How we actually decide on a score

People ask what our numbers mean, so here's the honest version. A score is our editors' overall feeling after real play — not a formula, but not random either.

We weigh how a game plays over time, not just the first impression. Controls, settings depth, and how it treats your phone all feed into it. A gorgeous game with terrible battery behavior gets marked down.

We don't hand out perfect scores lightly, and we leave room to revisit. Games change with updates, and a rough launch can become excellent months later — when that happens, we go back and adjust.

No score is ever influenced by whether a studio talked to us. If we got a review code, we say so, and it changes nothing. The number is just our opinion, offered honestly.