Enter the Hammerhead: A look at the Latest Mass Effect 2 DLC

Released Tuesday for the unbeatable price of FREE comes the Firewalker Pack. The Firewalker Pack includes five missions that take place in the new Hammerhead tank. Did I mention that it was free?

The Hammerhead is a type of hovertank that fires homing missiles.  It is essentially BioWare’s next generation Mako vehicle, which for those who don’t recall, was a horribly implemented exploration vehicle found in the original Mass Effect. Unlike the Mako, the Hammerhead is a much more precisely controlled vehicle, far faster than the Mako, capable of tight turns and due to the inclusion of hoverjets, capable of hovering off the ground for a few seconds at a time.

The missions included range from a tutorial mission, a platforming intensive fire world mission, an ice world speed mission and a couple of combat intensive missions. On a couple of the missions you will actually exit the vehicle briefly, however these were short portions and involved no combat. These missions are fairly short, the entire set taking perhaps one hour to complete in a single play through. I found it to be a solid introduction to the vehicle, leaving the door open perhaps for some future content. I did find one upgrade that you will need to research aboard the Normandy, which will raise your upgrades in one category past the current total of 5.

I found the Hamerhead to be the equivalent of a tin can in combat, easily being blown to bits in close encounters with the Geth raiders. This prompted me to start shooting all of the enemies from such a far distance that they were incapable of fighting back. This led to a certain amount of cheese-fighting and made the content slightly easy to complete. Still as a free introduction to the Hammerhead and an always appreciated addition to the content of the Mass Effect 2, the Firewalker pack comes highly recommended. Now we need to wait and see how the $7 DLC pack being released in April pans out. Expect a post regarding this new content once it has been released.