In Depth: Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam

The fire burns everywhere. Hillside razed, embers burning where once a jungle stood. Flames tear homes apart, a hut, a home, now charcoal skeleton. Those flames aren’t mine; but these, the flames burning through the Charlie lying all around, they are. They’re my flames, on my Charlie, and I’m proud. Beside me, a marine sniper laughs as he puts a round through someone’s skull at 300 meters. Brass, they call this place Hill 137. Gunny, though, he calls this place Hamburger Hill. The place where Charlie made mince meat out of Marines. This place is a battlefield. I’m in bad company. Trapped in Vietnam.

Journey to this place cost me. Not so much as I’d expected, though.

Available now for $14.99 US, or 1200 Microsoft Points, Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam is the only true multiplayer expansion so far released for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Definitely the best Bad Company 2 expansion for me to put my hard earned money towards, too. Sure, there’s the Onslaught Mode and SPECACT bundle out there already. But, really, I found the attraction of actually paying for either the new class skins in the SPECACT bundle or the cooperative-only Onslaught Mode to be kind of, well, nonexistent.

Fortunately, I guess, the Onslaught Mode was included in the cost of the Bad Company 2 Ultimate Edition I picked up at EB Games for about $78, along with a download token for the outstanding Xbox Live Arcade game Battlefield 1943. No SPECACT bundle token though, so I guess I’ll have to bear life without those four achievements for now.

Vietnam, obviously, takes place in both a location and an era entirely independent from Bad Company 2’s standard multiplayer. This mere change of time and place, however, doesn’t stop Vietnam from being a drastic departure from vanilla Bad Company 2 in terms of aesthetic and gameplay.

Once I downloaded the Vietnam patch – over a gigabyte, so I went and watched an episode of 30 Rock while I waited – and actually paid for the expansion itself, I noticed a change to Bad Company 2’s main menu. There, beside the “Onslaught” option, sat a new “Vietnam” tab. I highlighted and opened it, expecting a simple message to pop up, welcoming me to the past.

Instead, I heard music.

Some folks are born, silver spoon in hand.

Fortunate Son, by Creedence Clearwater Revival, now playing through my Astro A40s. Fantastic choice of song, something that really complements the virtual “cover art” for the expansion. And, what brilliant cover art this is. A Marine armed with a Remington 870 shotgun slightly to the left of centre, an arm and leg illuminated by fire’s orange glow. Behind him a Medic walks tall, M60 slung over his shoulder. Their third squad mate mans a Jeep’s heavy machine gun, while three Huey transport helicopters fly overhead.

Given what I had unwittingly bought into, this menu is about the most perfect introduction DICE could have given me to Vietnam; the menu characters and vehicles move slowly as the music plays, giving a real sense of life to what I saw.

Life, really, is what Vietnam is all about.

Because, after I scrolled through the weapon stats page to see the kind of hardware I’d be working with, I felt the urge to explore. Picking “Play with Friends”, I decided to play with an old friend from my days at Ferny Grove High School. Curious, I scrolled through the map list. Five new maps. Fifteen new weapons. I pressed the Xbox Guide Button, joined Mickey’s Xbox Live party, and joined his game.

Now, I got to see the awesome treatment DICE has given to the loading screens for each of the five new maps in Vietnam. Vantage Point, Cao Son Temple, Hill 137, Phu Bai Valley, and Operation Hastings each opens with a degraded projection of the map in question, showing bases and objectives to be captured. The loading music is really the most fantastic bit of all this. I’m pretty sure that Ron Burgundy himself actually plays the jazz flute intro to Cao Son Temple. Hill 137's "Muscle Soul" is probably my favourite of the 49 tunes hidden away in the soundtrack, though.

After loading into “Operation Hastings” with my squad, the immensity of this particular map immediately struck me. Unlocked after Vietnam players performed a collective sixty-nine million squad actions, Hastings is just goddamn massive. There’s enough room to fit four Conquest flags instead of the usual three, and space for two main battle tanks, a helicopter, a patrol boat, and several light vehicles, per team. Simply traversing this map on foot would be suicide in Bad Company 2. Vietnam, though, makes the journey much easier.

Though some Vietnam multiplayer maps are significantly larger than those in Bad Company 2, they’re a hell of a lot more claustrophobic and paranoia inducing, too. At first this would seem paradoxical. Jungle encroaches on personal space, though, leaves you alone with yourself, when you know armoured support is only ten meters east of your position. Fewer long lines of sight mean snipers will be able to spot fewer enemies as they approach their position. Ancient temples, rampant vegetation, scrambling villages; fresh air is difficult to find in Vietnam.

