Mass Effect 3 Retaliation due out on October 9th (10th for EU Playstation 3). And what would a Mass Effect 3 DLC be without an awesome trailer?
Space! Now with a 100% more danger.
The hazard map variants are rather exciting to me. In the Mass Effect universe we are off to strange and different worlds and it was always surprising that every one of the multiplayer maps had no natural threats to them. BioWare is fixing that with these new Hazard maps, which feature everything from sandstorms to hostile swarms. These will add a nice new challenge besides the enemy hordes raining death upon us, especially on gold difficulty!
That said, I am very hopeful to see an actual Reaper show up and further add to the chaos by bombarding the area with its giant death ray. Missile swarms would be nice too, but I'm not sure if Reapers carry those. They seem rather fond of their pew pew.
More tool kits? Yes please.
Mass Effect 3 Retaliation, like previous DLC, comes with three new classes to play with! The new additions this time around include the Turian Havoc Soldier and Turian Ghost Infiltrator though not a lot of information was given about them. But they're Turian and therefor awesome, and that's all I need to know. There was also a mention of many more classes being added as well, but they weren't mentioned at all in the blog post so I am rather curious to see what other awesome classes are going to come our way with this DLC.
What new class am I most excited for? The Turian Havoc Soldier. Why? He's got boosters built into his armor! If he's anything like the standard Turian soldier, I'll be loading him up with the biggest machine gun I can get my hands on.
Old friends return with new pain.
Of course, the biggest addition to come with Mass Effect 3 Retaliation is the return of the Collectors. The big mysterious villains from Mass Effect 2 make their come back to assist in the extermination of this cycle and they're none too pleased about the shenanigans that went on in their space station. How did the Collectors return? I have no idea, and the blog post doesn't really say either. I'm rather curious to this myself. Maybe this is a hint to future story DLC?
The Collectors also brought some new weapons for the Alliance to play with. The Collector Assault Rifle, SMG and Sniper Rifle, all with the strange and awesome bio-technical look the collectors have. If new weapons weren't enough of a reason to fight the collectors, there are also new weapon and ammo upgrades to discover to help dispatch even the toughest threats.
Along with the returning Collectors, Cerberus is bringing a new Dragoon unit into their ranks and the Geth will deploy new drones into the field. I wonder what new tricks they'll bring to the party...
Think you're the best?.
Finally, Mass Effect 3 Retaliation will introduce a challenge feature which will track players progress with a variety of different multiplayer assignments. For the most part these seem to be attached to reaching a score threshold with specific weapons or weapon types. Each rank achieved will earn players challenge points.
What's the point of earning challenge points? Players will unlock different titles and banners as they progress through all of the different challenges. It's not a whole lot of incentive to complete the challenges, but they're still nice looking. I would've personally preferred a credit bonus to completing challenges and the option to spend challenge points on different aesthetic bits and bobs for the different classes, with the titles and banners being icing on the cake.
So Mass Effect 3 Retaliation is looking to be a fun new expansion to Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode, and a good reason to dust off the game for those that haven't played it in a while. For those that haven't picked up Mass Effect 3, with Christmas coming around the corner, it's a good buy especially with holiday sales beginning to spring up. Sure the ending may be controversial, with or without the revised ending, but the journey is amazing and the multiplayer mode is just plain good fun.
