I actually really liked the driving mission of Half Life 2, it was like the National Lampoon's Vacation of video games. The boat mission was kinda shit, but the coastline one was great, it was such a long roadtrip with all of these memorable stops, barricades, and trials to overcome along the way that felt like missions of their own.
But yeah, Mass Effect Mako missions, while cool in concept, were poorly executed, often uneventful, and felt extremely copy+paste with different skyboxes and ground colors.