Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station Review

Delving back into the rich narrative of Mass Effect, I once again experienced some of its evocative and memorable final scenes before its dramatic end. See, in order to play the new downloadable content side quest, Pinnacle Station, I needed to load a save point after a specific plot curve, but before the “point of no return” endgame so I could still access the galaxy map and travel to different planetary systems.

Despite these very nitpicky requirements to even reach the side mission, I certainly didn’t mind reviewing climactic story moments involving Shepard’s determination to stop the rogue Turian Spectre, Saren. I mean Mass Effect mixed a highly intriguing sci-fi narrative, fluidly nonlinear and realistic character conversations, and fun third person shooting action to effectively make a fantastic action RPG. So after I watched a few scenes, I of course wanted nothing more than to continue playing through to the exciting conclusion.

Sure Saren threatens to destroy the entire galaxy, but I guess I could take the scenic route through Pinnacle Station to see what interesting new story it has to offer. Boy, was I disappointed.

For 5 bucks, at least the view is nice.

The whole mission is really just a glorified menu. Pinnacle Station’s entire premise—its minimal story and some newly recorded dialogue—boils down to the same annoying words you’ll hear several times from the particularly peeved Quarian who runs the station’s simulator: “Which combat mode: Time Trial, Capture, Survival, or Hunt?” Simulated combat? Maybe I should’ve kept pursuing Saren after all.

Enter the simulator and you’ll have overly simple task of getting top scores in four combat modes with three maps for each. With Time Trial, you and your selected squad must find and defeat the 25 enemies scattered across the map as fast as possible. For Capture, you must reach, defend, and capture three preset positions in the map as fast as possible. Survival, like Left 4 Dead’s Survival mode, has you hunker down and hold out against an onslaught of enemies for as long as you can until you die. And Hunt makes you defeat as many enemies as you can within a time limit that repeatedly replenishes with each kill you make.

Overall, the simulator provides some pretty generic, unremarkable Warehouse, Subterranean, Tropical, and Volcanic maps with straightforward designs to accommodate the cover-based third person shooting. Though in all modes the simulator pops enemies into the map at random places, I had no problem killing them fairly quickly. Defeating the high scores for all 12 scenarios took me no more than two or three tries each.

Shepard checks out his new digs when he could be saving the galaxy. The lazy bastard…

For all your efforts and the $5 you spent, you do get some “reward.” You’ll have a choice between a pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, or sniper rifle, all high caliber weapons exclusively obtained through Pinnacle Station. After you beat the extra challenging mission offered by Pinnacle Station’s Admiral Ahern, you’ll even win his retirement home, which you can visit to find free items. But really, am I supposed to care about these extras?

Pinnacle Station came over a year after Mass Effect released on PC, so most have already played through the original game. Sure you get these nifty trinkets, but at best you could only enjoy and use them during the final few scenes of the game. Most of us, however, will probably just finish Pinnacle Station with a nice sour taste in our mouths, and not bother to replay the ending using the rewards.

And the rest of Pinnacle Station comes as no prize either. With no real semblance of Mass Effect’s excellent sci-fi story, we simply get the game’s arguably weakest aspect, the combat. Not to mention, it’s quite ironic that this DLC costs $5 especially as the free DLC, Bring Down the Sky, had story, gameplay, and length that made it one of the best side missions in the game. I know neither why EA charged money for Pinnacle Station, nor know for sure why Bioware even developed it; I can only assume it comes as a half-hearted attempt to fulfill Bioware’s original promise to develop several DLC missions. But with Mass Effect 2 coming soon, I see no reason why anyone, even Mass Effect fans, should waste their time with Pinnacle Station.