As a big fan of Mass Effect I have been locking forward to more DLC for a while now. The last DLC, Bring Down The Sky, was released over a year ago so this addon has been in production for some time. It is however a very shallow experience that has nothing of what made Mass Effect great (story) and focuses on the average combat system.
The DLC adds a new space station in the Pheonix system. This space station is a training ground of sorts, where soldiers can engage in combat against holographic foes. Shepard is invited to try the training programs by the station commander. There are 12 different challenges spread accross four different environments. They all fall into one of four different types. Hunt, Capture, Time Trial and Survival. Along with the training program is a short plot about competition between the soldiers on the station. If you manage to win all 12 scenarios a 13th scenario is unlocked.
One thing that really bothered me while playing through this was the timed focus of three of the scenario types (Hunt, Capture, Time Trial). I found that the Mass Effect combat system was most entertaining while in Hardcore or Insane combat difficulty. However the timed aspect of the combat doesn't really allow you to spend time on thinking about tactics and its much more appealing to just set it to casual difficulty and run through. The only scenario type I found abit enteratining was the Survival mode which is akin to Horde mode in Gears of War 2.
The price of 400 MSP is about right for this amount of content. I guess there is about 2h of entertainment in here. There doesn't seem to be any unique loot rewards, you do receive a unique reward which I won't spoil but it only effects gameplay in a minimal way.
