That was my first thought, I am sure that there were some incentives from Gawker that contributed to it but Kotaku quickly became one of the gaming sites that I strongly avoided around 2017 when it seemed like they would get a crusade against any game that had some problems and just run it into the ground. (Mass Effect Andromeda was the straw for me)
Here is my thing about Andromeda, it was a bad Mass Effect game in the same way that Mario Sunshine was a bad Mario game. The bar was incredibly high so in comparison it was a "bad" game.
But both were still solid games. now ME:A had its faults (especially at launch), but to this day I blame Kotaku for single handily causing that game to fail and the public perception of it being the way it was and we never got the DLC that was clearly hinted at in the game. Which I am still frustrated about.
It seemed like on a daily basis for a couple weeks we got a negative article about ME:A from Kotaku and suddenly everyone talked about how bad it was even though they never played it.
Disclaimer: I have a Mass Effect tattoo that I plan on turning into a sleeve so I am not exactly... impartial
I think part of the reason I say that is... I don't want to say I have a lower barrier for more Mass Effect but at the end of the day more Mass Effect is a positive to me and I am willing to forgive a lot.
Same deal with Halo, I also have a tattoo of it and I have stuck with Halo Infinite this entire time (and that is finally paying off).
I feel like many of those that hated Andromeda are also those that said that the ending of 3 ruined the franchise. Which... yeah the ending sucked. But I don't understand how a crappy 10-15 minutes ruins a close to 200 hour playtime for the trilogy. It for sure hasn't stopped me from replaying the entire trilogy multiple times or waking up this morning, seeing the date and knowing to put on my N7 shirt.
> I often wonder how Andromeda would have been received if it wasn't branded a Mass Effect game, and launched like a week later.
I have wondered that quite a few times. Especially if it still had the BioWare name attached to it just as a new IP. People would have been a lot less critical and... out for blood frankly. And maybe more people would have just ignored it and the game could have just had peace...
