...are nuts. That was one of the coolest things about Mass Effect 1. Its controls weren't as great as they could have been but man, it was awesome being able to actually feel like you were EXPLORING something instead of going down corridors all the time.

Scan a planet, find something interesting, LAND on the planet, drive around and explore. That should have been in all Mass Effect games.

I loved driving up the side of mountains and evading thresher maws or whatever they were.

The main story bits with it were good too.

I loved the mako, but I did think it was rather annoying that before every main mission you had to drive it down long and winding paths, stopping constantly to take out the frequent turrets placed there. I have no idea why they did that.

It was fine until it became the most tedious nonsense imaginable probably 30 hours in, especially in retrospect, and trying to play it after playing Mass Effect 2.

I think it's crazy that seemingly everyone hated the Mako then, and seemingly everyone loves it now. You internet people are all nuts.

Yeah, I never quite got why the Mako was complained about so much. It did give the world a sense of big-ness.

HELL YA!!! THE MAKO WAS AWESOME.

You could go to THE MOON and then you could go to PLACES THAT AREN'T THE MOON and then you could DRIVE UP MOUNTAINS. SO COOL!

I'm replaying Mass Effect 1 and yeah, I still love the Mako. No animation for going out is kinda jarring but driving up mountains is great.

Fuck the Mako. Driving 5 feet just to stop and pew pew a turret is NOT FUN. In the main story missions wih it there was 0 exploration, it was just the worlds worst rollercoaster.

yeah i loved spending 45 mins struggling with the terrible controls to get to a locker i couldn't open. i don't miss it. but each to their own i guess.

I loved it then, still love it now. Made it feel like you were actually astronauts.

Glad I'm not the only one. I actually quite liked it since it gave a sense of exploration and scale plus the large open spaces gives it an ominous sense of an alien, hostile life. It's quite disconcerting. That plus driving along and having a Thresher Maw burst straight out from the ground beside you was pretty awesome. Of course it wasn't perfect with the resource collecting and the cookie-cutter buildings that you found on every distant planet. So yeah, I liked it but it could've been better. As with everything else in the series.

I didn't mind it at all, God knows why people complain so much. I played on Xbox, so maybe it's a PC control issue.

@eroticfishcake said:

Glad I'm not the only one. I actually quite liked it since it gave a sense of exploration and scale plus the large open spaces gives it an ominous sense of an alien, hostile life. It's quite disconcerting. That plus driving along and having a Thresher Maw burst straight out from the ground beside you was pretty awesome. Of course it wasn't perfect with the resource collecting and the cookie-cutter buildings that you found on every distant planet. So yeah, I liked it but it could've been better. As with everything else in the series.

Yeah it was far from perfect but it was UNIQUE. I missed it in both ME2 and 3. The exploration element was completely gone from what was otherwise good games.

I never hated it as much as the Internet did but I certainly wouldn't call it awesome.

I loved the Mako. On PC there weren't any problems and exploring those planets was awesome. I have so many screenshots.

Hated it. Glad it hasn't really been revisited.

@Jost1: Yeah there wasn't anything quite like it though you have to admit having the Kodiak ship you straight to unique missions in ME2 was pretty fun too. Shame that you can't have both. I'm sure the SR-2 can hold them. Thinking back on it, the Mako is probably one of the biggest things people are divided upon. The other thing being the ending. You people are crazy.

I liked the mako, but the problem was that the sidequest planet were mostly the same planet with a different environment slapped on to it. Noveria was the best though, driving in the blizzard knowing something had gone very wrong in the research was great....also Ilos.

^ Yup. The Mako was fine. It was the endless desert planets that I took issue with.

Why would you want to explore the planets? The only difference was their color scheme. They were all rocky and full of mountains. Sometimes it was really hot or really cold and sometimes it was snowing. The planets were the least interesting aspect of the game.

I loved the Mako. I accidently roadkilled a space cow with it, that's when I knew it was awesome.

@DonChipotle said:

Why would you want to explore the planets? The only difference was their color scheme. They were all rocky and full of mountains. Sometimes it was really hot or really cold and sometimes it was snowing. The planets were the least interesting aspect of the game.

What if they had sticked to the idea for 2, and made the planets more interesting ?

I agree the uncharted worlds weren't the most exciting stuff in the world, but the wasted potential is a huge bummer. Although I think ME2 is an amazing game.

Mako was awesome on PC.

@SlashDance said:

@DonChipotle said:

Why would you want to explore the planets? The only difference was their color scheme. They were all rocky and full of mountains. Sometimes it was really hot or really cold and sometimes it was snowing. The planets were the least interesting aspect of the game.

What if they had sticked to the idea for 2, and made the planets more interesting ?

I agree the uncharted worlds weren't the most exciting stuff in the world, but the wasted potential is a huge bummer. Although I think ME2 is an amazing game.

If they had made the planets more interesting, it'd be neat. But not if their idea of interesting was the platform nature of the Firewalker DLC. If the planets were like the one in Overlord, with its nice aesthetic design and waterfalls and general openness, it'd be great.

The Mako is one of the reasons I still greatly prefer ME1 over ME2 (not sure about 3 yet, just started). I like exploration in my space opera.

I liked the mako a hell of a alot more than the planet scanning and being chased by reapers.

