Tying Up The Trilogy

Having had, as already mentioned, a week off recently, I made the reluctant option to spunk around £30 on all the last three bits of Downloadable Content for Mass Effect 3. I didn't really want to do this, but the option of some extra time with characters I'd grown to love was too much.

This is what I think of all of them. Being spoiler-free on the DLC, but not on the ME3 in general.

Leviathan

So, call comes through, our man Shepard is told some science bod may have found a whole new grade-A weapon against the Reapers. Well, we gotta have that, right? So begins an only-vaguely interested series of jobs, too many of which involve hanging around the scientist's gaff. There's precious little new content in terms of your crew outside EDI, Cortez and a little bit with Vega.

I think it took me around three hours to complete it. For the money I paid, that is frankly pathetic. It does provide some interesting background on the Reapers and their origins, but you can see all that on youtube if you so wish.

Omega

Of course, Aria L'Toak was one of the best characters in Mass Effect 2, a totally amoral bitch who didn't give one about anything bar her own status and power. By the time of ME3, we all know Cerberus booted her off her own kingdom and she wasn't happy about it. Thus, we now get to help her get what she lost back.

This is obviously a good thing, as is that you get to scrap against Aria and someone left behind on Omega, a female Turian (the first we get to meet) named Nyreen. Having read the comic book chucked in with the special edition off the original ME3, I had some idea of what was going on here. Others won't be so lucky, as it doesn't offer much in the way of explanation. The basic gist is to kick Cerberus arse, essentially. You can't bring any of your team - Aria doesn't trust them, apparently - which is a wee bit of let down.

It's a fun little diversion, but still not enough to justify paying a tenner for, given the length of play. One particularly annoying trait was the bigging up of a new kind of enemy as being some unstoppable killing machine, only for them to not be much tougher than yer average Reaper forces.

Citadel
This is more like it. Admiral Anderson orders the ship and crew to dock in and enjoy some R&R. It all goes guns akimbo in no time, natch, as Shep finds a plot to have him knocked off by a mysterious new enemy. All part of a normal day, really.

There's a hell of lot more than just that, though. For starters, you can get Wrex back in your squad if he's alive, which is very cool. You also get use of Anderson's somewhat swanky flat, to which your crew will pay visits. Bizarrely, if you've romanced Tali, she'll sing some weird musical number to you. On top of that, you get a arcade, casino and combat simulator to play in.

The central plot of the DLC is solid enough, with plenty of chuckles. If you've managed to avoid everyone alive to the end of ME3 (just prior to the attack on the Cerberus base) then you'll get the full worth of the content - don't play through it before you've resolved everyone's issues. As a reward, you'll get to enjoy the sights of pretty much all your friends from over the series having a bit of a party and getting a tad wasted.

Citadel is the only piece of ME3 DLC that I would put down as a "vital". The other two are fine, but only worth getting if you have plenty of cash spare. Citadel, however, is a nice little "see ya" to the series, and a wee bit of compo for the lousy ending. 

Forty From Ten

Recently, I was asked to compile a list of my top 40 albums of the 1990s for NoRipcord.com. An easy task, you might think, given that decade saw me go through just about all of my teenage years.

Alas, not, but I finally managed the task to find one band conspicuous by their absence. Want to guess? Oasis? Nah - they had two good songs (Live Forever and Slide Away), plenty of average rockers and a load of shite. No, it was Radiohead that failed to make my own Pick of the Pops (1990s edition).

Strange, in a way, as I love me a bit of what I will call "miserable bastard music": Joy Division, the Smiths, Depeche Mode and the Cure all provided a soundtrack that made my mother worry that I was bound to hurtle myself off St Bees Head one day. Radiohead were in there too - after all, isn't Creep the perfect adolescent boy song? At least, those of us who scored no luck whatsoever with whoever we fancied. Tough times. But Pablo Honey was an average album at best and somehow its famous song hasn't aged very well, especially when compared to something like Boys Don't Cry, which works perhaps due to a charming simplicity. The line "you're so fucking special" merely sounds derisory 17 years on from the first time I heard it.

The Bends was better and got a fair few playings, then there was OK Computer, which is widely praised to this day. Yet, something must have happened as I've not listened to either album in a decade. The latter has too much I find too self-indulgent, the latter I just seem to have grown out of.

Seems strange that I would do so, given all the other bands I mentioned still get a good blast on the MP3 player on a weekly basis.

Going back to my top 40, I expect very few of them to make the NoRipcord total, bar a few obvious exceptions. After that goes up, I may well print up my list for the sake of completion.