Charlie could be around any corner. Normally, somebody named xX I D0 UR MUM Xx or something similar to that will be around the corner instead, trying vainly to hide behind a wall with a shotgun.

One 40mm grenade later, that wall’s got a hole blown in it and xX I D0 UR MUM Xx is feeling rather poorly.

Weapons do far more damage in Vietnam than they do in standard Bad Company 2. This means you no longer have to play hardcore mode to kill an enemy without going through a full clip of ammunition. Recon teams can now put down foot mobile soldiers without always getting headshots. To make it harder for these Recon snipers, Ghille suits are now gone from the inventory. Hide behind a bush using the Recon class, and you’ll stand out like a Medic or Engineer. Now, playing Recon is less about camping in trees and more about taking higher ground and spotting.

Sure, Recon players can still camp behind a rock pretending they’re Carlos Hathcock; but it won’t be long before they’re spotted by an enemy sniper and cut down by a Patrol Boat’s dual heavy machine guns. This, and increased weapon damage, is all part of a delicate balancing act DICE clearly hoped would fix some of the issues inherent in Bad Company 2.

DICE have made many other little changes from Bad Company 2 to Vietnam; most of these alterations are fairly subtle, with their purpose being less than obvious. Two changes have been made that are quite noticeable, however: vehicles are now far less effective without support; and infantry kit loadouts have been changed slightly to redefine infantry roles.

Lone vehicle effectiveness is vastly reduced in Vietnam, probably because military vehicles in those days didn’t really have the kind of armour that their equivalents would have today.

Observant players will notice this almost immediately upon their first encounter with a Huey. Helicopter pilots are no longer capable of dominating everyone and anyone on the opposite team, because Huey helicopters have weak armour. In Bad Company 2, the Hind Transport, and Tiger and Apache attack helicopters, were almost impossible to kill once they were in the air, being completely immune to small arms fire. This essentially meant that, once a decent pilot had destroyed the few anti-air gun emplacements on the map, he could proceed to slaughter the enemy team unopposed, laughing maniacally all the while.

Now, going anywhere near enemy medics, tanks, or jeeps, at all, will get you shot down if you don’t use cover properly. There are no longer wars of attrition between helicopter pilots and tank commanders. If a tank spots a Huey approaching, that Huey is dead unless it backs off to find another attack vector. Huey rocket pods are incredibly powerful, though, capable of gutting tanks with either careless drivers, or unmanned mounted machine guns.

Problem is, through the thick canopy of the jungle, Hueys can be hard to spot. Likewise, when circling with a helicopter, it can be very difficult to spot the jeep or tank that you’re hunting. Infantry are definitely helpful, being able to more easily spot and call out enemy armour and positions. When that tank symbol pops up, I’ve found it’s best to aim the rockets and blast it before it blasts you.

Tanks also no longer have coaxial machine guns, instead sporting flamethrowers that generally seem pretty useless at any range beyond five feet. This leaves tanks unable to engage either infantry or helicopters with the efficiency they used to; although light vehicles are still easily dealt with. Because flamethrowers have such pitiful range, manned machine guns are essential. In Vietnam, tanks must operate with a crew of two.

Infantry are the deadliest force to stalk through the jungles. Vehicles, like it or not, are too cumbersome to travel anywhere except for roads that are probably mined. Tanks and even jeeps are just big targets asking to take a hit. Without friendly foot mobiles to back them up, they tend not to last very long

Why? Because, infantry, far from being valuable only as vehicle support, are the deadliest force present in the fetid undergrowth of Vietnam. Each class, or Kit, has been fine-tuned close to perfection. Now it really feels as though each kit stacks up well against the other.

No one kit is the most effective overall, because of the changes listed below.

Overall Changes:

No class can attach a Red Dot Sight or 4x Rifle Scope to their weapons anymore. The R870 Shotgun and the Flamethrower may both be equipped as any Kit’s primary weapon, alongside the WWII Thompson, and the M1 Garand available via the Battlefield Veterans program.

Assault Kit

In Vietnam, The Assault Kit receives a nerf – an effectiveness decrease – to the close quarters combat effectiveness of its 40mm Grenade Launcher. DICE made the change relatively easily, by swapping out rifle-mounted grenade launchers for the M79 “Wombat Gun” or “Thumper”, a separate single shot grenade launcher. Fans of Modern Warfare 2 should recognise it as the secondary “n00b tube” many players would equip themselves with for room-clearing classes.

The M79 being an equipment type launcher like the RPG-7, now takes much longer to switch to than an underslung rifle grenade launcher does. Thus, Assault players must now focus on good marksmanship and alertness. If you get ambushed at close range, you can no longer just switch to your grenade launcher and blow your enemy to smithereens by putting a shot behind them. Just try this, and you’ll be left fumbling for your M79 while an enemy Engineer is turning your once pretty face into bacon bits with a repair torch.

