As Good as DLC Gets
Lair of the Shadow Broker is the most recent DLC from Bioware focusing on the continuing adventures of Commander Shepard in his fight against The Collectors. It's also the first time a DLC has content that takes place after you've beaten the main game. Ultimately for the price point ($10, or 800 Microsoft/Bioware Points), this DLC delivers everything it should within the timeframe it should be aiming for.
The DLC has, as usual, Cerberus send a message to your terminal about a break in the case to find out just who the Shadow Broker, a trader of information who has never been seen by another being, is. Since Liara T'Soni, Shepard's former shipmate, is the closest to finding out the mysterious trader's identity, Cerberus suggests you share the info with her. She's delighted to use the information, but gets attacked in her apartment while you're not there. She vanishes after the attack and Shepard must join forces with an asari Specter to see what happened. Twists and turns abound, as well as Liara temporarily joining the squad for the duration of most of the DLC (you choose the third squad member from your usual roster).
My main sinking suspicion while going into this was that it would be a few loosely tied missions involving Liara that would keep her on the hunt for the Broker, but ultimately add nothing to the game. This is NOT the case, by the end of this game you know who the Shadow Broker is. I won't spoil the ending, but it's most definitely a great pay-off that comes after one helluva lead up. As good as you may have gotten at the game, beware playing on the higher difficulties as some of the fights are extremely difficult.
Liara and Shepard have a wonderful repartee, including a few inside jokes that reference the previous game, but unfortunately other party members are conspicuously silent. I brought Legion on a mission and he had a single line of dialog, but I think he's just someone run through a voice scrambler because no one else had any lines. This would normally count against them, but it's only $10 and they bring both Shepards plus Liara's voice actors back into the studio, it's understandable they wouldn't, or couldn't, reunite the entire cast just to record a few extra lines of dialog.
The plotpoints that matter after the main game's been completed contain way too many spoilers for both the main game and this DLC, so I can't get into it here, but suffice it to say it's well worth the trip and helps to keep the characters you love fresh in your mind. It might even let you gain a new appreciation for the characters you didn't care for. $10 is less than the price of almost any movie theater and you get about two hours of pure entertainment that you can replay different ways with different Shepards making this ridiculously easy to recommend for anyone who could use a little snack to hold them over for Mass Effect 3.
