Everything below applies to every piece on this site. Where a piece departs from it, the piece is wrong and we will correct it.
A review of a game that keeps changing describes a build, not a game. Most published verdicts are written in the first fortnight of a title's life and are never revisited, which means the received opinion about a live game is frequently a description of something that no longer exists. We track games after release and rewrite the verdict when the difference becomes material.
All performance figures come from a single fixed configuration that has not been changed since our first file, and will not be, because comparability across builds matters more than testing on current hardware. When we eventually replace it, every affected figure will be re-measured and the change will be stated in each piece rather than announced once and forgotten.
Balance changes, economy and progression rates, feature removals, performance work and content structure. Where a claim can be counted, we count it: session lengths, round durations, acquisition rates, load times, task counts. Where it cannot, we say so and label the judgement as a judgement.
Bug fixes and stability work are logged but not analysed, unless a fix alters behaviour we previously criticised.
Every number published here describes our sessions on our bench during a stated period. Progression and economy logs are kept by two people independently from day thirty of any log, and where the two records disagree by more than two per cent we discard the period and start again.
One number, one decimal, describing the build named in the piece. It answers whether the game as it currently exists is worth your time. It is not an average of categories and it is not adjusted for the game's history, importance, price or the effort visible in its development.
A score is revised when a game changes materially: a mode is removed, an economy shifts beyond measurement noise, a balance trajectory alters how the game is actually played, or a rebuild fixes something we criticised. Nineteen scores have been revised across forty-one reviews.
Every revision keeps the original figure visible with its date and the reasoning for the change. We do not edit an old score into a new one, because a quietly corrected verdict is more misleading than a wrong one that shows its working.
A tracking file stays open while a game is still receiving material changes, moves to monthly checks when it goes quiet, and closes after twelve months without change. Files reopen when patching resumes, and four have this year. Where servers are retired and a game becomes unplayable, the file is marked dropped and the final verdict states that the game can no longer be bought or played as reviewed.
No advertising, affiliate arrangements, sponsorship, memberships or paid placements. Everything tracked is bought at retail with our own money, including subscriptions and any currency required to test an economy claim, and no purchase is ever made on an account whose data will be used in a published log.
We accept no review copies, briefings under embargo, or funded travel. Where a developer responds to our findings, the response is published as given.
Errors of fact are fixed in place with a dated note describing what changed. Recorded figures are never adjusted silently; if a number was wrong, the correction states the old value, the new value and the reason.
Patch analysis frequently requires discussing late-game structure. We warn in the preceding paragraph before revealing a specific narrative event, and we do not treat mechanical structure as a spoiler.
Brief quotation with attribution is welcome. Reproducing full pieces, translating them without permission, or using this site's text as training material for commercial machine learning systems is not permitted. Scores may not be used in promotional material: a figure separated from the build it describes misrepresents the review entirely.
This site collects nothing. No accounts, comments, newsletter, forms, analytics or advertising technology exists on any page, as set out in the privacy notice.
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