Here at SG we believe in giving our full, honest, and unbiased viewpoint. So while most sites race to meet an arbitrary deadlines to publish their reviews, we prefer to take a different approach. Given the state of today’s industry with day one patches and the often on-going development of titles post-launch, we chose to only offer a final review of a title once we have experienced it in the wild as all other players have. While we will continue to play and discuss pre-release copies of games when possible or necessary, our final review will always only be once we have completed the game.
As an independent site where our contributors choose which games they’d like to review, we are often reviewing higher quality or more notable releases. Because of this, we leave it up to the discretion of the reviewer what an appropriate score is for a game if it does not achieve a 7 or greater. As always, we encourage all visitors to read the review rather than solely focusing on the score to get the full scope of the experience from the reviewer’s point of view.
If the reviewer believes the game deserves 7 or above, we will award it with an SG Medal. The scoring and medal descriptions for games that reach a 7 or above can be found below:
Historic (10): Awarded only to titles that represent a truly generational level achievement by the developer. These titles have a significant and notable impact on future game development and/or the industry as a whole. They are immediate entries into the SG Game of the Year discussion, and will likely be remembered for generations.
Sensational (9-9.5): Awarded to titles that push the boundaries in nearly all areas and stand superior when compared to peer titles across the industry. These titles demonstrate a level of story, character, or world development that is highly memorable and not plagued with any notable issues.
Superb (8-8.5): Awarded to titles that demonstrate noteworthy design elements and gameplay experiences while being free from any glaring faults.
Honorable (7-7.5): Awarded to titles that exhibit qualities that bear mentioning and despite some possible shortcomings in areas, demonstrate more positives than negatives.
A summary description of why the game was awarded the medal will be provided by the reviewer along with some rankings in key attributes. As always, we sincerely thank you for your support of independent gaming journalism and we always appreciate feedback.
