Ever wondered how Game8 News reviews your favorite games? Read on to learn more about our Review Scoring System, criteria, and how we handle game reviews in general.
Game8 Review Policy
Review Criteria
At Game8, we rate the games based on five areas. These are Story, Gameplay, Visuals, Audio, and Value for Money. We believe these five aspects have to meld together to give players a great gaming experience overall. An error in one aspect can detract from the other good aspects of a game, and our scoring system reflects that.
| Story | Rating the plot, characters, as well as pacing, and overall depth of the story. |
|---|---|
| Gameplay | How we rate the gameplay mechanics and systems designed in the game. |
| Visuals | Rating how beautiful the game's graphics are as well as its user interface. |
| Audio | Rating how the game's music grips players during battle and cutscenes, and how well the voice acting and other sounds are done. |
| Value for Money | The base game's length, replayability, and time needed for 100% completion. |
Review Scoring System Breakdown
We want to give our readers as much of an objective and unbiased review of a game as possible. That way, you know whether a game is worth your time and your money. That's why our reviews are based solely on the reviewer's experience with the game and feedback from our team.
The way we rate a game is by giving it individual scores from 1 to 10 across the five criteria we mentioned above, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. The scores are added together, then multiplied by two. This reveals the Overall Score, which ranges from 0 to 100.
| Score Range | Description |
|---|---|
| 90 - 100 | One of the best video games of the decade, and probably one of the best video games of all time. Gameplay, visuals, audio, and story are all in perfect harmony. |
| 80 - 89 | Definitely GOTY material. The developers have shown a great deal of effort into making their game an outstanding title. |
| 70 - 79 | Ridiculously good. If not for a few minor flaws, this game would've been better. But it's already great as it is, and you shouldn't miss it. |
| 60 - 69 | Pretty good game. It's either lacking in a few areas or has some flaws, but otherwise it's a fun experience overall. |
| 50 - 59 | The game is a bit mediocre, but it has some good ideas here and there. If you want to try it out, buy it when it's on sale. |
| 40 - 49 | It's quite mid. Either certain elements of the game just don't meld together that well, or there's something else that's wrong with it. |
| 30 - 39 | The game is still in 'meh' territory, but even then it has some major flaws. |
| 20 - 29 | This game is bad. Graphics, story, audio, gameplay, and value for money – it has failed in all these aspects. |
| 10 - 19 | The game is horrendously bad. At least we played it so you wouldn't have to. |
| 0 - 9 | Is there even a game that can be this bad? The only distinction this game has is how terrible it is. We might even give the devs an award for it. Like the Razzies, but for video games. |
Game8 Review Process
A Full Review Within a Week After Release
At Game8, we buy a copy of the game ourselves out of pocket. Once we get our hands on the game, reviewers among our staff will play it and see if they liked or hated it. Within the week, we already have a full review out for you guys.
We don't have advance copies to review a video game weeks before release, but this ensures the independence of our reviewers. The scores and opinions that you see in our articles are those given by Game8's writers alone, free of any outside influence.
Scope of Game Review Coverage
At Game8, we review a healthy mix of both highly-anticipated titles, as well as many indie or mobile games. That way, we give exposure to both the hottest video games out there, as well as hidden gems you might have otherwise missed.
