Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station - Review

Added September 9th, 2009 by Justin

Long before Mass Effect was released, Bioware teased with the notion of extending the life of the game long after the final credits rolled by way of post release DLC. Unfortunately, these ideas didn’t seem to pan out as lavishly as expected and, nearly two years after the release of Mass Effect, Pinnacle Station is only the second downladable content pack. Even worse, this content isn’t all that great – in fact, it’s downright mediocre at best.

Upon arrival to Pinnacle Station, a high level military training ground situated deep within the Argus Rho cluster, you’ll be free to embark on one of the station’s many simulated combat scenarios. To start, there are eight challenges for you to face in one of four disciplines: time trial, capture, survival or hunt. Time trial challenges you to find and kill a set number of enemies as quickly as possible. Capture is essentially territories mode from Halo 3, giving you a few objectives to capture, one after another whilst facing enemy resistance. Survival is exactly what it sounds like, challenging you to survive endless waves of respawning enemies for as long as you can. In the Hunt mode, you’ll be tasked with gunning down enemies to add time to an ever-dwindling clock. Strangely, once you’ve accumulated 20 kills, you stop adding time to the clock. I imagine this is to make the challenge a bit more difficult once you’ve reached that barrier, since then you’re merely racing the clock to rack up the kills.

After completing the eight challenges, four more will open up for you to complete under each of the four disciplines and once those are completed, Admiral Ahearn, the head of Pinnacle Station will present you with one final challenge - a recreation of a battle he faced during the First Contact War. This challenge is, by far, the most difficult you’ll face aboard Pinnacle Station and one of the most difficult in the game, even for a 60th level character with the absolute best in terms of armor and weaponry. This is a challenge that will send all but the most seasoned Mass Effect veterans back to the Normandy in tears…or a body bag.  

Each challenge has its own leaderboard and you’ll be ranked alongside your fellow combatants. As you may have guessed, your ultimate goal is to climb to the top of each of these leaderboards. Doing this is not too difficult for mid – high level characters, depending on difficulty. Even Mass Effect newcomers shouldn’t find the challenges to be too difficult.

The biggest problem with Pinnacle Station is that it highlights many of Mass Effect’s biggest flaws. Among these flaws is the inability of the graphics engine to keep up with the action in large firefights. Since this content is solely focused on combat, this is an issue that regularly crops up throughout your time aboard Pinnacle Station in the form of a framerate that drops like a rock at an annoyingly frequent rate. Anyone who has played Mass Effect for a decent amount of time can tell you that this is not limited to combat aboard Pinnacle Station but, due to the combat being more widely spread apart, it’s a bit more bearable. Instead, the storyline, which is still widely regarded as one of this generation's best, and character integration are pushed to the forefront with the combat assuming a secondary role.

This brings to light another flaw with the content. There is very little character interaction and no story whatsoever to be found here. Two of Mass Effect's biggest strengths are completely disregarded in this new content pack. Even the prior release, Bring Down the Sky had its own little story arc contained within it and some pretty decent character interaction as well. As a result, Pinnacle Station just doesn't seem to fit within the world of Mass Effect.  

There are a few bright spots in this. In what little character interaction there is, the voice acting is consistent with Mass Effect as a whole in that it is typically great. For players after the achievements gained for reaching certain level milestones, this will likely be a life saver, as it offers infinite XP rewards. Unfortunately, that’s where the praise ends. The combat scenarios are mildly entertaining but once you’ve completed them all, aside from the unlimited XP, there’s nothing to warrant a repeat playthrough. Mass Effect works as an action RPG, not as a standalone third person shooter, which is what Pinnacle Station seems to be trying to turn Mass Effect into. Without the storyline, exploration and character interaction of the main game, this just falls flat on its face.

All things considered, Pinnacle Station is a disappointing addition to Mass Effect. This is not something to be expected of one of the premier RPG developers in the gaming industry, rather, something expected of a developer that has no idea what they are trying to present in their game and deciding to ditch the strongest aspects of their game in favor of highlighting its weaknesses. Completing the DLC will net you 150 achievement points, a new weapon and a small and ultimately frivolous apartment for your character to visit from time to time. 400 MS Points aren’t a lot to pay by any stretch but that $5 worth of points can certainly be better spent elsewhere.