If you even play games casually, you know that the Mass Effect: Andromeda (we’ll call it MEA from now on) release was hyped beyond reason. This is typical with high-profile AAA games, and can often be what makes or breaks a game’s critical reception. Don’t believe us? Read about Fallout 4’s release.

Our guys had an almost entirely different experience with MEA than the user (and some critic) reviews were suggesting, so we took to Reddit to see if we could get our own accurate data.

“…we wanted to make sure we were getting information from people who have actually played the game for a significant amount of time.”

The passionate gamers over on Reddit were kind enough to abide by our requirements, as we wanted to make sure we were getting information from people who have actually played the game for a significant amount of time. To ensure this, we asked that each gamer surveyed use OBS to take a short video of them logging into their Origin accounts, verify the username, and show the “total playtime”. Only those with 10 or more hours were allowed to take the survey. Those confirmed were given a link to a Google Forms document where they could take the survey.

We asked those being surveyed to rate 7 elements of the game: replayability, animations, RPG elements, combat, size (of the game world), story, and graphics.

Take a look at the results:

Our previous article cast doubt on the accuracy of many of the user and critic reviews for a number of reasons, but our internal survey of verified gamers shows what we said from the beginning: the game is awesome. This survey did, however, reflect some of the negative reviews in a lack of quality in animations compared to the rest of the game’s elements. Contrarily, it’s clear that the size of the world, combat, and replayability are the game’s strongest points.

This survey did, however, reflect some of the negative reviews in a lack of quality in animations compared to the rest of the game’s elements.

Conclusion: people who have been proven to have put significant time into the game love it. Does this mean all the other reviews are fake? No, but it does beg the questions: “What are the other critics’ methodology?” and “How do we stop letting trolls who haven’t played the game rate the game on sites like Metacritic, IGN, and others?”.

We hope this has been eye-opening for you. Andromeda deserves some serious praise.