Finished ME2 for the...well, I've lost count of how many times I've played at this point. It finally dawned on me why this middle chapter is so much fun for me: Very limited fetch quests. In ME1 and ME3, you were constantly bombarded with NPCs asking you to go scan a planet, find a locket, or follow up on a distress signal. There were only a few of those in ME2 and everything else in the story is action based. Sure, doing things like helping Jacob work out his daddy-issues is weird in the face of a threat against humanity, but at least there's a lot of shooting involved.
I know that I could always just skip the fetch quests, but I'm kind of a completionist and feel compelled do them when they are staring me in the face. In general, ME2 doesn't waste too much of my time.