Mass Effect 2 'Firewalker' DLC coming late March, includes Hammerhead vehicle and 5 missions

Personally, I think they should have integrated mining into the whole "random planet square mile Mako exploration" thing. It would make mining, say.... interesting? At the very least anyway. Maybe even FUN!!

I wish they would've kept the Mako but just made it less floaty and made it steer a bit better. The damn thing felt weightless.

It was just GRINDING. That's what was wrong w/ the Mako portions. All you had to do to find crap was go from one corner of the map to the next and it would magically appear on your map. That's it. So for that, I had to suffer driving a vehicle that seemed to be moving at a half mile per hour? BORING. It was just outright boring.

Next time you need to pick up somethng from the store, don't go faster than 1MPH and see if you enjoy it.

It was just an unnecessary device used to make the game longer, nothing entertaining or interesting about it and what ever loot you found, it was either a collectible (like Turian insignias) or rarely something of real value. All they had to do was make that Mako a little faster and there would have been a lot less complaining.

At least in ME2, they tied exploring to your upgrades... so if you want better weapons, you HAVE to explore. They gave it a real purpose... but guess what? the exploring in Me2 is equally as boring.

I played on 360 and had no trouble. I think it's just frustration at having to wander around barren planets with a slow car with odd physics.

What made my experience MUCH better was looking up each planet on the mass effect wiki. Yeah, you could call it cheating, I just call it getting a good chunk of my life back. I have no ill will towards the Mako now as a result.

you had to drive up those damned mountains and it was a pain in the ass

I have to disagree. In an RPG, YOU are the character, the character is not you. And yes, there's a big difference in what I just wrote.

2nd, RPG is just a GENERIC term... technically, ALL video games are a type of 'RPG'. Don't you play the role of a quarterback in Madden? Right. You don't play the role of a driver in Burnout?

So to me, there are certain traits and aspects (and I'm NOT referring to 'genre' like sci-fi or fantasy) applied to PC/digital RPGs to set them apart from action games, sports games, etc.

These traits are typical and if anyone ever pays attention to what BioWare has done in the last 10 years, they are consistently trying to bust those RPG stereotypes... at the same time, they are trying to make 'casual' RPGs that anyone can play. There is nothing wrong with that at all and BioWare makes some of the best games ever. There's no question that ME is an RPG. But ME2 is LESS of an 'RPG' than ME1 was, and not to shock a lot of people here, but some of us actually LIKED those conventional RPG elements that are now gone.

Is ME2 a Triple-A, 5-star game? Absolutely. But it was different enough to make people notice that it's really NOT the same game as ME1 was. BioWare calls it 'improvements', but its really more like an overhaul. Most people are ok with it, I take it for what it is, but people who don't like ME2 for these reason have very valid points as well.

All in all... I love ME1, I like ME2, and I sure as hell miss KOTOR 1 & 2 that much more after playing ME2.