I did all the sidequests in this game my second playthrough. Really didn't care for them. The puzzles were insultingly easy (and I mean literally insulting, I was hurt), they felt weird and funky (like climbing across that ship which was about to fall off a cliff, you'd have to use the duck in cover mechanic to climb over small ledges :lol ), and overall they were just plan lame.
Well, I just finished ME1, and in about 95% of it's sidequests, I shit you not, it reused the same four dungeons. Some mine, some space station (always a freighter), and two building structures. It used those four layouts. Every. Fucking. Time. And as cool as the Mako was at first, the game soon became Mako Effect. At least half of those sidequests was spent driving around climbing shit looking for anomalies and bringing up the map every 15 seconds to see where the heck I was goin'.
So in short, I actually appreciate the sidequests in ME2. I'd rather have mediocre ones than shitty ones. ME2 is really not that much smaller than ME1. I see no difference between ME2's small areas (Tuchanka, Omega, Zakera Ward) versus ME1's one big Citadel and in a pinch Ferros. It really is the same shit in both games, you have merchants, people with fetch quests, and people giving you coordinates to places. Same thing.