Recon Kit

The Recon Kit sees a subtle increase in its anti-armour effectiveness at the cost of a reduction in effectiveness versus infantry. Because they no longer have a ghillie suit to blend into vegetation, Recon players get something of a boost to their offensive capabilities.

Namely, the Recon Kit now includes both C4 and a Mortar Strike Designator.

Lurking snipers now pose a double risk to careless tank drivers, being able to take them at both close range using C4, and long range using a Mortar Strike. On the plus side, no additional optics – bar a 12x Scope – may be mounted on a sniper rifle, vastly decreasing a sniper’s close-range effectiveness versus infantry. The Sniper Spotter Scope cannot be attached to any weapon, either, making it harder to spot enemy troops moving carefully.

Given the sniper rifle can be pretty ineffective at close range, now, I found it more fun to use a Thompson submachine gun as my primary, playing the role of commando more than sniper.

Engineer Kit

Engineer effectiveness at long range is vastly reduced in Vietnam. My beloved Engie can only use his M1 Garand in long range combat situations. However, the Engineer is unquestionably the most effective class for getting up close and personal. Really, nothing much is more satisfying in Vietnam than shredding enemy infantry into pieces with a submachine gun before putting an RPG-7 into their supporting tank's exhaust port.

Interestingly, the RPG-7 is the only launcher available in the Engineer Kit. Anti-tank mines are still there, but gone are the Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle and the AT4. I’m glad to see the Carl Gustav gone. No longer do Engineers possess an anti-infantry launcher so accurate it begged to be used exclusively as a high-explosive sniper weapon.

The RPG-7 no longer has a scope attached, instead using the iron sights that Call of Duty players will be accustomed to. These sights make it a little harder to aim the RPG-7 at long range, further limiting its already terrible long range performance.

Medic Kit

Medics are less dangerous at long range than they were in Bad Company 2, being unable to use any weapon aside from light machine guns or the weapons that any class can use. This doesn’t automatically make medics terrible at a distance, though. Anybody with half a brain can tap the trigger to help pick off enemies from afar with their Light Machine Gun. Any class can attack at long range. Medics just aren’t meant to do it.

These changes seem to ensure that Medics actually do what they’re meant to do. Light Machine Guns are there to clear hostile areas quickly, and take down helicopters and light ground vehicles like jeeps. After the medic is done providing support, they’re meant to heal any squad mates who have been wounded or incapacitated by enemy actions. Bad Company 2 saw many medics sit on their own life-giving health crates trying to snipe people with scoped M60s. Medics in Vietnam tend not to try that, because they need to stay close to their squad to stay protected. Their anti-helicopter prowess makes them an even bigger target than they were before, so most Medics I’ve encountered will actively try to keep friendlies alive.

Really, what Vietnam encourages, aside from excessive use of flamethrowers, is the use of the four Kits for their actual intended purposes. Soldiers sitting on an ammo box, trying to use their 40mm launcher as a mortar, will soon be either sniped or gunner down by a helicopter. Same goes for Medics who like to pretend they’re their own little gun emplacement.

This whole new level of Kit balance isn’t what makes this expansion so absorbing; though, I found it definitely helps that people aren’t screaming about “Recon campers” and “Assault tubers”.

What makes Vietnam so very ensnaring is the culture. M40 rifles have “Hell Sucks!” carved into the stock, and there is a peace symbol engraved into rear casing of the M10 submachine gun.

And, like the base Battlefield: Bad Company 2 game, the Vietnam expansion is heavily steeped in popular culture. However, instead of mocking other popular video games as Bad Company 2 does, Vietnam uses music to pay homage to several films which revolve around the horrors of the Vietnam War. Though, true to DICE’s style, some of these references are more tongue-in-cheek.

Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries seem to be the two songs that play by default whenever I get into the pilot seat of a Huey helicopter, referencing Forrest Gump and Apocalypse Now, respectively. There are apparently 49 other Vietnam-era songs that’ll play through the radio of any United States Marine Corp (USMC) vehicle you dare to commandeer, but really, nothing beats the Huey’s onboard radio.

Jumping out of a Huey landed on a small patch of turf while “ Some folks are born, made to wave the flag” waffled eerily out of the pilot’s radio, took me way back to my early teen years. Back to the first time I saw Forrest Gump. This, again, provided yet more proof that my mental health is not so sound as I would like it to be. Rather than remembering one of the profound life lessons I should’ve learned from Forrest Gump, I felt compelled to scream “I gotta find Bubba!” into my headset microphone. Cue me running through the jungle as quickly as my computerised legs would take me, while enemy mortar shells pummelled the ground all around, shredding Vietnam’s luscious jungle vegetation into pulp.

