Well, Mass Effect is basically a celebration of 80's scifi-cliches (and Bioware's own), so it's not exactly surprising that and most of the characters and the story aren't exactly anything new - starting from Shepard himself, who is a textbook example of a Mary Sue if you ever saw one (then again, he's not alone).
And while I'm certainly no fan of Mass Effect, I still say you should probably just set the difficulty way down and do a quick runthru of the main plot. It's easily the best part of the game, and you won't have to deal with the broken and boring gameplay as much since you can complete the main storyline in about 15 hours.
Oh, and:
As a B5 fan, I'm insulted.
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