How we review games

Everyone seems to have different ideas about what the number at the end of a review means, what games an outlet should even review, and how the critics should go about getting their copies. Here's our attempt to explain all of that succinctly, as it applies to Gameroni only. Other sites have their own guidelines, and we think that's pretty cool.

The Scores

Gameroni reviews are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, using whole numbers only. We could have broken them down further, or used a range from 1 to 100 for the sake of precision, but there's not much point. An 8.9 isn't quantifiably different from a 9, is it? Most of the people we like don't sit around arguing about whatever number follows a decimal in a review score.

To know what a critic thought of a game, you should read all of the text they wrote. Those words are there for a reason, after all. Our writers will tell you precisely what they mean, and appreciate you reading all their lovely words. But if you're one of those TL;DR folks, here's a very general summary of what the numbers mean today:

  1. Irredeemable

  2. Awful

  3. Bad

  4. Disappointing

  5. Unremarkable

  6. Okay

  7. Good

  8. Very good

  9. Excellent

  10. Exemplary

No game is perfect, so let's not pretend otherwise. Even your favorite game ever probably has a flaw or two, if you're being honest. But we won't avoid giving a game a 10/10 just because the framerate stuttered in one busy town square. Likewise, we won't shy away from numbers below 7 (which, by the way, does not equate to "Average").

We hope you find the above scale and explanation useful. If you're here to argue too hard about a review because of the number at the end, we ask that you kindly refrain. Scores are general guidelines, and we take them seriously, but we don't want anyone losing sleep, friends, or performance bonuses over them.

What We Review

Games can take a long time to play and to properly critique. Some RPGs might go on for dozens of hours with no end in sight. On the opposite side of the coin, some really brief games can feel like they took dozens of hours, despite only lasting 2 or 3.

When we consider assignments, we know all of that. Therefore, we try to only tackle the stuff someone on the team actually wants to play. If no one is available for the next Madden game, that's okay. If we have a team member who is eager to take the Seahawks through franchise mode, that's terrific.

What we won't be doing is finding someone who hates shooters and pointing them toward the new Call of Duty or Halo game so they can properly eviscerate it. And we won't be assigning a game to someone to review if they hate the subject matter or art direction going in, or if they saw the developer ranting indelicately on social media, or if we spot any other red flags after a quick glance over the press kit.

Contrarian perspectives can be fun to read. We get that. But they lose their value when a critic expected to hate the game, then played the game, and did indeed hate it. That's not a review. That's an easy rant. We have features for that sort of thing, provided a writer has a genuinely compelling angle.

Also, there's no such thing as a game that's too small to be worth a review. If a publisher is selling it, or asking players to invest their time in lieu of money, that's reason enough to write about it... provided the game intrigues us.

To summarize: we'll review whatever we think looks interesting, and we'll try to have people cover the game who would have happily bought it on their own dime. Which brings us to...

Where We Get Our Games

Some outlets receive press copies of the games they review. We will try our best to be one of them.

Some outlets have their writers buy every game they cover, or so we hear. That takes money we don't always have, and we try to avoid it. We hope that by providing worthwhile critiques every time we post a review, developers will trust us with advance keys for our team members. But if they don't have any to spare and we just really want to play that hot new game, we'll totally buy it.

After all, we're only reviewing the games that look interesting to us and that we think our audience will want to know more about.

If you wonder whether we reviewed a game after receiving a free press key, look for that disclosure near the end of the review, right next to the score. If you don't see it, we paid for our copy. The FTC expects sites to disclose all of that stuff these days, and we don't figure it hurts to be transparent on such matters.

Are you a publisher with a game you'd like us to review? If so, we invite you to contact us about possible coverage.

Last updated September 29, 2026