No. No, no, no. Nonononononono. I would've been so much happier with nothing instead. The vast amounts of hideously ugly (compared to the rest of the game, which didn't look like something out of a mid-90s fractal terrain generator demo) emptiness were easily the worst thing about the game. They were completely devoid of any sort of character (all the planets were pretty much interchangeable, and no one would notice if one of them went missing), and they were mostly just a crappy time sink to pad the game out. Even the buildings, which tended to have more interesting things happen in them, were endlessly recycled and bland.dududf said:
The main plot and planets that were actually fleshed out were pretty good, but so many of the side quests and optional planets were miserable experiences. It's particularly bad when compared to BioWare's other games, which are usually very good at avoiding that problem. I think the Mako being associated with the absolute worst stuff in the entire game hurts its reputation a lot, since most of what it gets used for is the crappy stuff most people don't want to do. It doesn't help that it's painfully, frustratingly slow (especially when going over hills/mountains), so it takes forever just trudging through the amazingly uninspiring side-quest-planet environments to get anything done.
I thought the Mako was pretty meh (the buggy in Borderlands, which I played around the same time as ME, had much worse controls (both games on the PC) but was much more fun to ride around in), but the majority of my hate for it probably comes from the stuff in the game I associate it with. I wouldn't be surprised if that's true for other people, too.
