How we actually test games

People sometimes ask how long we play before writing. The honest answer is: until we have an opinion we'd defend. Usually that's at least a few hours, sometimes a lot more.

First we install and check the offline claim in airplane mode. If the game won't run without a connection, we note it and often drop it. Then we play normally and jot down anything that stands out, good or bad, as it happens rather than from memory.

We care a lot about the first day and the third day. Plenty of games feel great in the first thirty minutes and fall apart once the novelty fades. The third-day test tells us whether something has staying power.

Finally, the person who played writes the review. No committee, no rewriting someone else's notes. That's why our scores sometimes disagree with the crowd, and we're fine with that.