Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

Pinnacle Station is good and worth the $5, but not as good as the previous content. What it is, is twelve "combat simulations" that test your fighting ability. You fight for high score in survival, hunt, capture, or time trial modes. You're just trying to beat scores of the NPCs in the game, so no online competition. Each of these simulations last about 2 minutes and you might have to retry once or twice beat the required time/score. There is one final mission where you are forced to survive on "the highest difficulty" for over 2 minutes, but I didn't find that mission any more difficult than the normal survival modes(in fact, I thought it was considerably easier). The rewards for playing are a powerful weapon, your choice of which type, and your own retirement home. The apartment is pretty boring, but you can use it to buy the most powerful items in the game.

This DLC fills a hole that existed in Mass Effect and lets you fight like you've always wanted to. The reason it is not as good as the previous DLC is the complete lack of story or moral choices. In the previous DLC, there are a couple chances to choose paragon or renegade and and some considerable story. Neither of those are present in this package. Pinnacle Station also only take about an hour to beat. The 3 hours promised by Bioware would only be possible if you had to retry many of the missions.

So, its a good package that scratches that itch of wanting to test your characters fighting ability. It could have been more by either giving more options for the matches, like say Shepard fighting alone, or having online leaderboards. It also sacrifices the story, which has always been a big part of what makes ME great. Still, its some good fun and provides much more than the standard ME sidequest.