Source Gaming reaches for a high standard of quality in its writing. Our reviews are written with the intent to inform, illuminate, and interrogate the games we play. We try to write for newbies, experts, non-gamers, and everyone in between. While we’ll try to provide a wealth of details, we’re often most interested in the feelings a game imparts or the nature of its experiences over a dry overview of its content. We find this more helpful when providing a reader and potential consumer the knowledge needed to make an informed decision.
Reviews on Source Gaming are subjective, the personal opinion of each contributor to the publication, but they are not written in a vacuum. Source Gaming has an internal review guideline that reviewers must follow to ensure consistency and fairness across all game reviews, regardless of platform, publisher, and so on. In addition, no formal review, and almost no publication on this site, comes without at least one round of editing. While one writer’s review isn’t indicative of all our writers’ perspectives—we are far from a monolith or hive mind—whatever we publish comes with our collective support.
Review Scale Policy
Source Gaming uses a ten point scale. Just as every review is subjective, every number is a symbol of the reviewer’s feelings. However, Source Gaming does have a general definition of what each number means, which are as follows:
- 10: Impeccable: The absolute top of the heap. Impeccable games may not be flawless, some may even be critically flawed, but they are examples of game design at its best and most powerful. They help set the standards of the medium and warrant our most effusive praise.
- Examples: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, SteamWorld Dig 2, Donkey Kong Bananza
- 9: Fantastic: A powerful, strong experience. Fantastic games provide a level of polish and quality that you’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, alongside strong and compelling game design. What keeps them from getting higher may be simple: a limit to their innovation, one major problem, or perhaps they’re just too similar to other games of their ilk. Still, don’t let that lack of one point deter you from trying it.
- Examples: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Metroid Prime, Super Mario Bros. Wonder
- 8: Great: Innovative, powerful, and mostly successful. Great games are polished but somewhat unimaginative, or rough but wildly ambitious. And yet, their limitations are part and parcel of what makes them great; they’re symbolic of a grand struggle.
- Examples: Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Nintendo Switch 2
- 7: Good: A solid time. Good games are more modest, basic, severely flawed, or perhaps they provide an experience that’s “merely” satisfying. We don’t want you to pass these ones up, as the indies in this category especially can sometimes fly under the radar.
- Examples: Mind Over Magnet,
- 6: Mixed: Something we can recommend, but not wholeheartedly. Mixed games may be mediocre but playable, or imaginative but unable to let its ambitions sing. Still, some of the most fascinating games ever made land here, and that’s not unimportant.
- 5: Bland: A game that can’t become more than the sum of its parts. Bland games lack the energy or spark of what’s higher on the scale.
- 4: Bad: Actively poor in a way that fails to achieve mere blandness. Bad games may feature ideas done far worse than they should, or perhaps they include ugly real world economics or a surprisingly low threshold of quality.
- 3: Fiasco: A spectacular failure of a thing. Fiascoes are what you look for when you’re talking about bad games, as they have a true notoriety or grandeur. Those of you who like to read about the worst works of art ever made and the biggest disasters will find the most fun in this category.
- 2: Broken: Unacceptable and unpleasant. Broken games are “broken” not just through their gameplay, but everything else as well. Expect horrid optimization, miserable game feel, ugly and hateful writing, barely functional mechanics, and a general nastiness or shamelessness. Were we to use a letter grade, these would be D-: the gentleman’s F. It’s rather rare to find a mainstream release this poor, so don’t expect to see these often.
- 1: Toxic: The absolute nadir of game design. Toxic games are not merely offensive, not merely terrible, but fail (or choose not to pass) what the gaming industry and community have deemed to be the absolute barest of acceptable standards. We have no interest in shining a light on such games, and the chance of one being compelling enough to warrant a review is near-nonexistent.
- Unfortunately—or, for us, fortunately—we don’t have many personal experiences with these. Until we review some, we’d suggest you look at the tide of AI slop, cryptocurrency scams, and full-on plagiarism games out there.
Review Codes and Ethical Standards:
Like other press outlets and websites, Source Gaming accepts review codes from gaming publishers. Our getting them does not factor into our review, and we always make sure to identify which games we were given and by whom. Source Gaming values transparency and believes that readers should have the full context for each review.
Review Content Prior to September 2025
Source Gaming is over a decade old, and reviews have been a part of the site since the early days—our very first subject was Hyrule Warriors, all the way back in 2014. Since then, our attitude towards how reviews should be conducted has changed several times. For the sake of consistency with our current, more modern standard of game reviews, which was put into place in September 2025, we are making an effort to go back over the hundreds of review articles and update some of their formatting. This includes the headline, the review scores (many of which were published using a 5 / 5 scale), and in these cases we’ve recorded and clarified our edits for the sake of transparency.
However, as Source Gaming has always held a preservation of the past as one of its guiding values, we will not be rewriting or updating the copy of these reviews. What this means for those looking back is that some old reviews may be formatted in a way that is vastly different from the current standard. For example, at one point in our history we didn’t use review scores at all. These reviews will remain this way as we cannot ask previous writers, some of which are no longer with the site, to come back and provide a score for a game they may have not played in years and may have wildly different opinions on from back then.
Thank you for your understanding regarding this.
If you have any questions regarding these standards and any other point made above, please reach out to Editor-in-Chief Joshua ‘NantenJex’ Goldie at josh.goldie(at)source-gaming(dot)com
