How we test whether a game truly works offline

People ask why our reviews take so long, and the honest answer is our offline checklist. Before anything else, we install the game with a full connection and let it finish any first-run downloads.

Then we turn off wifi and mobile data entirely and play again. We're watching for the sneaky things — a splash screen that spins forever, a save that won't load, a menu button that silently does nothing without a server.

We also close and reopen the app offline to make sure progress is stored locally and not just cached. A game that forgets your save when you relaunch it in airplane mode fails this test, no matter how fun it is.

Only after all that do we sit down to write about gameplay. It's not glamorous, but it's the whole reason this site exists.