You can play Mass Effect: Andromeda starting March 16 if you have EA Access

EA Access members will be the first to explore Mass Effect: Andromeda's brand new galaxy, and now we know when they can start playing. The free 10-hour Play First Trial will be available to subscribers starting on March 16, the week before its proper release date of March 21 in the US and March 23 in Europe.

Ten hours sounds like a pretty good chunk of time to spend with a game. But if Mass Effect: Andromeda resembles the rest of BioWare's productions, 10 hours will be barely enough time to settle on your preferred playstyle, pick your favorite companions and potential romantic partners, and shove your first alien out of a window. You'll have to wait until the general public release date to do more, but your progress will carry over if you keep playing on Xbox One.

EA Access members can pass the time until March 16 by playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, both of which were recently added to the free-play EA Access Vault. Skate 3, Madden NFL 17, Dead Space Ignition, and Zuma's Revenge will join them later this year. If you want to pick up a month-long EA Access subscription ahead of time, CDKeys has a nice little discount on them them for $3.09 / £2.49 (GamesRadar+ will receive a portion of the revenue from that link).

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.