How we actually review a game around here

People sometimes ask how long we play something before writing about it. The honest answer is: it depends, but almost always longer than you'd think.

First impressions get written early, usually in the first hour, because that raw reaction is useful and we don't want to lose it. But no rating goes live until someone's lived with the game for at least a week where it makes sense, or finished it where it's short.

We split games up by who's keen. The person who likes tactics takes the strategy stuff, I grab anything with a story. That way nobody's forcing themselves through a genre they'd rather skip, which keeps the writing honest.

The deletions matter as much as the keepers. For every game that makes the catalogue, five or six get removed within a day or two. We don't write about those. The catalogue is only the survivors.