Review by: Danielle Riendeau

It’s going to be pretty interesting to see how Bioware handles the introduction to the upcoming Mass Effect 3, given the narrative importance of the final two DLC chapters for the second game. The events of The Arrival (like Lair of The Shadow Broker before it) have direct, important consequences on the series storyline. Both DLC packages are essentially “required reading” - bridging the gap between the two games in several crucial ways. How are first-time players (or ME2 players who simply didn’t want to spring for the extras) going to get up to speed?

If anyone is up to a little narrative tap-dancing, however, it’s the wizards at Bioware, who have crafted yet another indispensable chapter in the shooter/RPG space saga. The Arrival differs from previous DLC – and other missions in the game – in a few crucial ways, by reintroducing elements from the first game, offering a humongous scope, and letting Shepard go it alone in ways he/she never has before in the series.

We begin with a personal call from Admiral Hackett, asking Shepard to take on a rescue mission – alone. You’re tasked with infiltrating a Batarian prison, cutting loose one Doctor Kenson, an Alliance researcher, and getting the hell out. Kenson’s research is the key to the massive scope of the story. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say that there’s a rather large Reaper threat that her team has been working to circumvent, and, as with all things involving those pesky civilization-mauling foes, things aren’t entirely as they seem.

For large stretches, you’ll play as a lone Shepard, with no bantering squad mates to help you. As such, some of the shooting gets monotonous, as you’ll encounter hordes of the same three or four enemy types throughout the stage - and without my usual crew of Samara and Miranda, things got a little lonely. Most of the fun of ME2’s combat is in balancing squad mates’ powers and shooting in the meantime, so the simpler stop-and-pop just isn’t as fun on your lonesome.

Thankfully, the pacing is solid and there are a decent variety of other tasks on hand, so you won’t be popping guards for too long at a stretch. The climax itself is powerful and unexpected, and the Mass Effect central conceit – that your decisions matter big time – is actually pulled away from you in the heat of the moment, creating serious dramatic tension.

It’s apt to call the central decision you make – and the way in which the rug is pulled out from under you - as “frustrating, in the best possible way” – in the way that sometimes, even your best intentioned decisions aren’t possible to implement, after all. The aftermath has huge implications for Shepard’s future and the set up of Mass Effect 3. It’s not as consistently awesome as Shadow Broker, but that’s ok – The Arrival more than does its part in setting the stage for a killer third installment of the series. We’ll just have to wait for the fall to see how Bioware plans to fill everyone else in.