The Mako – Mass Effect’s land vehicle – is almost beyond absurd. It is a three-axis six-wheeled monster which basically drives like a medium-boiled peeled egg. What’s up with that?
I’ll tell you what it is for me … the worst driveable vehicle from any Xbox360 game to date! The Mako does not only react very sensitively to your input, turning much too easily, it also hops and jumps wildly over each little bump making it all the harder to keep it on track. Occassionally it will just turn or flip over from all the bouncing and turning it does. Once i even managed to do a double-barrel roll with it. Amazing, but totally uncalled for because i was in the middle of frigging combat!
Of course, I’m thankful that the Mako can never get stuck and it will always roll back on it’s wheels and that i can even drive up mountains with it. And no matter what you do with it, you can’t damage it just by driving and crashing. But driving it is no fun at all because it is much too stressful to keep it going in just a straight line and more often than not you will find yourself driving onto a wall, flipping over or having to back up.
Speaking of backing up … why the hell did Bioware decide that it’s a good idea to have the controls reverse when you turn the camera around? First of all, I died about 5 times driving off a ledge on Prothean Skyway and on Noveria because of the sudden shift of momentum. Secondly, why did they even allow driving off edges? Other locations have invisible barriers so that you can’t pass with your vehicle, why not just block all the deadly areas for the Mako, too? I mean, if you’re so concerned about the casual gamers that surely would have halved their death rate. And we all know that dying in a video game is what often makes people quit the game.
Gaming Horror - 
[...] own posts, they were about Mass Effect’s Manual Override, 3rd Person Camera and the dreaded Mako and can be found by clicking on the aforementioned links, obviously. The popularity of the Manual [...]
Seriously, the Mako is FUBAR. Almost as bad as the Warthog from Halo 1.
The ironic thing is that the developers didn’t seem to notice and decided to make every planet a impossibly rugged mountain environment. It’s slightly more bareable on the very few flat planets.
And the camera is soooo stupid, I would ALWAYS end up watching the vehicle from underneath for some reason.
Oh yeah and one more thing: Why does recharging shields take for AGES in the Mako? I ended up re-loading the game as it resets the shields.
I used to say the Mako’s driving experience is like trying to roll an egg on a straight line. It just never happens no matter how hard you try but if you try hard enough, at least you get it to flip over and have a little fun. Not that this gets you anywhere to achieve your goal.
I actually like the Mako, it did remind me of the Warthog from the Halo series and the weird control system did take a while to get used to but I had it down after one play through (Having now done 6 to get all the achievements =D). To be honest though, I think it’s more to do with the person playing, ie. you. I never once found the control system overly annoying or uncontrollable to the point where I had to get out and walk for example, sure there were times when you end up going up a rock face beccause of it’s weird axles, but mastering it comes with practice. I don’t think I ever managed to flip it either, which is strange considering you seemed to find it happened alot. Maybe I just took to the controls quicker, I don’t know. Also, I never found it hard to drive in a straight line, something which alot of people seemed to have difficulty with. It seems obvious to say, but did you ever try pushing the analogue stick straight up? It seemed to work for me, the only problems that arose were if the planet was particularly rocky or bumpy, and even then, more often than not there was another, more straightforward route around.
[...] watching the game, as my girl was forced to do, is like watching a movie about a guy silently driving a four-wheeler across the landscape, punctuated by riding in [...]