A look at how we actually review a game

People sometimes assume reviewing games is just playing for fun and jotting down a score. There's more to it, and I thought it might be interesting to pull back the curtain on how we work at Pocket Verdict.

It starts with time. Before anyone writes a review, they commit to playing the game enough to form a real opinion. For a short arcade title that might be a couple of evenings. For a sprawling RPG it can be weeks. We don't publish on first impressions alone.

While playing, we take messy notes. What felt good, what frustrated us, where we got stuck, who we think the game is for. Those notes become the backbone of the review. The score comes last, after the words, never the other way around.

We also try to name our biases. If someone on the team doesn't enjoy a genre, we say so rather than pretending our taste is universal. A low score from someone who dislikes the whole category isn't very useful to you.

None of this is complicated, but it takes honesty and time. That's really the whole promise of the site: we played it, and we're telling you the truth about it.