Similarly, manning the side gun of a Huey cruising at 50 meters over the treetops is creepy enough without music. Just me sitting there in the air, the rotor’s overhead whir the only indicator of what NVA attack might come from anywhere. Once the speakers start to howl Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries at the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars lurking in the undergrowth below, though, the tingle in my spine is almost too affecting to bear. I know they can hear us, now; and, I can almost hear them, plotting my demise. I hope, once the fighting erupts, that my pilot can dodge Rocket Propelled Grenades.

Being this immersed in a world I’ll only inhabit until my next virtual death isn’t an experience I’m used to in an online multiplayer first person shooter. Games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty titles like Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 are great fun, certainly; but, when playing, I’m always aware of them being games. There’s a big rush to do whatever suits me, to get whatever weapon is my favourite, or to get to my favourite part of the map.

Vietnam, even more than the already entrancing Bad Company 2, is almost too real. Teammates feel less like players, and more like actual squad members.

While I’m escorting a tank through a likely choke point, flamethrower at the ready, blood runs cold when my Sapper goes down. Our medic yells, “Get down! Sniper!” I move into a trench, knowing danger can only come from the narrow path before me. Medic gets to work, patches up the Sapper. Both move to safety with me, while the tank starts shelling out the only high ground that provides any cover. Our own sniper team, two men just ahead of our position, well hidden, make the kill. “Got the son of a bitch,” one mutters.

Our tank stops firing, and we move ahead, checking the road for mines. Soon, we meet the rest of our armour, and roll towards the NVA’s position ahead.

This isn’t me over glorifying the situation, either. Storming bunkers with flamethrowers, being forced to pull back after an unsuccessful attack on enemy tanks, hearing klaxons as your Huey careens earthward. These are moments you’ll live through, or die during, several times a day in Vietnam. Often, you’ll have to fight like this several times in a single match. Really, the potential for action is what makes the idea of playing Vietnam after a hard day at work so attractive; DICE’s outstanding menu design, choice of game soundtrack, and ever-helpful in game dialogue is what keeps you immersed in action that could, otherwise, easily be mindless.

All that sucks about this, truly, is looking at your watch when you finally decide to go to bed. More often than not, mine reads “5:30am”.

When I bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam in December 2010, I really couldn’t have asked for a better game expansion to spend my 1200 Microsoft Points on. For me, it’s an outstanding improvement upon what really had to be the best First Person Shooter title of 2010. DICE didn’t just change the battlefield for this expansion. DICE didn’t just try to breed a clone of Bad Company 2 that wore a different outfit and spoke with a foreign accent. Instead, DICE took what issues existed in the original game, banished them to the Negative Zone, and built a brilliant new Battlefield: Bad Company 2 expansion.

Now, more than ever, I’m waiting for Battlefield 3. If DICE can maintain or even improve upon the quality of Vietnam, then I’ll be a very happy man-child. Until Battlefield 3 is released in Fall this year, which is probably late Spring for Australia, I think I’ll be just fine.

After all.

Grass huts don’t burn themselves to the ground.

Review: Lair of the Shadow Broker

Through the storm there cruises a ship chasing shadows, fleeing sunset’s mustard light. Beneath it, so far that soil seems impossible, flat sheet of cloud lie calm, layers upon layers of slate, skyward ocean undisturbed. Alien, this ship, broad at her stern, tail like the flared gills of a cod looming over reef, hungry. Needles on her spine rend the churning storm, take lightning as punishment, absorb each strike, using this pain as fuel.

Screams rattle the hull, whether those of wind or crew, and the prow, hanging empty like a mouth without mandibles, gasps at the air ahead. Here, Commander Shepard will meet the Shadow Broker. Here, countless workplace health and safety violations make paperwork a nightmare. Here, I’ve really jumped the gun, left myself right in the eye of the storm.

Yes, a bloody terrible metaphor; but also, a necessary truth. Really, I just couldn’t start a review about Lair of the Shadow Broker without a mention of the sanity-impairing visuals that Bioware packaged with story and sound. Like Overlord, most of what there is to see stirs some kind of feeling deep inside me. Whether awe, fear, or curiosity, there’s always a primal, sort of desperate edge to what you experience while playing through this expansion. Lair of the Shadow Broker is just one of those things that you sit there and experience, legs crossed and bladder aching, until it comes to an end of its own accord.

