But before we get reviewing, WOOO my banner finally got there, and it only took 2 weeks after I submitted it. It looked far cooler in Paint, I'll tell you that, but minimalistic is cool these days. I know I'm right. Anyway, Pinnacle Station.



Pinnacle Station is the second slab of Mass Effect DLC, after the very competent Bring Down The Sky. Unlike Bring Down The Sky, which saw you fighting a new alien race to save a human colony from the brink of destruction (which, so it seems, Shepard does five times before breakfast), Pinnacle Station sees you taking on a far bigger threat - THE ULTIMATE EVIL OF VIRTUAL REALITY!!!!! The station itself is a top secret human facility, built for the training of the various races of Citadel space. You dock with the station, a big wig from the Alliance fleet introduces himself, a Turian soldier belittles your ability, and a salarian whizz-kid plugs you in to the simulation.

As far as story goes, that's pretty much it. There's no huge ties to the main plot and your squad doesn't even make an appearance until you get down to the fighting. So, you'd better do just that, plug yourself in and get fighting.

The simulator is designed for four types of mission - Time Trial, Hunt, and Survival and Capture. In Time Trial, your goal is to kill everything in the level - the faster, the better. Hunt requires you to kill as many enemies as you can within an alloted time, with each kill netting you a few more seconds. Survival is exactly how it sounds - wave after wave of enemies will attack, and you must hold out for as long as possible, and Capture tasks you with capturing three or four points around the map as fast as you can. These missions are played out on four different 'arenas': Warehouse, Volcanic, Tropical, and Subterranean, and give a maximum of 12 combinations of mission (each mission type supports three arenas each). Scores/times are recorded against your fellow NPC combatants, with your goal, obviously, to claim the top spot in each mission.



As far as gameplay is concerned, its your standard Mass Effect affair - you shoots teh gunz, and teh robots fall downz. Enemies are no different from normal (except they disappear in a Tron-like fashion when you slay them), you can pick two fellow team members, alls good. The mission themselves aren't particularly taxing to the mind - you either shoot fast, run fast, or shoot and run fast. Out of the four missions, however, I found Capture to be the most fun. The act of sprinting to a point, sticking yourself against some cover and holding off the enemies as best you can whilst the 'capture' bar fills up torturingly slowly is actually quite a satisfying one. Survival, however, seems a wee bit broken. The point of survival is to steadily raise the difficulty of your enemies until survival proves almost impossible (see Left 4 Dead for the perfect execution of Survival), but here at Pinnacle station, difficulty starts at medium-hard and sticks there like a magnet to a fridge. Its supposed to be a case of "its not IF you die, its WHEN", but in every instance of Survival I actually had to seek out my own demise after seven minutes of fighting.

Of course, perhaps this is because I was playing the game on Normal mode with full Spectre gear on a stat-maxed Rufus Shepard. As such, I found most of the missions unchallenging, with minimal problems taking the top spot on my first try for each assignment. I imagine that a lot of the missions would be a lot more challenging with a new character or on higher difficulty, and its something I strongly suggest if you don't want to be bored out of your skull. The final bonus mission for perfecting all the rest is a bit of a challenge, but again, I bested it on my first try. I'm yet to try it with my far weaker Zara Shepard, so I'll keep you posted on the difficulty there.

Barring the difficulty, there is one huge issue I have with Pinnacle Station - it just feels like a rushed money-spinner. The arenas are actually re-hashed parts of the main story planets, it doesn't take a genius to think of 'Survival Mode' and there is probably less than six minute of original dialogue in the whole 2 hour experience. Case in point - after you finish a mission, the Admiral in charge gives you a one-liner depending on your victory or defeat, and I heard the same line repeated 5 times. Come on, Bioware, there's only TWELVE missions, would it have killed you to think of TWELVE little one-liners praising a victory?



In the end though, its 2 more hours of Mass Effect for a meagre 400 Microsoft Space Bucks, and you'll certainly have fun for those two hours, so if you do have a copy of Mass Effect you want to dust off, I do suggest you get it. It just feels like such an arbitrary addition to a great game, and such a pointless thing to produce, especially this late after Mass Effect's initial release. But, hey, its five bucks. You could certainly do a lot worse.

In other things:

I'm resolute now that I will post at least one entry a week in this infernal blog, probably on a Wednesday. If you enjoy reading my drivel then do add me to your friends list, and I'll certainly reciprocate.

Also, I bought I MAD3 A GAME WIT ZOMBIES IN IT!!!11, and its pretty awesome, especially the song that plays throughout. If you've got change from your Space Dollars, be sure to pick it up.