How we actually land on a score

People ask why one game gets a 4.6 and another a 4.1 when both are good. The honest answer is that the number comes last, after the review is written, not before.

We judge each game against what it's trying to be. A relaxing garden sim isn't failing because it has no boss fights. We score it on whether it does its own job well.

That means a casual mini-game collection and a sprawling RPG can sit close together on the scale. One does a small thing cleanly, the other does a big thing with a few rough edges.

So treat the score as shorthand. The words around it are where the real verdict lives, and that's where you'll learn whether a game is for you specifically.