Your opinion on the Mako

Sounds great, but rough ride does not even begin to cover my Shepards driving skills - suicidal is more fitting

I can see why it was implemented. It gave the game, and its galaxy, a bigger sense of scope, a larger dimension. And it also made the characters look small in proportion to such a large universe.

But in reality? It just made what is in fact a very small and fast game to complete (if you know what to do) seem much longer and bigger than it actually is. Bioware will always live in the shadow of Baldurs Gate 2 and the 200 legendary hours it takes to do everything in it. I am fully capable of completing a mass effect 1 game with all side-missions (aside from collectibles) in less than 16 hours. It usually takes me 3 nights to do it all.

In all honesty, 16 hours for an action game is pretty decent, especially when we factor into the equation that there are several optional encounters, different decisions, variations of classes, powers, squad-mates and equipment, increasing the replay value of the game immensely. But for classic rpgs fans (the typical rpg codex crowd), 16 hours is terrible, it feels insulting.

Do I hate the Mako? No. Do I love it? Also no. I do not think it was necessary, but it was a cool addition. However, the implementation could have been better.

What irritates me about the mako are not the controls, nor the terrain, the lack of lateral movement, nothing of the sort. But the fact that, along with nearly all of the side-missions it seems inappropriate, a little out of place aside from the critical path, since there are much more pressing needs other than collect stuff.

On one hand, the game fills the player with the temor that saren has to be stopped soon of all will be lost. On the other hands, it offers a lot of slacking off content that you can only do prior to confronting saren. Whenever I am doing the side-missions I can hear my conscience telling me that I should be punished for wasting time in such trivial matters when there is a galaxy to save. Even with all my meta-knowledge of the game reassuring me that there's not harm in doing side-quests, I can't help but feel this way.

The mako, as well as all the side-missions, could have worked greatçy if they all remained available to do post-main-game. The same can be said for pinnacle station. If dlc was not something of a novelty at the time when it comes to consoles, they could have created several stories for the sr-1 and its crew, along with the mako, between ME1 and ME2.

Loved it in all it's cantankerous glory.Plus it could shoot stuff!

That would be great. Or companions commenting more often, something along the line 'Shep, you know, I like you and I think you do a good job most of the time, but stay away of the wheels!'

You've nailed it. I didn't have any problems with the controls on the PC Per Se. I didn't notice it being all that different for the controller, but of course, YMMV. It handled suitably for what it was, which was like a Hummer or an SUV. It was not a sports car & shouldn't have driven like one. It was somewhat on the bouncy side, but one could easily chalk that up to its Mass Effect Field.

The terrain is THE single biggest issue & I bet is where the vast majority of people's frustration comes in. I don't care what you were driving, a planet like Eletania would be complete frustrating madness in *any* ground vehicle. I don't know how those Super-Jagged planets passed playtesting. I think on some level Bioware realized this as I noticed the landscape in 'Bring Down the Sky' was markedly... recalibrated. (^_~) Moderate challenge in certain parts, but a discernable path to most significant locations. Sadly it was too little, too late.

P.S. Pity that wasn't a voting option- "It's Okay, but a lot of the Planets Suck."

OK, if you look at some of the planets with more jagged mountains, you can usually find a path somewhere that gets you where you want to go. For a long time, if my map said I needed to go NE then I went NE, even if going NW and then E turned out to be the easier path. I think the ME1 devs maybe just didn't want everything to be a linear path. Going around a mountain might make you run into a mineral for your collection or even a cache of weapons or armor. Or maybe even some asari matriarch's writings! Or possibly a salarian mummy. Who knows?!

Further consideration about the Mako and everyone's opinion of the driver. Think about how the Mako gets to a planet. It's dropped from pretty high up. No one seems to complain about that. Yeah, sure, tipping end over end might seem problematic from an outside perspective, but I'm thinking that inside the Mako they're just fine. Otherwise, the Mako would have to be gently dropped to the ground rather than pushed out as the Normandy is zooming by.

I always loved it, especially in planet explorations, trying to find the most impossible climbs. "Maybe if I just...use the thrusters at the right time...I can make this 82 degree incline! Yeaaaaaah!! -flips backwards off the mountain-"

Does anybody knows how to use the thrusters for exploration. Because i never found them useful

And for avoiding the rockets fired by the geth

An Infiltrator with good armor + Immunity can survive one Thresher Maw melee attack, but the Mako cannot.
An Infiltrator with a good Pistol and Master Marksman (or Assault Rifle) can kill a Thresher Maw faster than the Mako.

But the Mako is the tank?

Honestly, I never did work out what the hell the issue is that made the Mako the worst thing ever in the history of everything. It didn't control noticeably differently to any other vehicle in the Unreal Engine. Personally I really enjoyed it.

But hey, I didn't get why everyone hated Heavy Weapons in ME2, or the post-EC ending in ME3, or all of MEA. I must be weird, I guess.