Our Review Process

You've read the reviews, you've seen the scores, and maybe you're wondering how we come to our occasionally deranged conclusions. It's a fair question. Here’s a look behind the curtain at how we tackle the games you love, hate, and love to hate.

So, Who Actually Plays This Stuff?

The answer is: it depends, but it's always someone who knows what they are doing. Most of the time, it's simple. We lock ourselves in a dark room with an unhealthy amount of caffeine and play the absolute hell out of a game. We live in it, we breathe it, we let it consume our lives until we know it inside and out, warts and all. That direct, firsthand experience is the bedrock of most of our reviews.

But sometimes, a game needs a different approach. Maybe it's a genre none of us are particularly fond of, or maybe we just want a second opinion that isn't from the sleep-deprived goblins in our own mirrors. In those cases, we'll hand a game off to one of our trusted friends -people who are genuine fanatics of that specific genre. Then, once they've played it to death, we'll interrogate them like detectives in a noir film. We'll pull out their raw, unfiltered, and often sleep-deprived thoughts, and hammer that into the review you read.

And these aren't just some randoms we pulled off the street. We're all in the trenches of the game industry in one way or another: devs, students, QA grunts, you name it. It gives us a certain perspective, an understanding for the struggles but also a lie and greed detector that's been finely tuned by years of crunch and questionable design meetings.

What's the Deal with AI? Is a Robot Writing This?

Let's clear the air on this. No, a robot is not writing our reviews. The opinions, the blood sweat and tears, the questionable metaphors, that's all 100% human-grade chaos, courtesy of us. The passion and the rage are real.

But let's be honest, we're writers who spend more time breaking down game mechanics than we do memorizing the Chicago Manual of Style. So, once the raw, unfiltered thoughts are on the page, we run it through an AI editor. Think of it as a spellchecker on steroids. It catches our typos, fixes our comma splices, and generally makes sure our caffeine-fueled ramblings are actually readable English. The AI is our tool, not our voice. It's the janitor that cleans up the mess after the rock show, not the one playing the guitar solo, however, to keep it fair, it is still important to mention.

What's the Deal with Free Keys? Are You Guys Sellouts?

Let's get this out of the way right now: Yes, sometimes developers and publishers send us free game keys. We are always 100% transparent about this and will clearly state it at the bottom of any review where we received a complimentary copy.

Now for the important part: it means absolutely nothing for the score. A free key is not a bribe; it's a press pass. It gets us in the door to do our job, which is to tell you whether a game is worth your time and hard-earned money. A free game doesn't buy a good score. It buys a review, period. If the game is a masterpiece, we'll shout it from the rooftops. If it's a dumpster fire held together with duct tape and broken promises, you're damn right we're going to say that, too. Our loyalty is to you, our long-suffering readers, not to some marketing department's quarterly targets. The score is our own, our opinion is our own, and that will never be for sale.