of RPG players, specifically speaking of Mass Effecters out there: Those that play it to say that played it and enjoy the storyline, and those that go diehard to attain total completion. Every sidequest, see every nook and cranny of each and every celestial locale. I am most certainly the latter. The controller was in flames when I enjoyed my first session of Mass Effect. There was so much to do, so much to see. I had to make my presence known as the respected Spectre I was across every realm by assisting those in need, slaying the immoral, and, well, making some proverbial fat cash. If you are the latter, feel free to venture forward and continue down the path. If you are the former, there’s little worth convincing you on spending $5 for a sidequest when you didn’t have interest in the fully fleshed out platter of sidequests available with the original game to begin with.

Initially what you expect and enjoy from Mass Effect is it’s well-crafted dialogue by a set of characters you know and have become deeply familiar with. Since it’s been quite a while since the game has released, most players with their eagle eye out for promised heaps of downloadable content will have already beaten the game at least once, and therefore be in the 50+ level tier. Pinnacle Station is considered a battle simulator. VR missions, if you will. There are eight quick missions set up for you with a small number of objectives: Time trial and Survival being self explanatory, Capture, well, you need to secure several areas of the map as quickly as possible, and then Hunt is where you are allocated a certain timespan in which you must slay the most enemies. Sounds simple? It is. Pinnacle Station is almost completely devoid of story elements, what you would normally enjoy most from an RPG.

After you trek through the eight missions and achieve the high score, which, at level 50 or higher will be easier than making a mud pie would be for a nine year old, four additional maps will then open up, one for each possible objective. The maps are all just cut and paste areas that you’ve traversed once before in the Mass Effect universe. An angry turian will poke his head out to give you some grievance about being human whilst beating his amazingly unimpressive scores in the VR simulation trials, the whole nine yards. You know how it’s so clearly impossible and all that jazz to beat some puny CPU scores. Once you beat all his high scores and you’ll be given the opportunity to loot him for all he’s worth, or at least earn a new gun of his of the gun type of your choice. All of the available guns to select were all significantly lower in stats than my current arsenal though, unfortunately.

As much as I’d like to say there’s more of an experience to be had. There really is not. After toppling the 12 trials without breaking much of a sweat, the Admiral commends your hard work and dedication to showing the soldiers what a Spectre’s capabilities truly are. You are a legend. Admiral Ahern will reminisce a bit about old times and set up a virtual scenario of a battle he once fought where the odds were dreadfully against him. It is a survival mission like the others, where you and your team must survive for five minutes this time enduring a brutal onslaught of turians. Stand tall until rescue arrives, for you are ridiculously outnumbered. Of course he claims it’s just a simulation and the pain will not be that of real pain. Simulation my ass! It’s time to turn the safety off in this final mission.

You place a little bet with the Admiral about you being able to survive the impossible. I can’t believe he actually held up his end of the bet! I always wanted a swanky new bachelorette pad on my own alluring red planet ever since the day I was flaunting my promotion to Spectre!

In reality there are more negatives than praise to give to this little piece of content that we had long-awaited all year (and last year!) for. In modes such as survival and the final mission, there are times when a horde of enemies will be focused on your screen at one time which will cause a noticeable drop in frame rate more times than not. The content overall will last you about all of three hours, and for five dollars that isn’t terrible. It’s just the quality of content we’ve come to expect from BioWare and then being given this is a bit of a disappointment, knowing what their team is truly capable of creating then getting fed the scraps.

Luckily, many of us DID play Mass Effect very deeply, weaving in and out of every single possible sidequest available to us until death do us part. So this will give achievement hunters and completionists a reason to spend some time again with Commander Shepard and Co. Honestly, I have one rather worthwhile recommendation for using Pinnacle Station to aid your needs. For those of you who sought after the achievements such as “Use biotic Barrier 75 times,” “Use biotic Barrier 75 times,” or “Use medi-gel 150 times,” and weren’t able to pick up every single one of those mass use achievements, this is the absolute perfect place to run through and wreak havoc upon some alien swine. You will pick up these achievements with ease if you spend time at Pinnacle Station, as well as gain some fair experience points while doing so.

Title: Mass Effect Pinnacle Station (DLC) Publisher: Microsoft Developer: BioWare / Demiurge Studios Platform(s): Xbox 360 Release Date: August 25, 2009

Doin It RIGHT: - Gives the completionists something to do. - Is a great aid in nabbing a glut of achievements that you may have not yet attained in previous playthroughs.	Doin It RONG: - Suffers from frame rate issues. - Has 13 missions… Most of which are all the same. - No story element whatsoever and feels rather unfitting to Mass Effect’s renown.
FINAL SCORE: 6.5 / 10

       

Tags: Bioware, Demiurge Studios, DLC, Mass Effect, Pinnacle Station

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under DLC, Featured, Reviews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.