How we actually test a game

People sometimes ask how long we spend with a game before reviewing it. The honest answer is: however long it takes to form a real opinion, which is usually a lot more than one sitting.

We play on a mid-range phone on purpose, because that's what most readers own. Testing everything on the newest flagship would give numbers nobody can relate to. We note load times, frame drops, and how the phone heats up over a proper session.

Battery gets measured across a fixed window so we can compare games fairly. We also try both the default settings and the toned-down ones, since that gap tells you a lot about how well a game is optimized.

Only after all that does anyone start writing. The goal is that when you read a rating here, there's a person and a lot of hours behind it, not a quick glance and a guess.