Really, the only – minor – issue I took with Lair of the Shadow Broker is that I ended up a little confused when I tried to start my detective work. I paid 800 Microsoft Points and then waited about an hour for my download to finish, only to find myself unable to immediately begin my hunt. Unacceptable. I’m a twenty-year old white male. I can barely handle waiting for my Footy Franks to microwave.

To trigger the mission, you need to go to Illium and talk to Liara T’Soni. At least, that’s what the prompt on the galaxy map told me I needed to do. Really, to get anywhere, you need to talk to Liara. Simple enough. After all, she’ll just keep staring if no one asks her what a squidjob is, so talking to her is a natural enough way to react. However, you need to choose a specific dialogue choice to head out on another adventure with tentacled Smurfette. Granted, once I actually succeeded in getting the mission underway, I definitely felt like a massive tool; but, that wasn’t until after I realised I needed to ask Liara about the Shadow Broker, yet again.

Yes, the man behind Commander Shepard, the great paragon of virtue, couldn’t detect the start of this great mystery, let alone the end. And, after the action started, that fact worried me even less than all the dead spiders in the light fittings.

Immediately after the mission loads, and you gain control of Commander Shepard, it’s all about finding evidence. Like the Hammerhead segments in Overlord, the starting moments of Lair of the Shadow Broker provide yet another nice break from setting people on fire and shooting (presumably) smelly monsters in the face. If you’re not the type of person that likes using tweezers to put bits of Blu Tak into individually labelled jars, there’s not much need to worry. Commander Shepard will soon get their chance to pummel mercenaries to death with their own fists, loot the dead, and hack bank accounts for quick money. Don’t take too long rifling through pockets, though, lest you keep the seething hordes of enemy soldiers waiting.

That’s definitely no understatement, either. Lair of the Shadow Broker is the most difficult piece of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content so far; the moment I put a bullet through one of their skulls, I had near-countless mercenaries swarming over me with suicidal abandon.

No mere grunts and lowly gunslingers, here: there were numerous Engineers, Sentinels, and Vanguards attacking, all using vastly annoying combined abilities to disrupt my ability to advance, take cover, and retreat. Even the grunts, normally stupid enough to hide behind canisters of toxic gas or radioactive material, seemed smarter than normal. Before each advance, they’d throw flashbang grenades down, hoping to flush me out of cover. Every time I made a push, they’d try and use their flashbangs again, this time to leave me blind in the open. Rather than becoming tedious, this became more fun in itself, a game within a game. Me, trying to pick off one or two foes distracted by a friendly combat drone’s silent and steady approach. Me, taking cover after their friends realise combat drones can’t really do much but glide around like an old helium balloon. Albeit a helium balloon that has a constantly discharging tesla coil strapped to it.

Just when all the fighting starts to feel little strained, there’s another break from the action. Now, Shepard gets another chance to take a vehicle for a spin. No, the Hammerhead’s staying aboard the Normandy, this time around. Instead, you get to commandeer one of the ridiculous looking hover taxis you see flying around places like Illium, the Citadel, and Omega. Maybe it’s because hover taxis don’t have guided missiles like the Hammerhead, but I wasn’t paying too much attention to the sky road in front me. I am aware that my driving probably killed more people than the combined forces of evil in Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Knights of the Old Republic. Really, though, it’s just difficult to concentrate on driving when there’s so much to look at. Ducking and weaving through tunnels and cultural hubs while watching neon signs reflected in my new hover car’s shiny exterior. Above and all around, the sky felt not so much above Illium but a part of it, crammed with floating billboards and traffic, the flotsam of this languid city’s life. Shorter buildings peaked a hundred meters below me, the true skyscrapers towering a kilometre or so above.

This is where the scenery really caught my attention, which it held captive for the rest of my journey. Really, I found myself wishing I could buy some kind of camera attachment for my armour, so I could take photos for my cabin aboard the Normandy. Illium had a lot to offer me, and when it came time to leave, I found myself wanting to stay where I’d finished up, to further explore the view. Time, however, apparently didn’t want to play by my rules. Soon, the Normandy jumped from Illium to Hagalaz, some backwater world whose surface is ravaged by one massive storm. Shortly after scanning it from space, EDI pointed out that Hagalaz is a second-rate garden world; capable of supporting human life, but definitely less than ideal, and just not worth the hassle of setting up a colony.

If you found a way to weather the storm, though, the perfect place to hide. After choosing our plan of attack, we jumped into a shuttle, and used it to board. Standing atop that ship, instead of watching it on approach, certainly gave me some perspective, especially once the fighting started. We were always heading towards the aft of the ship, with the stern never appearing larger, never seeming to get any closer. Like Overlord, I’ll still remember Lair of the Shadow Broker years after I’ve written this review, possibly even after my consciousness is installed in my new cybernetic body. Perhaps it’s a sad comment on the way I live – although that’s all about opinion, anyway – but I don’t think I can ever forget exactly what I saw and felt aboard that ship.

