Review of Mass Effect 2: Firewalker Pack by Adam Milton

I don’t hate the idea of DLC in general. They can be cash grabs that offer new armor and other cosmetic upgrades, but sometimes they really add depth and up to four or five hours of gameplay. Project Firewalker is the worst of both worlds.

First, this DLC is centered around Mass Effect 2’s replacement for the Mako: the M-44 Hammerhead. The Hammerhead is an “infantry fighting vehicle” that hovers across the ground. The Mako wasn’t perfect, but it could be fun to drive, and its railgun had some punch. The Hammerhead feels floaty and isn’t very fun to drive or fight in, despite having its own railgun and a missile attack.

If Mass Effect 2 had more exploration elements, like the first Mass Effect, this could have been a lot of fun. But the Hammerhead only appears in a few of the DLCs and is mostly used to get from place to place, not to explore. This makes it feel like a cheap way to pad the length of the game.

In Project Firewalker you fight a few Geth and zip from location to location, searching for bright yellow‑gold icons on the ground to “scan.” The Geth pose no real threat, as you can strafe much too fast for them to be anything more than a noisy nuisance. The screen quickly fills with bright visual noise, and the alarms of your vehicle under fire blare in your ears.

Scanning the “research data” or “artifacts” isn’t much fun either. All you really do is position the Hammerhead above them; more noise, the ship jitters from side to side, then there’s a final dry buzzer sound and you move to the next one.

It’s boring gameplay with not much in the way of new items or cool equipment and as an addition to a character driven narrative this is almost unforgivable. On each playthrough, my completionist nature drags me back to Project Firewalker and every time, I regret it and find myself bored.