gotta admit, I was kind of disappointed by removing Mako, after all, exploration was more fun this way, firewalker is a piece of crap though, i did miss the exploration of the planets, but then again, we did have a nice set of missions in ME2 where we were landing on the surface as well, gathering minerals was kind of boring, though it was nice too, more stuff gathered in pretty much the same time as in a mission, I suppose our archeologist won't show up, after all, she has a much more interesting job now, and can spy on shepard whenever she wants to

I missed Ashley at the start of the game in ME2, Ashley was a great help, hell nearly all characters that used assault riffle were great help in ME2, but in ME1 Ashley was just that good, when I started playing the game at first, the thermo clips seemed odd to me, but then, soon I learned to aim better and count every shot, currently on hard mode I am pretty much always full on thermo clips.
Funny thing though, Bioware fell in their own trap in ME2 with Thermo Clips, at the start of the game they refer to Thermo clips not as ammo, but means to cool your weapon, soon afterwards, they "change" their minds and start referring to clips as ammo, I still laugh about it
