PixlBit

A lot of people disliked the Mako bits, but I always loved them. Each planet felt so big and it was such a trip going around each. Main quest is pretty short, four planets then the final one.  Those actually don't give you achievements though, but the list is still pretty outrageous.

I can see why some people think it's boring, but being a huge astronomy fan, I get so excited imagining myself landing on alien planets and driving around, even if it's some ugly desert world like many of them are in Mass Effect.

Hum... no achievements for finding stuff on planets. Oh well, I still like searching for that stuff. I think you get some experience and money for doing it though.

Funny, those were my exact feelings about driving around in the Mako. I collected astronomy books as a kid and just loved space in general so exploring those big empty planets felt pretty awesome to me. 

I dig the mako too.  they should have refined it instead of trashing it.  

I like your screenshot. Homemade screenshots are the best.   

Yea, my "away" TV (meaning the TV at my friend's place. My "home" TV is much better) is kinda lame, but I shoot it with my pocket camera anyway.

I can't believe they dropped the Mako after ME1. I'm tring to play through all 3 games this month, so I'll be missing that sharky rover soon.

I really enjoyed exploring the planets too.  I think I got almost every one completed except one or 2.   The one with the snakelike creature that pops out of the ground and chasing me around was one of those.  I just couldn't kill it. 

I got that thing and killed it after a lot of shooting from the Mako. I have the game on easy, so I imagine that thing would be hard to kill on normal. 

I loved exploring the planets. I didn't like the controls of the Mako, but I still always liked exploring. It wasn't the core idea of the groundside Mako exploration that was flawed, it was just the execution and the feel of it that I bet people didn't like. The idea itself is excellent. Some of my favorite moments from the Mass Effect series were doing the Mako stuff and seeing the art. There's a planet where you find this ancient Prothean sphere and you put a trinket into it and it tells you a story or something. It's a trinket that the Consort may or may not give you at the beginning of the game on the Citadel if you do things for her. You have no idea if it's important or not until way later in the game when you use it to interact with this ancient sphere and that blew my mind.

Then there's this planet called Klendagon or something that was struck with a gigantic round from mass accelerator Reaper killer weapon millions of years ago. It was the largest weapon ever devised and it blasted straight through the Reaper, went across the solar system, and tore across the surface of Klendagon leaving a giant rift. Holy crap that's awesome history and hidden narrative for you to find. I love exploring the planets and hearing about their atmosphere content, orbital cycles, surface temperature, and then going down to the surface to find cool stuff and look up in the sky to see new things. There's always neat artwork and cool skyboxes to see.

The Mako's controls did get annoying to me after a while. It goes where ever you look which is not what you want it to do sometimes. Looking should've been independent of direction of movement.

Fighting with the Mako came down to less manuevering and just sitting in front of the target, shooting, and then using the lifters to hop over incoming missiles. This is much easier than trying to drive around during a fight since you can't target while going in another direction.

I read all the descriptions of every planet I came across. I love hearing about all the history and scientific data too. I noticed there are a few jokes thrown in there. One says a cult saw their leader's image in the ice cracked surface of one world. Another is a moon that has etched in its surface various insults to humans. And several others have various urban myths attached to them suggesting some inteligent force behind a world's strange composition and weather. I enjoyed reading all of it.