How we actually test a game before reviewing it

People sometimes assume reviews come from a quick demo. Ours don't. Before anything goes up, at least one of us plays far enough to hit the part where a game shows its true colours.

That usually means the mid-game, where the tutorial has worn off and the grind either kicks in or it doesn't. A game can be charming for an hour and exhausting by hour five, and we want to catch that.

We take rough notes the whole time — what felt good, what made us sigh, where the difficulty jumped. Then we compare impressions, because one person's favourite mechanic is another's deal-breaker.

It's slower than cranking out reviews from trailers, and we're fine with that. The whole point of the site is to tell you what the game is actually like to live with.