Enemies would attack in massive waves as I attempted to push forward. Shooting lightning rods could thin their numbers. Biotic attacks launched their miserable victims up, out of the ship’s artificial gravity, into the storm’s waiting grip. Lightning, jagged wire, would fork down and skewer them, repeatedly, incinerating them as the ship surged forward, their limp bodies smashed to pieces on the colossal engine shroud. Perhaps it’s just because these were merely worthless peons being wasted: I laughed. I laughed like a Hyena with a stutter, unable to control my mirth. For this, I will surely suffer some sort of horrible divine punishment, but, it’s just unbelievably funny watching lighting strike the same guy about seven times before he finally splatters everywhere.

Breaching the hull allows access to the inner sanctum, where you’ll encounter numerous enemies, and some discomforting truths. Lair of the Shadow Broker may not be quite so devastating as Overlord; but it certainly provides enough reward to be worth the extra cost of 800 Microsoft Points. Aside from the huge number of credits to be earned, about 90 000, there are several upgrades just waiting to be accessed, alongside hilarious videos featuring such classics as an angry Krogan punching a reporter.

Even with all the nifty bonuses this mission awards upon completion, your old companion Liara T’Soni offers the greatest reward of all. That reward is her mere presence, and the different ways that you may choose to either help or hinder her understanding of you. While the overall, and unavoidable, goal of the mission is to help her discover the Shadow Broker’s true nature, there are several other things that Liara may be after, depending on your shared past. Word must get around, because any choices you’ve made up until this point are apparently public knowledge. Whether you’ve remained a close personal friend and nothing more, or whether you’ve taken her love and spurned it, Liara will undoubtedly have some remark to offer. You might agree with her judgement, accept fault for your actions, or throw Liara’s comments right back in her pale blue face.

Whatever the case, your choices here fit together with all those you’ve made in previous Mass Effect games, tailoring your specific experience, getting you ready for whatever may come in Mass Effect 3.

Lair of the Shadow Broker, like Overlord and Kasumi – Stolen Memory, leaves you with an astonishing amount of magnificent scenery to gawk, and tells a fascinating and dark story that perfectly fits Mass Effect 2’s gritty Christopher-Nolan-Makes-Batman-Now feel. At 800 Microsoft Points, Lair of the Shadow Broker is the most expensive single piece of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content there is. Really, though, that doesn’t matter. People should buy their way into this story. They should buy their way into all three stories. Skip the Firepower and Aegis packs if you really must limit your experience to save about five dollars, and instead focus entirely upon the story-oriented content. Your journey though Mass Effect 2 will become so much more beautiful and enjoyable for your choice.

Review: Overlord

Through Overlord, Bioware provides even more fantastic downloadable content for those who own a copy of Mass Effect 2. Without any recruitable squad members or exciting new weapons to recommend it, Overlord might give off a lacklustre vibe, at least initially. A misleading reading, because whatever Overlord is, lacklustre it definitely isn’t.

Overlord is based upon one of the most basic of artificial-intelligence doomsday scenarios there is – that of an advanced Artificial Intelligence trying to escape confinement to infect the internet and thus all technology. However, Bioware takes this common trope and turns it on its head, leaving a story that is as absolutely beautiful and heart wrenching as it is exciting and powerful.

The story starts once you’ve paid whatever price is necessary to access it.

Overlord will cost you the same amount as Kasumi – Stolen Memory, no matter your preferred platform. Xbox 360 owners can expect to pay 560 Microsoft Points for the privilege of helping Cerberus sort their shit out. Playstation 3 owners, meanwhile, can expect to lose nothing, bar perhaps a little sanity as they wait solemnly for Mass Effect 2’s Playstation 3 release later this month.

Whatever the cost, once Overlord is installed, the doomed planet Aite will appear as a new location the next time Commander Shepard accesses the Normandy’s galaxy map. Once you chose to undertake the Overlord mission, the Normandy will swoop in, cargo bay door open, dropping Commander Shepard and two Squad Members of his choosing in the M-44 Hammerhead. Introduced in the Firewalker Pack, free to Cerberus Network members, the Hammerhead is a light hover tank that replaces the Mako recon vehicle of the first Mass Effect. Thankfully, aside from a passing resemblance, the Hammerhead is nothing at all like the Mako, and actually handles like a hover tank, rather than a drunken caterpillar with busted pogo sticks for legs.

