Getting through ME (1) when playing the trilogy is a chore

Yeah, early on it's a bit silly in its oppressiveness. Later on the restriction is effectively removed by superior tech and upgrades. I'd like to see the thermal clip mechanic remain, but have it cloaked in the heat sink lore. You're not changing your clip, your venting your sink.

The difference is when you are moving. For example while moving forward with the controller you can't point the cannon behind you, which is something you can do with the keyboard and mouse.

It's because the camera is tied to the right analogue stick when playing with the controller.

Always played Soldier or Infiltrator when it came to completion. Never bothered with the other classes because the character builds were utter shit (seriously, WTF do I have to spend 8 points into armor to unlock pistol training for the Adept?).

The above post reminds me of how much I enjoyed my last Engineer playthrough. With no defensive power, and a full repertoire of disabling powers (each with independent cooldowns), it really does play a bit differently.

If I was to of played the game on a higher difficulty than casual, I would've stopped playing. The same for my one playthrough of ME3 on the pc. I'm not very good using a keyboard/mouse when it come to games. With a controller, I do fine

My big issue is that I feel compelled to do every side mission that carries over to the sequels, but not interested enough -- anymore at least -- to do every mission. This means all my playthroughs essentially end up with the same basic structure. It's a really terrible way to play the game, because it really does feel like a chore.

I still get excited for the better side missions, and the story missions, but collecting the writings for an extra 10 seconds, 2 games down the line, is just grueling.

My other big issue is the fact that my preferred romances are all in ME2 (Jack, Tali, and FemShep/Garrus), which really hurts, because it makes what should be some of the best parts of the game (the Normandy post-mission sections), repetitive.

Next playthrough I'll give Liara a try, and maybe that will change things up enough to make it interesting. I will say this, I've given up on Insanity runs of ME1. I've done it with fresh files, and I just find it tedious now, still worth it for the story, I still read most of the codex etc. but without a trophy or something hanging over my head I just don't have it in me to whittle down enemies anymore (versus 2 and 3 where I play Insanity for fun).

Mass Effect 1 weapons gave unlimited ammo that could be fired indefinitely by the middle stages of the game. You could just lay on the trigger without letup.

Keeping the thermal clip mechanic maintains the important gameplay balance that the feature brought to the series in ME2 and ME3. Cloaking it in the lore of heat sinks brings it back in line with the more sensible lore of ME1, and eliminates the need to inexplicably litter Andromeda's battlefields, nooks and crannies with thermal clips -- a silly enough thing, even without considering it's Milky Way tech.

The thing with the heat sinks on the battlefield is, it can be easily explained as your omni-tool converting the gun's parts into useable heat sinks. Sometimes when an enemy is defeated, their weapon falls on the ground, and you pick it up and it's automatically converted using the plastics and metals.

And then you have no more grenades when you need them later.

It's the only ME game I keep playing once a year. It's a tradition for me.
I'm a total sucker for the Mako and planet exploration and just wandering around uncharted planets admiring the view and listening to the sound of the wind over the deserted planets.

ME1 is always a pleasure for me to play. I also love the squad there the most. Having Wrex as squadmember is just too cool.

The real chore for me is ME2 with that Cerberus nonsense and the new squadmembers I don't particularly care about. The lack of plot in that game make me hate wandering around doing stupid tasks for TIM and solving daddy issues of my squad. ME2 suffered greatly from its sequels ME3 who made the entirety of that game pretty much pointless.

Yeah, I've felt that way sometimes. I remember doing an ME1 playthrough where I visited every galaxy and scanned every planet that I could and landed on any planet that I could. That was a lot for one playthrough though so I limit the galaxies and planets I visit now.

Apropos of this thread I've just been reading the (very long) retrospective look at the ME series by Shamus Young:

www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792

I didn't see this discussed on the Bioware forum but I probably wasn't visiting much at the time. I too think ME1 is the best of the series and his analysis of the differences between ME1 and ME2&3 is spot on.