As games evolve, should their review system follow? A 2025 investigation

The first in a series of articles looking at how professional game reviews shape the $180 billion global industry.

Metacritic: The crucible of all major games.

As a flurry of February releases hits gaming devices, a new report is set to perhaps rekindle an age-old gaming industry debate.

Published this month in the Journal of Business Research, new research has drawn a line between critical reviews and game sales. To significantly summarise: it found that, in general, there is a correlation between the pair. And conversely, there's less of a link between general player reviews and commercial returns. That's unlike a lot of other industries where user reviews are as influential — and are perhaps more trusted — than pieces from professional critics.

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Pulling the research into the real world, there are arguments for and against this finding. Pokemon Scarlett and Violet were critically panned when they released, riddled with glitches and lagging beyond belief. Yet they went on to be among the best-selling games in the franchise's history.

There's a long list of games that have, however, fallen in line with this finding. Star Wars: Outlaws — another game based off popular intellectual property — saw middling reviews and performed weakly as a result.

But it's not all one-sided; there's an unspoken balance of power with reviews. Early access to a game for day-one reviews — and more recently developing early strategy guides — is coveted by gaming publishers. They are well known to generate both high traffic and engagement from readers.

As such, to say that critical reviews in the video game industry are a prickly topic would be an understatement.

For years, debate has raged around whether five or so years of work from a game maker should be nearly distilled into a score out of 10. Meanwhile, while the way in which games now release has changed significantly over the past three decades, the process in which they are graded and reviewed has remained largely intact.

All of this begs the question: Is it time for a rethink of critical gaming reviews? And if so, what would they look like?

This is the first article in a series looking at the impact of critical reviewing games on the ecosystem. Over the course of 2025, I'm aiming to talk to journalists, game developers and streamers about the impact of game reviews on their roles, and how they feel about the reviewing process. Tell, where possible, all sides of the story. But to start this off, it's first worth understanding how the process actually works.

How do critical reviews actually work?

While there's no hard and fast rule as to how games are released and reviewed—each is a case-by-case basis usually decided by the publisher and developer, and managed by their PR team. Here’s what's considered standard practice, fact-checked by several sources within the industry:

• Game codes that allow an early download of a title are provided to a curated list of newsrooms, influential reviewers and streamers ahead of launch.
  

• In accepting the codes, reviewers agree that they won't release anything till an agreed date — typically close to the release. This in the industry is known as an embargo.
  

• This could be anywhere from several weeks to a few days to play the game to completion ahead of launch.
  

• Reviewers play a pre-launch version of the game, ahead of its "Day 1 patch" which may iron out some bugs and kinks. It's now accompanied with a fact sheet that explains the game and any potential fixes on the horizon. Reviewers are free to ask questions and clarify what will and won't be in the game Day 1 to help hone their review.
  

• Some pre-release review versions may exclude online modes, and this is generally mentioned in the review if applicable.
  

• Everyone's reviews are generally released at the same time. Some publications may receive an earlier embargo. This also generally includes both written reviews and video reviews. Streamers can also discuss their impressions of the game.
  

• As long as there are four or more reviews — from approved sites — Metacritic collates scores out of 10 (or 100) of the sites that produce a score and are registered on its platform, and produces an overall review score of a game.

What's wrong with this process?

For the most part, this process has endured as it is the fairest means of giving all parties what they want. However, as games have evolved, some cracks have started to emerge:

• Games change over time. This is perhaps the biggest challenge for the process. Reviews provide a snapshot of a game at launch, but games now evolve with patches and updates, years after release. The only other review point is when additional content (DLC) is released, but general updates don't trigger a re-examination. Providing a late review — weeks after launch — also penalises publishers in terms of traffic.
  

• Scores themselves can be arbitrary and don't capture nuance. What is the difference between a 7 and an 8? Some sites have already addressed this. Back in 2018, video game website Polygon made the radical move of abolishing review scores. They instead replaced it with a "recommends" badge that allowed readers to quickly identify whether the game was a must-play.
  

• The pace of reviewing. While some publishers provide ample time to review, others create a rushed window forcing reviewers to speed through the game quicker than the average player. Is this fair? Also should reviewers — in an authoritative position — pass judgement on a game before they’ve finished playing it?
  

• Platforms can influence the review process. Metacritic favours critical reviews and scores, encouraging more outlets to provide a score over a more nuanced analysis. Steam — a games marketplace — places more emphasis on user reviews and general sentiment towards a game.