Aite is a beautiful planet, and that’s just when you’re viewing it from space. Delicate rings of crystal orbit Aite, both outlining and belying what must happen after you land. Certainly, you have a mission. Yet, once you’ve been dropped on the surface and actually get to exploring, you may find yourself tempted. You could destroy enemies and mission objectives if you wanted to. Or, you could spend a few hours cruising around to find more verdant pasture, more crystal lagoons to skim across, more fig-shadowed horizons to stare at, and even more six-limbed space cows to splatter with your reinforced bonnet.

There are even some puzzles you must solve using the Hammerhead, situations where you need to pretend you’re Crash Bandicoot, where you have to forget your training and cross rivers of liquid hot magma by jumping across floating rock platforms. Sometimes you need to trick otherwise indestructible enemies into shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. You can also harvest mineral deposits directly by parking over them and holding Y (on an Xbox controller, anyway) until a light panel on the rear of the Hammerhead blinks green. This is mildly confusing, because there’s no way anyone in the vehicle could possibly see this light panel to know harvesting was successful. Unless Cerberus also installed a periscope to let Shepard see what could easily have been a small holographic icon in the cockpit. Either way, it’s a case of human engineering at its best.

Eventually, though, after you’ve found the six hidden Cerberus data packets, after you’ve hunted a lumbering sapient species to extinction using a military vehicle, and realised the green light is just an unfortunate result of outsourcing, you’ll want more. You’ll want to actually get somewhere, to uncover some missing part of the story, to try and complete the mission. Sure, the space cows will forever remember you as the greatest blight of their peaceful civilisation’s short history, the man whom forced them to take up arms; but, mere exploration will only tide you over for so long. All you have to do then is find a Cerberus bunker, park correctly in a designated Cerberus personnel space, and walk right in through the front door.

At this point you’ll have to face wave upon wave of synthetic enemies: LOKI mechs, their morbidly obese and infinitely angry YMIR brethren, and Geth. Make sure you’re bringing tech-savvy squad members capable of AI Hacking and using Overload. If your Commander Shepard is an Infiltrator, Engineer or Sentinel you should also have a much easier time of it. If you’ve previously downloaded the Firepower Pack, make sure to break out the Geth Plasma Shotgun with Disruptor rounds. That is, if you feel like one-shot killing non-armoured synthetics from about thirty meters away, regardless of whether they’re shielded or not.

The combat component of Overlord is actually almost too easy, especially if you, like me, run an Infiltrator class with shotgun training. In that case, you just kill all easy targets with the Geth boomstick, incinerate the armour of big badass enemies, hack them. To take my own poor example, I hacked a Geth Destroyer and watched it turn its flamethrower upon its helpless former allies. After this, I spent a good five minutes giggling like a little boy who’d just heard his dog fart for the first time.

So, it’s not particularly difficult or time-consuming defeating the entirely-robotic enemies covering Aite; but that doesn’t stop Overlord from being a truckload of fun. Hell yeah I just disguised an obscenity.

Perhaps it’s better that the five missions that make up this little expansion aren’t all that hard. Otherwise, I might have gone insane as I feverishly attempted to uncover the secrets story of the Overlord in my race from the first to final bunker. Without giving too much away, I found what I encountered in that final bunker emotionally overwhelming, almost too difficult to deal with. Even after I finished the expansion, went back to the Normandy, saved two redundant files to be safe, and shut my Xbox 360 down, I felt my heart being twisted by what I’d uncovered. New Years Eve, and instead of grabbing another Rum with Dry and Lime whilst Daft Punk played through my headphones, I needed time to sit. I needed time to sit and think about what had happened.

After all the mindless ecstasy of speeding over lake, land, and lava in a hover tank, Bioware switched the mood, and immediately left me a thoughtful kind of morose.

That switch is what’s left me convinced that Overlord is so very brilliant, and so very worthy of the same respect I lavished upon the Kasumi – Stolen Memory expansion. While you don’t get another squad member or weapon out of it, Overlord certainly leaves you with something difficult to face and think about: for me, that is certainly worth 560 Microsoft points.

Review: Kasumi - Stolen Memory

Kasumi – Stolen Memory, the latest character expansion added to the ever deepening pool of downloadable content (DLC) Bioware has released for Mass Effect 2, is definitely not a mere drop in the ocean. Rather, it tells one of the more entertaining and interesting stories that Mass Effect 2 offers.

Kasumi, the Japanese woman for which this piece of DLC is named, doesn’t necessarily keep on the right side of the law. Actually, she’s just an outright thief; but, she’s the best there is. Her technical expertise, her ability to jump around she's Ezio from Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and her deadly combat skills will be very helpful to Commander Shepard’s mission. Fortunately, for the small fee of 560 Microsoft Points, you can procure Miss Goto’s services for the remainder of your mission. Of course, those who are waiting for the January 2011 release of Mass Effect 2 on Playstation 3 can procure Kasumi’s services for the even smaller fee of nothing. That’s right: Kasumi – Stolen Memory will, like most story-oriented Mass Effect 2 DLC, be free for those with a Playstation 3.

