I recently had the chance to play, and finish, the "Bringing Down the Sky" downloadable content for Mass Effect. As I completed the module, one thought stuck out above all the others in my head: "This is what I expected all of the Mass Effect side quests to be like!" Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect them all to be as important as this one. (You are involved in preventing a terrorist driven asteroid from hitting a populated colony planet, killing millions in the process and making the entire world uninhabitable for centuries.) However, I did expect all the other quests to have a similar level of depth to this one. Those of you who have played Mass Effect are aware of what I'm talking about. The side quests in Mass Effect were a huge disappointment. They were about a mile wide and about a foot deep. Most of them were no more involved than "go to this planet and exterminate the bad guys", which is extremely shallow for a Bioware title. Comparing the side quests to a game like Knights of the Old Republic showed how far short of meeting expectations the ones in Mass Effect came. Everyone would have been better off if Mass Effect featured half as many side quests with twice as much depth to them. However, "Bringing Down the Sky" was everything that I might have hoped for and more. As I said previously, your job is to prevent a asteroid populated by terrorists from hitting a populated human colony. That's all well and good. But what makes this particular download a lot of fun are the details that were fully fleshed out. 1. Who are the folks trying to crash this asteroid into the planet? 2. Why are they doing it? 3. What is their grudge? 4. Why were the engineers/scientists trying to bring the asteroid back to the planet in the first place before it was hijacked? 5. Will your decisions as a Spectre help define who you are and also have far reaching implications for the galaxy? (Yes.) Beyond that, while there is a great deal of combat, it is the small touches that add context and meaning to the combat. This mission begins with you intercepting an anonymous distress call from the surface of the asteroid. Apparently, someone has evaded capture from the terrorists and is trying to call for help. You land on the asteroid and, throughout most of the mission, this person stays in touch and guides your actions. There are even side quests within this side quests that you can undertake. You have conversations at several points along the way and, at the end, you face several very meaningful decisions that will have a massive impact on how the scenario ends and whether you come away with paragon or renegade points. Completing the mission earns you an extra 50 achievement points, but beyond that, it will make you want to redo it. It is a testimony to the richness of this particular side quest that after completing it one way you'll immediately want to see the "other" ending to the mission. Is this download worth a full $5 all on its own? For some, the answer will be "no". After all, it really doesn't impact the main quest of Mass Effect at all. Also, $5 for one side quest seems a bit steep. However, for me I felt that I got my money's worth. After all, that's about as much as a downloadable movie rental off of Xbox Live and, unlike the movie rental, I can now play this mission again and again every time I play Mass Effect. That having been said, I can't quite get past the fact that the PC version of this extra content will likely be free to download at some point.