after all the hub-ub with the mass effect 3 ending (i still don't know what it is, i assume it has something to do with the reapers), i'm glad i never got around to acctualy buying it. I absolutely loved the first game because of the progression system, it was slow, and when you upgraded your stats you didn't always see results right away. There is such a huge contrast between the beging of the game, where shepard is so weak that a few bullets would take him down, and the end of the game, where shepard attains godhood. There was an ability called immunity, that would reduce the damage you recive to almost nothing (it was kind of like quantom armor). If you upgrade this to max, then the time it takes to cool down is shorter than the time it takes to where off, so as long as you remember to use it before it wheres off, you are basicaly indestrucable, and can even go toe to toe with krogans in a boxing match (this was my favorite thing to do in that game). It acctually took prtetty much the entire game to got to that point as well. In ME2 this was not the case, they had stipped the progression system bare, and left us with very room to expariment (sure you can reset your stats, but that's no fun). Then there was the story, holy shit was there ever a story! I mean "like wow, man, like wow"
So in conclusion, I think that ME1 did "giant robot squid that can desroy plants wants to kill your mom and dad, so it's up to you to shoot at it and use space magic!" quite well.
P.S. what ever happened to the rachni queen? I freed her in the first game but i don't remember ever hearing about it again.
Edit: this turned out to be a much bigger rant than i thought it was gunna be. can you tell i really enjoyed that game? haha