7/10
Nov 24, 2018·✓ Recommended
Beat·Xbox 360
Best played as an epilogue to Mass Effect 2, Arrival is an intriguing expansion partly for its content, but also because it feels a bit like two separate ideas smashed together.
Shepard is sent alone deep into Batarian territory to rescue a missing Alliance scientist, so the first half of this DLC was clearly supposed to be a tense, stealth-based encounter. This is Mass Effect 2 though and Shepard has all the tact of a boulder, so actually you barrel through everything all guns blazing, which robs the moment of some of its gravitas and political implications somewhat.
Things get better in the second half though when Shepard finds out what the scientist they rescued has discovered. It leads to a lengthy and often tricky fight through the tightly-packed hallways of an Alliance installation against the clock, which I would genuinely hold up as one of the most exciting set pieces in the trilogy.
Check out my full review! The Almighty Backlog, review #27:
https://thealmightybacklog.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/mass-effect-2-dlc/
