How We Decide On A Score

People ask what our numbers mean, so here's the honest version. A score isn't a formula spat out by a spreadsheet. It's a summary of how the team felt after actually living with a game for a while.

We start by playing, not by grading. Only after several sessions do we sit down and argue. Handling and feel matter a lot for the racing and arcade games we love, while story and pacing carry more weight for adventures and RPGs. The genre shapes what we weigh.

A score in the low fours means a genuinely good game with a few rough edges. Anything approaching the high fours is something we'd keep on our own phones. We rarely go below the high threes here, because if a game is worse than that, we usually just don't cover it.

The takeaway: read the words, not just the number. The paragraphs tell you whether a game's weaknesses are dealbreakers for you specifically.