Aside from the cost, or lack thereof, of hire, Kasumi also requires Commander Shepard’s help with a problem of her own. A Graybox filled with memories that belonged to her former partner has been stolen by murderous crime lord Donovan Hock, and Kasumi is incapable of stealing it back on her own. Possibly because she lacks the resources Shepard has access to, or possibly because she gets lonely now her partner’s dead.

Whatever the reason behind the necessity of this partnership, everything works out in Shepard’s favour in the end. Firstly, you get to play an infiltration-type mission, where the goal is to sneak around and seek objectives without being discovered. To help you blend in, Kasumi provides a snazzy suit – for my male Shepard – that she almost definitely, and literally at that, stole off another’s back. This outfit is my favourite in the game, and certainly lets Shepard walk the Normandy with a little more pimp in his strut. Outfit aside, there are other bonuses here. Helping Kasumi reclaim what’s rightfully hers will earn you not only her trust and loyalty, but a lot of useful swag on top of that.

Hock’s a crime boss after all, so he “owns” a lot of stolen property that you can repurpose as you see fit. Aside from the usual boxes of refined minerals and research materials you find elsewhere, there’s a cool new toy to gain out of this. The M-12 Locust is an insanely accurate and deadly submachine gun that is about as accurate as an assault rifle. Using it, you can put a full (though admittedly rather small) clip into an enemy with almost no muzzle climb. The Locust is also more effective against armour than most SMGs, and comes with a lot of spare clips, too. I played through Hock’s mansion with both the Phalanx pistol from the Firepower Pack, and the Incisor sniper rifle from the Aegis Pack DLC. I found myself using the Locust more often than I used either of these two weapons. The Locust is just that powerful, and that versatile, easily capable of tearing through shielded or armoured enemies on Hardcore difficulty. Even towering YMIR mechs and hovering gunships stand little chance against smart players using it at medium range.

Soon after you acquire the Locust, you’ll discover just why it’s provided as part of Kasumi Goto’s loyalty mission. The sheer power it provides will leave most enemies cowering in fear, shields and armour gone, the moment you start firing at them. Now, you can use one of your special abilities to dispatch your unprotected foes, glaring coldly at them as they breathe their final breath.

Or, you could use Kasumi’s Shadow Strike ability. You could use Kasumi’s Shadow Strike ability, and be left almost paralysed with laughter once you see just how hilariously effective it is. Basically, Shadow Strike is what the Infiltrator Class’s Tactical Cloak ability would be if it were combined with the favourite tactic of Active Camouflage users in Halo: Reach. Upon using this ability, Kasumi becomes completely invisible and dashes towards the targeted enemy, wherever they are, using her athletic prowess and some kind of ninja witchcraft to vault over every obstacle between her and whomever is about to meet their unfortunate end. Then, she’ll reappear directly behind her target and assassinate them by punching their spine with her Omnitool, loosing a concussive blast that topples even the strongest foes like a sack whack from Optimus Prime would.

Afterwards, Kasumi will instantly cloak and run back to her place by Commander Shepard’s side. I can’t say that I wouldn’t do the same after kicking a Harbinger-possessed Drone in the ass.

Where many of the loyalty abilities in Mass Effect 2 struck me as just a little underwhelming, Kasumi’s Shadow Strike feels almost overpowered: especially since it's not a loyalty ability. After all, it can either instantly kill an unprotected enemy or leave a shielded enemy suddenly vulnerable to a headshot. If you level it up properly, Shadow Strike will almost instantly recharge upon landing a kill. To make Shadow Strike even better, Kasumi’s charming and disarming personality shines through every time she uses it. A Blue Suns mercenary will go flying into a ravine with a Wilhelm scream, and Kasumi will pause for a moment to pay her respects with an irreverent “Ha Ha!” Clearly, The Simpsons is still popular in the year 2185.

Kasumi – Stolen Memory is a brilliant DLC pack that expands Mass Effect 2's story, Commander Shepard's wardrobe, and your arsenal. Kasumi herself is an extremely powerful ally, and always a joy to have as part of your squad. I would’ve happily paid 800 Microsoft Points to have Kasumi join my team. Fortunately, her services will cost you only 560 Microsoft points. Or, nothing on top of the cost of Mass Effect 2, if you’re a Playstation fan. I just hope that Kasumi remains with the Normandy’s crew in Mass Effect 3. Otherwise, I won’t have anyone to backstab jerks for me.