As you can likely tell, this is a complicated topic, involving a lot of closed-door discussions between those in the industry and those who cover it. Fair warning: There likely won't be a solution from this series. There, in all honesty, likely isn't one.

But at a minimum, it will shed light on what is a very influential but somewhat less talked about aspect of the gaming industry.

What's your take on the critical review process? And what else should I explore with this series? Let me know in the comments. I'll be releasing future articles on this over the course of 2025 as I delve further into the subject.

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What I'm Playing: Tactical Breach Wizards

It’s like setting up dominoes, but with magic and guns. Source: Steam.

Maybe it was that time where I thrust four troops off a train. Or the other where I cleverly knocked out several enemy reinforcements as they entered the arena. Or maybe, when a made-up joke objective displayed at the end of one of the missions that literally made me laugh out loud.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when I fell in love with Tactical Breach Wizards. It's a game that lives up to its name, with plenty tactical depth, but surprisingly so much heart and humour. Given the subject matter — war, cults, and world domination — it's laugh-out-loud funny, playing on just about every magic fantasy trope in the book. I'm going to say this upfront: Tom Francis, who both wrote and designed the game, has a knack for words.

As an XCOM veteran and strategy game aficionado, Wizards was bound to hook me eventually. But like any good relationship, it was a slow build, as I learned the mechanics and built my confidence.

Tactical Breach Wizards is an isometric strategy game. It plays a bit like sophisticated chess, where each room you breach is a unique gridded board and each character can move, attack, and trigger abilities. Goals can vary, but you are more often than not tasked with neutralising — knock out, not kill — each enemy and sealing doors to prevent reinforcements.

You play as a coven of wizards essentially trying to unravel a global conspiracy. You initially start out with two characters, Zan and Jen, with the band growing over time as the story progresses to a total of five unique wizards.

Each plays very differently. Jen is focused on movement and knock back — her best turns are where you knock multiple enemies out of the arena or into each other. Zan, on the other hand, is more tactical. He can deflect attacks and pre-emptively shoot enemies if they move into his line of sight. Other wizards can animate the dead, cut through armour or even change places with enemies. For such a simple set of abilities, there's a level of nuance here that lends itself to there being a dozen different solutions each and every turn.

This is daunting at first. Enemies feel overpowered and you feel outnumbered right up until you get a full grasp of your toolkit with each character. The first few areas of the game are arguably the hardest, as your options are limited as is your understanding of the mechanics. Tutorials hold your hand for the first hour or so, but beyond that, you are on your own.

While I managed fine with the default difficulty settings, there are a robust number of changes you can make to the game to adjust it for your play style, such as increasing your character’s health, upping your actions per turn, or limiting enemy reinforcements. This flexibility makes Wizards a great recommendation for those new to the strategy genre. For veterans, though, if you can't get enough, there are also bonus levels designed to challenge and hone your skills. While there are plenty of them, I found them harder to play in rapid succession as they aren’t looped in with the overall story that pushes the game along.

A foundational mechanic for Wizards is the ability to see how the enemy will react to your moves before they have their turn. It's essentially patching up a major weakness of the XCOM games, where an unpredictable enemy manoeuvre — or surprise reinforcements — would encourage you to reload an earlier save of the game. Perhaps the closest similarity is the rewind feature in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Wizards' fix for this classic frustration with turn-based strategy games doesn't detract from it at all, and if anything should be a new benchmark for strategy games with high-stakes turns.

All of this tense strategy gameplay is wrapped together with an engrossing story and world, where magic is commonplace, but only practiced by a few gifted individuals. The character lines between breach encounters and levels are snappy and laden with jokes. There's also a fair amount of characterisation here, with each wizard in your party given space within the story.

Wizards plays very well on the Steam Deck — I had no issue with controller-based controls either. Fair warning though: it's power-hungry. I can only suspect it's a bit like XCOM where on the surface it looks like a simple game for a device to run, but actually operating it sucks a lot of life out of any and all gaming machines.

On that, as of the print date of this review, Wizards is a PC-exclusive. That means you'll need a Steam Deck or decent gaming PC to play it. That's a real shame; I know plenty of players who enjoy XCOM — have only played it on console — and would very much get satisfaction out of this game. Ports aren't easy, and the hit-or-miss nature of strategy games makes them a risky endeavour.

But if Civilisation VI can outperform on Switch, I suspect the makers of Wizards may be quietly sitting on a hit.

Reviewed on: Steam Deck OLED

Worth trying if you like: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, XCOM 2, Marvel's Midnight Suns

Available on: Steam, Windows

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