How We Actually Review a Game

People sometimes ask how we decide on a score, so here's the honest process. It starts with someone on the team wanting to play a game — genuine curiosity, not a schedule.

We commit to real playtime, spread across several sessions and days. First impressions matter, but so does how a game feels once the novelty wears off. A lot of games are great for an hour and tiresome by day three, and we want to catch that.

While playing, we take rough notes — what surprised us, what annoyed us, who we'd recommend it to. The rating comes last and always from the writer who played it, never from a group vote or an outside voice.

We don't chase objectivity we can't deliver. Our scores are one editor's honest read after real time with the game. That's all a review ever really is.