[DLC] Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station

Introduction

Mass Effect is awesome. The story is awesome, the gameplay is awesome, Commander Shepard is awesome, and Wrex is very awesome. And despite having some of the most ridiculous technical problems I’ve ever seen from a current-gen game, but it’s still easily one of the best on 360. But one thing that positively sucks about Mass Effect is its DLC. The first piece of DLC, Bring Down the Sky, was released last year and cost 400 Microsoft Points ($5). It wasn’t necessarily bad, but there was just one problem: It was nothing but one ****ing sidequest! Even for only $5, you would expect more than an hour-long mission on an asteroid.

But as disappointing as that was, it’s nothing compared to the second piece of DLC, Pinnacle Station. This one was just released a couple months ago, and even though Bioware had a year to work on it, it has come out as a boring, buggy, broken mess that doesn’t deserve the words “Mass Effect” attached to it.

Single Player

After you download Pinnacle Station, start up your game and go to the Galaxy Map on the Normandy. Pinnacle Station will appear on the map in the Phoenix system of the Argos Rho cluster, and it’s always marked on your map as though it were a story mission. Apparently Pinnacle Station is a place used to train soldiers through combat scenarios. Beyond that, there is no storyline to speak of, which is already a problem since that’s one of the best parts of the main game.

Gameplay

First of all, if you own the Platinum Hits version of the game, don’t even bother reading any further, because Pinnacle Station will not work for you. This is supposedly due to a glitch involving the Bring Down the Sky bonus disc that comes with the PH version of the game. If I’m correct (and I might not be), there was a patch released for the PC version of the game, but not the 360 version. There is a way to work around the glitch, but you have to download BDtS from the Xbox Live Marketplace for $5, and since you already have BDtS if you have the PH version of the game, then it’s just a total waste.

Of course, even if Pinnacle Station did work with all copies of the game, it would still be utter crap. You begin the simulation by talking to the Salarian Tech Officer (who sounds revolted by your very existence). There are four different game modes; Time Trial, Capture, Survival and Hunt. In Time Trial, you need to run through the map and kill all of the enemies as fast as you can. Capture requires you to capture control points from the enemy as fast as you can. In other words, run to yellow pole, stand next to yellow pole for 30 seconds, repeat. In Survival, you need to stay alive against the enemies as long as you can, which basically means run around the arena in circles while casting Immunity/Barrier/Shield Boost. I managed to last 6 minutes just by doing that (you only need 2 minutes to complete it)! In Hunt, you have to kill as many enemies as you can before time runs out, and you get extra time every time you kill an enemy. This is by far the best of the game modes, but it suffers from a glitch that causes the timer to stop adding time after you kill 30-40 enemies. I don’t know why, but that always happens, and it isn’t explained anywhere.

The combat scenarios take place in a few different environments, including Volcanic, Tropical and Warehouse courses. This could have made things a little more interesting, but all of the environments are just rehashes of planets you played through in the main game. Just like the game modes, the environments are completely derivative and uninspired. There are 13 different scenarios total, and beating the high score on all of them (which takes about 2-3 hours) will get you 150 achievement points, as well as a gun. That’s it. There are also a few missed opportunities in the game, such as the lack of online leaderboards. Since Pinnacle Station is based on getting high scores and beating other characters’ scores, the absence is glaring.

But the one thing that truly ruins Pinnacle Station is the broken AI. The main enemies you’ll be facing in the combat scenarios are Pirates. Their main strategy is to run towards you until you’re literally touching them, then proceed to just stand there, firing off a shot maybe every 5 seconds. This is very annoying because you’ll be forced to use your melee attack constantly when you just want to shoot, AND if you get knocked down, they will all surround you so you can’t move anywhere and just have to let them kill you. The Geth soldiers that you also fight fare slightly better (they at least function properly), but the Geth Destroyers will occasionally do the exact same thing that the Pirates do. At least your allies are as brilliant and resourceful as ever (sarcasm). And did I mention the framerate is actually worse than it is in the main game?

Overall

Why was this released? Pinnacle Station represents everything that is wrong with Mass Effect, as well as DLC as a whole. It fails to add anything at all to the game, and it doesn’t even work properly. Bioware should be taking notes from Bethesda (Fallout 3, Oblivion) and Rockstar (GTAIV) on how to make decent DLC. I hope they do a better job with Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 DLC. As for Pinnacle Station, avoid it at all costs. Your 400 MS Points are best spent elsewhere.

+ Admiral Ahern is awesome, and very funny.

- Doesn't work with PH version of the game
- AI is broken
- boring game modes
- boring environments
- Awful, awful framerate
- 150G and a gun isn't worth the effort.

. Avoid

And this is Virmi-- I mean the Tropical Course.

I love the wii it is better than anything microsoft ever made.

EVER.

Therefore, the wii > this pile of dogshit