I agree I think the Mako was a great aspect of ME1. I loved landing in planets exploring it and getting out to collect minerals.

I loved it then, still love it now. Made it feel like you were actually astronauts.

Favorite part of Mass Effect 1 is easily the Mako. Hopping from planet to planet running over Geth and blasting Thresher Maws in the face made you feel like some sort of roaming space god who squishes pesky ants for fun.

The controls weren't great, but I imagine that a wheeled armored vehicle that's twice the size of an average human isn't the easiest thing to control. I wish they would've done more with it. Biggest disappointment in Mass Effect 2 was learning that it was just a bunch of corridor crunching and arena fights. Miss the Mako so much

I actually liked the mako as it gave the player a sense of exploration. I think they could have refined it and made it better than completely removing it all together. Bioware need to stop listening to the bitching of their "fans" so much which is probably why the mako never made a return.

I loved the Mako from ME 1 It made it feel like the universe was just not full of waist high walls but as a huge place.

As somebody who loved the Mako when I first played the game and have recently played through again I think I'm qualified to tell you, you are so so wrong. Its awful. The controls are crap, the aiming crosshairs are useless, seriously I couldn't believe that I enjoyed it before. Its infuriating.

I really didn't mind the Mako that much, i think it was a good idea that didn't come out quite as well as the developers wanted, but it still wasn't painful. I really wish they didn't just throw the idea out of the way because i think it had a lot of potential.

The MAKO was awesome. I never understood why people gave it so much shit.

Oh god no, that thing was awful. There was nothing to see on the planets but pre-fab structures with a couple enemies in it. Boring and tedious, with awful controls to boot.

@Jost1: It was not a problem that driving around a planet exploring and searching was a bad idea. The problem was the implementation was poor which resulted in an annoyance. I would have no problem with them bringing back driving and planetary exploring but they got to make it behave better.

I'd like to go back and replay the series from the beginning but there are several things that I just don't want to do again. One of those is the MAKO, specifically exploring unknown worlds. Driving it during main missions is one thing, but trying to climb mountains, fighting turrets and thresher maws, hopping in and out to retrieve shit on the surface... ugh.

yeah no vehicles in ME3 at least ME2 had the DLC with the solution for the Mako (no wheels) I miss the per enemy XP from ME1 the most.

Gameplay aside, I fucking love the design/look of the Mako. What a great take on early 80s sci-fi technical art. The Kodiak looks really good as well, but the Mako looks like it rolled out of a "Starcom" set, or off the cover of some pulp 'future technology' book.

My nephew loves the Mako. Every time he sees me playing a Mass Effect game he asks if he can drive the car (he can't tell them apart I guess).

I also thought it was a good idea that needed to be fleshed out more rather than removed, as it did help make you feel more like an astronaut. Maybe it would've helped if they'd changed the controls so they are more like the Warthog (which I guess is what people want, personally I never had any problems navigating the thing) but they definitely needed to let you aim the gun a bit more without having to go into the periscope aim mode (when people complain about the aiming of the Mako I often wonder if they knew this feature existed because in periscope mode you could aim up/down/everywhichway while still driving and being able to jump over missiles) and make the worlds you're driving on more interesting and unique/dynamic and you're good to go. Though in that case they'd have to reduce the number of explorable worlds, but few is better than none.

I thought the Mako was fine, especially after getting used to it. Sure, the planets were not super interesting; but I loved the feeling of exploration.

That is the thing that pisses me off about 2 and 3. It felt like they shrunk the galaxy and made it more of a linear affair. Nothing like straight corridors and fucking god awful scanning. I guess that's what you get when they figure it's best to cater to the needs of shooter fans.

It would have been way cooler if it drove better (controls wise) and was not made of paper.

It was a lot better than that stupid hover thing though.

@joshthebear: The exploration of unknown worlds was probably the idea I was looking forward to the most pre-release. Once I had the game and tried it it was such a letdown. It didn't really feel like exploring since all the worlds were basically the same. Scanning for resources is another thing I don't want to do again. Three does it right: a planet-wide scan from space to detect anomalies followed by an orbital scan for that specific anomaly.

Driving the mako around the various planets was the highlight of Mass Effect for me.

There were a few planets with some cool stuff on them, but in general they were pretty barren. Driving the Mako was fun though. Scaling almost vertical mountainsides and trying to do tricks was quite entertaining. And fighting gigantic thresher maws was awesome.

The Mako was great, but it's what you were using the Mako FOR that was the problem. All those planets were barren as fuck. The Mako is awesome, though. Fuck the haters.

I loved the Mako, personally. I never understood why people hated it so much. I'd rather drive the Mako around cookie-cutter environments than scanning planets in ME2 or the dumb Reaper mini-game in ME3. I never had problems with the controls.

the Mako wasn't perfect, but they probably shouldn't have ripped it out of the series entirely.

I didn't care for the Mako and as I continued to forget about ME1 (i.e. after ME2/3) I thought I disliked it.
 
Been playing through ME1 again and the mako is actually pretty cool. I still don't really care for exploring in it but it controls fine and changes the gameplay up a wee bit.
 
On a side note, ME1 is much better then I remember it being and has certainly not aged nearly as badly as I thought.