Mass Effect: Redemption #4

THE BASICS

The conclusion to the four part mini series meant to bridge the gap between Mass Effect 1 and 2. Liara and Feron's journey together ends here. For now, at least.

MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF

• I'm really digging down deep to find ways to praise this series now. Any compliments I have are merely rehashes of previous ones. The action is fun and the feel is just right. Other than that, there's not much here to enjoy.

FEEL THE STING OF MY DISCONTENT!

• What was accomplished here? Almost nothing as far as I can tell. I know that this series is meant to bridge the gap between the two games, but that doesn't mean that that's all it has to do. Mass Effect is full of little side stories and events. Why not put a little of that into here? Normally, with only four issues, I would prefer that the story stay focused on one goal, but there wasn't enough story here to fill four issues. A little bit of well executed distraction could have gone a long way towards making this an enjoyable series. Since we don't get that, though, this issue feels like the conclusion to a story that should have ended two issues ago.

 

• While the feel of the Mass Effect world is just right, the feel of Liara's character is all wrong. She's presented here as a mindless brute, not a tender, passionate person. She goes around punching and shooting things (yup, they finally gave her a gun) first and asking questions never. A pretty gross mishandling of the character if you ask me.

WAIT, WHAT?

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE

The comic makes it a point to remind the reader at every opportunity that the writer behind this series is the lead writer for Mass Effect 2. So why the huge gap in quality? My only answer is that this was just an attempt to cash in on the games popularity and was phoned in.

Overall series rating: 2.0/5.0