Fair Game Review Methodology

Most people skip the upfront framework and jump straight into writing impressions. That is a mistake. When I first started doing structured game reviews, I kept ending up with scattered thoughts and inconsistent scoring. The process I landed on borrows from what gets called a Chapter 1 Fair Game Review approach, though the exact name varies between review sites. The core idea is simple: establish your criteria before you play, then measure your experience against those criteria instead of against hype or genre expectations.

Chapter 1 Fair Game Review

The method splits into three phases. Phase one is setting ground rules. You write down what matters for the specific genre or type of game you are reviewing, then stick to those metrics. Phase two is the actual play session, where you take notes against each criterion rather than memorizing everything and trying to recall it later. Phase three is synthesis, where you reconcile your personal enjoyment with your objective measurements. I still remember the first time this actually broke down on me. I was reviewing a mid-tier survival craft game back in 2019, and I had decided early on that resource management depth was a primary criterion. Halfway through, I realized my own frustration with the inventory system was completely drowning out my notes on combat balance, which I had rated as secondary. The workaround was brutal but effective: I stopped playing, exported my notes, and restructured them by criterion instead of by play session. It took about twenty minutes to redo, but the final review didn't accidentally skew because of a mood swing mid-game. That mistake cost me an entire evening of work, so I now do criterion-based note organization before I write a single paragraph of the draft.

Setting Up Your Review Criteria

Don't use a blanket scoring rubric across every game. A strategy title and a narrative puzzle game demand different benchmarks. Write out four to six criteria that matter for the specific genre, then assign a weight to each. Graphics might get thirty percent on an action game but fifteen percent on a text-based mystery. Your weights become your spine. Without them, reviewers drift toward whatever they happened to enjoy most, and the score stops meaning anything. One counter-intuitive thing nobody teaches beginners is that your own baseline skews everything. If you grew up on SNES-era hardware, a polished indie with retro aesthetics will read as more competent than it actually is. Conversely, if your reference point is current-gen AAA polish, you will punish smaller teams for missing features that were never reasonable expectations. I keep a running spreadsheet of reference games I have played, organized by year and platform, and I cross-reference my criteria scores against that baseline before finalizing anything. It takes an extra ten minutes per review, but it catches the subconscious drift that would otherwise sink the piece.

The Play Session and Note-Taking System

Take notes in real time, but don't try to capture everything. Focus on moments that confirm or contradict your stated criteria. A bug that crashes the game during a boss fight matters more than a minor texture pop-in on day one. I use a simple spreadsheet with columns for criterion, timestamp, and observation. When something breaks a key system, I flag it immediately with a color code instead of hoping I remember to bring it up later. There is a specific edge case where this method hits a wall. Co-op or multiplayer-heavy games do not lend themselves to single-session evaluation. I once reviewed a squad-based shooter where my solo matches were unrepresentative because the matchmaking queue forced me into inconsistent team compositions. The workaround was to only review the multiplayer portion after accumulating at least eight hours of varied sessions, and to split the review into two sections: solo experience and multiplayer experience. The combined score became weighted toward whichever section had more data. It is not perfect, but it is better than pretending one playthrough tells the whole story.

Synthesis and Drafting

Write the synthesis before you polish the prose. Match each criterion against your observed performance, note where enjoyment and measurement diverged, and draft a single paragraph per criterion. Only then do you add the intro, the verdict, and the formatting. This order prevents the common mistake of writing a glowing introduction and then spending the rest of the piece struggling to justify a mediocre score. I will be blunt about the limitations. This method is slower. A thorough fair game review takes two to three hours of notes plus another hour of synthesis for a typical two-disc game. You cannot apply it to everything, and you will occasionally find yourself caring about a criterion that turned out to be irrelevant in practice. That is fine. The alternative is a review that sounds confident but has no actual structure behind it, and those are the ones readers remember for the wrong reasons. If you need a shortcut, start with just three criteria: core loop engagement, technical stability, and value for time invested. Everything else is detail work you can layer in later.