Method

How the first-hour test works

What a brand-new player meets in their first sixty minutes, how we score it, and what the wallet grade means. Here is the whole method, with nothing hidden.

Last checked 24 September 2026

Why the first hour

The first hour is where a game makes its promises. It decides how long you wait before playing, how much it explains, and how early the shop appears. Most people decide whether to keep a game somewhere inside that hour, so every review starts there: what a new player on a fresh account actually goes through.

An hour is not the whole story, so every review also covers what comes after it: the free route over the following weeks, the passes and editions, and what the game asks of your wallet.

How the minute-by-minute map is built

Each review opens with a timeline of the first sixty minutes. The times are typical for a new player on a mid-range PC and an ordinary UK broadband line, counted from pressing install. They are estimates, not a recording of one session, and your hour will run faster or slower depending on your connection, your hardware and how much you explore.

Download sizes come from the official store and system requirement pages.
Account steps, tutorial structure and unlock rules come from the publisher's own help pages and patch notes.
Where a rule gates the first hour, such as a level needed for ranked play, we say so and link the source.
Every review lists its sources at the bottom, so you can check anything we say.

The four marks

Each review has four marks out of ten. The overall score is their plain average, rounded to one decimal place. There are no hidden weightings. The marks are our editorial judgement, based on the documented design of the game, its onboarding and its store.

Mark	What we ask	What pulls it down
Getting in	How quickly does a new player reach the real game, and does the tutorial respect their time?	Huge downloads, forced account links, tutorials that can't be skipped, walls of text.
Minute 60	By the end of the hour, has the game shown what makes it good?	Repetition, unclear goals, a first hour that is mostly menus.
Shop manners	Are prices clear in pounds, and does the store stay out of the way?	Offers pushed at new players, currency bundles that never match item prices, countdown timers.
The long run	How much is there to do over the following weeks without paying?	Content locked behind purchases, progress that slows to push a pass.

The wallet grade

The wallet grade is a letter from A to E printed next to every score. It describes spending pressure only, and it never changes the score. A brilliant game can carry a C, and we would rather tell you than fold it into one number.

A. Nothing to buy once you own the game, or a shop that is purely optional cosmetics.
B. A cosmetic shop and an optional pass. The free route is complete and fair.
C. Noticeable nudges: currency bundles that leave odd leftovers, cosmetic items sold by random draw, a pass that shapes your week.
D. Randomised paid items sit close to the heart of the game, for example new playable characters.
E. Progress itself is gated behind spending. None of our current ten games sits here.

How we check prices

All prices come from official UK stores and publisher pages, in pounds, including 20% VAT. The date of the check is at the top of each page. When a price differs between PC and consoles, the review says which one we quote. When a publisher shows a price only inside the game client, we say that the figure is an estimate and give the source it comes from.

We quote the cheapest official route to each item. We never link to key resellers or unofficial top-up sites, and we never suggest ways around a store's own pricing.

What we don't do

No publisher pays for a review, a score or a place on a list.
No affiliate links. Store buttons go to official pages and earn us nothing.
No invented reader ratings, star counts or player numbers. Every score on this site is our own.
No claims we can't back up: if something is an estimate, the page says so.