To the games credit, you don't have to hack/lock pick anything important for the most part unless the objective lies behind a locked door or in a datapad. Lockpicking was a simple matching game as well as Hacking went the same way, so long as you don't mess up. (Penny Arcade pointed out the idiotic nature of the Simon Says mini game ) With the exception of the later to some extent, am I the only one who thought the lock picking and hacking mini games weren't all that bad? I felt the Simon Says little mini games for everything from hacking to lockpicking to obtaining minerals didn't help anyone out and made it boring and predictable. As well as a couple of webcomics, one specifically NerfNow, point out the redundancy of Mineral Scanning.
In most of the reviews I have seen for Mass Effect 2, reviewers praise every aspect of the game except for the tedious minigames.