Our methodology
How we judge a game twice
Every verdict on this site carries two independent scores. One asks how good the game is to play. The other asks what owning it costs a UK player, and how safely you can pay for it. Here is exactly how both are built.
Why two scores
A single number hides the question most people are really asking before they buy: is it good, and is it good for the money? A brilliant game can be poor value if it is sold in pieces, and a modest one can be a bargain. So we keep the two apart and let you see both.
On every review the outer ring is the Verdict (claret) and the inner ring is the Value (green). The figure in the middle is the overall mark.
The Verdict score
We read a game the way you play it, in stages. The Verdict is a weighted average of five marks out of ten, and the first three follow the milestones every review is organised around.
Verdict how it plays
- First hours (15%). How quickly the game shows you what it is, teaches its rules and gives you a reason to come back tomorrow.
- The middle stretch (30%). Whether the core loop deepens once the novelty fades: new systems, better set pieces, harder choices.
- The long tail (20%). What is left after the credits or the first big goal: post-game content, modes, updates, reasons to replay.
- Craft (20%). Presentation, performance and stability on the platforms UK players actually use, including known launch problems and fixes.
- Access (15%). Difficulty options, accessibility settings, subtitles, controller support and how many kinds of hardware can run it.
Value what it costs
- Price against play (35%). The standard UK list price set against typical play time (main story plus extras), expressed as pounds per hour.
- Honest pricing (25%). How clear the editions, expansions and in-game shop are, whether anything essential sits behind a second payment, and no paid random items.
- Ways to pay (20%). How many stores sell it, which payment methods those stores take in the UK, and whether a subscription or trial lowers the entry cost.
- Protection (20%). Refund windows at the main stores, how ownership and saves travel between devices, and the spending controls around it.
The Value score
Value is about the UK bill, not about whether a game is cheap. We start from the standard list price in pounds at the main stores (sale prices are noted but never used for the score, because they end), then look at what else you are likely to pay for, how you can pay, and what protects you if something goes wrong.
Price against play uses typical play-time ranges published by the HowLongToBeat community for the main story plus common extras. Open-ended games without a finish line, such as a flight simulator or a party racer, are judged on what a typical player gets from them over a year, and we say so on the page.
The overall mark
The overall mark is 60% Verdict and 40% Value, rounded to one decimal place. We weight play more heavily because a cheap game you do not enjoy is still money wasted. The league table lets you sort by any of the three if you weigh them differently.
What we base it on
Each review is an editorial analysis built from primary and published evidence, and every page lists its sources at the foot:
- the publisher's own descriptions, patch notes, support pages and system requirements;
- UK store listings for price, editions, age rating and in-game purchase labels;
- the published critical consensus on Metacritic and OpenCritic, and Steam user review summaries where the game is sold on Steam;
- HowLongToBeat play-time ranges;
- official help-centre pages for payment methods, refunds and spending controls, and legislation.gov.uk, GOV.UK and Citizens Advice for consumer law.
What we will not claim
We do not invent personal play-throughs, anecdotes or screenshots, and we do not describe a review as hands-on testing. Where we describe what the opening hours or the endgame are like, that description is drawn from the sources above and from how the game is designed, and our judgement is the reasoning we add on top. Screenshots and key art are official material supplied by the publishers.
No publisher, platform holder or payment company pays us, sends us codes in exchange for coverage or sees a review before it is published. We carry no affiliate links, so no score is shaped by a commission.
Updates and corrections
Prices and store terms move. Every review shows the date prices were checked, and the price log records each change we make. If you spot an error, tell the desk; corrections are made quickly and noted under our editorial code.