At Strategy Gaming Online we are attempting to give you, the reader, the best possible "feel" for a game through our reviews.  Of course, reviews are subjective beasts at best.  In an effort to make our analysis of the subject as objective and universal as possible therefore, we offer a synopsis in the form of a numeric rating for every game as an adjunct to the review itself.  This is not meant to replace the text of the review - rather, the numbers attempt to tie words like "great", "crummy", "fantastic" and "laughable" to an understandable scale.

To give readers the clearest view of what we're looking at, and how we're deciding what we think, we've listed below the SGO rating methodology as exhaustively as possible.  Please note also that these numbers are intended to target the concerns of our specific audience - strategy gamers.   We're pleased with the utility this system provides and hope that by making OUR standards clear to the readers, we make our reviews ultimately more useful to everyone.   As always, if you have a comment, question, or suggestion - please raise it!

THE STRATEGY GAMING ONLINE RATING SYSTEM

In order to address the rating of games as objectively as possible, the various facets of games have been broken into two primary categories: 1) code issues, which are relatively clear: graphics quality, game audio, and the interface; and 2) play issues, which are much more subject to the interpretive skills of the reviewer.  These categories are broken down as listed below:

Each of these items is given a rating from 1-10.   These ratings are then averaged (with Solo Play quality and Multi Play quality being counted twice each) to result in our cumulative score.   A rating of 0 represents that item is not present at all, and is not averaged into the total.

A detailed listing - with examples where possible - for each category follows.  Note however, an important point: at SGO we are committed to making our rating MEAN something.  Score inflation seems to be a malady common to most review sites that use numbers to communicate game qualities.  Some magazines/sites have an alleged 0-100 score, but most games score between 92 and 97, and anything under 80 is horrid.  One of the reasons for this page is not just for review readers, but for our writers as well.  Our intent is to prevent score inflation  here - by posting concrete examples and constantly reviewing them*, we feel we can maintain that "5" is always average and, more importantly, that when you see high scores on SGO they mean that we have deemed something TRULY outstanding.  Please note that some of the "10" ratings are shown as being practically impossible to reach; there is humor involved here.  The point is that 10's should be hard to get, and rarely seen unless the game is a breakthrough in a given technology or paradigm.

* these are not static numbers.  As the "standard" for the medium continues to climb, we'll review these scales and re-set them where approriate.  That ensures also that games are judged fairly against their peers, not a standard that comes along later.

C) Interface - Continuing with the logic of the above analogy of immersiveness, the interface should be as unintrusive as possible - legible, easy to use yet powerful.  Hotkeys should be available and configurable to user needs.  The standard user has a mouse and a keyboard; requiring additional hardware/software to play the game is a definite minus, supporting additional products that make using the game easier (such as Game Commander) is a definite plus.  Tooltips are useful, as is the ability to turn them off.  Macro support is usually a plus.

D) Solo play - gameplay quality Obviously, these are the more subjective ratings.  To try to nail this down, I ask myself a few questions that will focus my thoughts on the GAMEPLAY issues (rather than accidentally lowering this rating because of unhappiness with bugs or video problems, for example):   Was it engrossing?  Did I find myself trying to play a little longer than the scheduled time I'd set to quit?  Or did I find myself clicking through turns/speeding the game to just "get it over with"?  Was it a gaming experience I've had before?  Will I remember pieces of it weeks, months or years from now?  In a more simulative vein, were the results consistent and believeable?  Is it a game that I'm going to play again?  How long before I think I'll be ready to re-install it?

E) Length of play/replay value At $50 a pop, computer games aren't cheap.  Many people rationalize the price against the "movie scale" - considering a movie (now, including food) is around $10, that's $5 per hour of entertainment.  If a game can deliver 10 hours of entertainment, they consider it "a good buy".  This category also includes any sort of editor as this is crucial to the player being able (with a little elbow grease) to parlay their investment into "more entertainment" - additionally, this is a good sign about how well the web community will support it and offer more scenarios, etc at user sites.

F) Multi play - quality  Becoming more important all the time, some new games are even offereing no in-game AI, merely the ability to play against other humans via the web.  This category is broadly the same as E) except at the higher ratings you start to justify the expense of better and faster web connections...further, some multiplay specific issues are addressed:

G) Learning curve  Clearly, games these days demand a lot from the gamer.  The gems are those that anticipate the educational experience with in-game tutorials and a graduated learning scale that allows players to walk before they (literally) have to run.  It seems an inevitable consequence of increased game complexity, but this complexity doesn't have to be painful to the player assimilating it.  (Note, this scale is reversed to make sense with the rating average: low score is HARD to learn, high score is EASY to learn.)  Frequently this rating overlaps other categories such as interface or gameplay, but considering that consumers want to be ENJOYING the game as quickly as possible, we feel this category deserves its own score.

Overall Rating with all the above in account, an overall impression of the game