How we actually score a game

People ask what a 4.4 means versus a 4.6, so here's the honest answer: it's a judgment call, but a consistent one.

We play a game to a point where our opinion stops changing. For a short adventure that might be finishing it; for an RPG or strategy game it's several evenings deep. Only then does a number go on.

We weigh how a game feels to control, how it respects your time, how it runs on ordinary phones, and whether we personally wanted to keep playing. That last one carries a lot of weight.

We don't hand out perfect scores. There's always something we'd change, and pretending otherwise would make the whole scale meaningless.