108: Chapter 108, 10/10, that's my final rating!

Amidst his joy, Marcus glanced at the time and saw it was already seven o'clock in the evening.

In other words, he had unknowingly played for another entire afternoon without noticing the passage of time?

As the excitement gradually faded, real-world worries began to surface.

Opening the folder and seeing that the 'Gameplay' section of the review document was still blank, Marcus sighed. Matthew's words from that morning involuntarily flooded back into his mind like a haunting melody.

His experience as a veteran editor seemed to be telling him that he should accept Matthew's hint.

But the game footage flashing continuously in his mind seemed to remind him not to forget why he had entered this industry in the first place.

By eight o'clock, Andrew was ready to get off work. He paused while passing Marcus's workstation and, seeing Marcus's solemn and silent expression, asked curiously:

"Still agonizing over it? Is this game really that hard to decide on? How about I help you review it? I promise if I pull an all-nighter tonight, I can send you the most precise and fair evaluation by tomorrow morning!"

Marcus, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head, slightly shifted his eyes toward the smiling Andrew, who didn't seem to be joking, and shook his head.

"This game isn't as simple as you think. You'd better just go home and spend time with your girlfriend!"

Andrew shrugged. He didn't know why Marcus was acting like this over a game review for the first time.

However, he could sense the resistance and helplessness in Marcus's voice, so to avoid being annoying, he simply turned and left.

After the area around the workstation fell silent once again...

Marcus pondered for a long time before finally opening the review document again. The cursor blinked in the 'Score' column for over a minute; several times he typed '10' only to delete it, as if stuck in some kind of time loop.

After struggling for about ten minutes or so...

He ultimately chose to keep procrastinating.

Marcus closed the document, shut down the computer, tidied his desk, and picked up his phone to leave, only to see a sudden message from Matthew.

"The other side contacted me again. They have a new blockbuster launching globally soon with a massive marketing budget. If possible, subsequent exclusive interviews and the debut review can be prioritized for us, along with ad placement investments. Marcus, you know how it is!"

Marcus looked at the message, turned off the screen, and after a long silence, couldn't help but laugh.

"To hell with 'I know how it is.' I know your mom and dad are in heat in the garage right now, shit..."

Muttering under his breath, he hurried away. The scales in Marcus's heart seemed to be tipping gradually in a certain direction.

Although it was the height of summer in June, amidst the dry heat, a chill unknowingly swept through the city.

Marcus drove for about twenty minutes, found a place to grab dinner, and finally returned to his apartment nearly after nine o'clock.

After taking a shower, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, his mind a mess.

One moment, Matthew's words from the morning and that recent message were ringing in his ears; the next, scenes from Minecraft seemed to flash before his eyes.

Tossing and turning for half an hour, he still couldn't fall asleep.

Finally reaching his limit, Marcus simply got up, turned on his computer, found the Minecraft icon, and clicked launch!

He played until past three in the morning.

Finally jolted awake by a throbbing pain in his bladder, Marcus realized with a start that he had somehow played this game for several more hours.

"Fuck... damn game..."

Cursing under his breath, he hurried to the bathroom to take care of business.

By the time he washed his face and returned to his room feeling refreshed, his rugged face had turned incredibly solemn, as if a brilliant holy light had dawned upon it!

He nimbly opened the computer and read the review document from beginning to end.

First, he selected the score column and entered '10.' Then, in the review section, inspiration gushed out like a flood, and he wrote down all the thoughts he had been brewing for a long time in one breath.

He spent a few minutes finishing the evaluation that had plagued him for two days and hit submit. Closing the computer and lying back on the bed, he closed his eyes and whispered to himself:

"The review is done. 10 points. This is my final evaluation, and I'm never changing it!"

When Marcus walked into the office at ten the next morning...

Most of his colleagues had already arrived. Andrew was sitting at his station, sipping from a cup of coffee. Seeing Marcus arrive, he immediately raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

"Did you submit your review?"

Marcus sat down at his desk with a calm expression and said indifferently:

"Yeah, it's in."

"What's the score?"

"10!"

Andrew's coffee-sipping motion paused slightly. He suddenly recalled the low-pressure aura surrounding the Editor-in-Chief that morning and began to wonder about the connection between the two.

Several early-arriving colleagues turned their heads upon hearing the conversation, their faces filled with intense curiosity.

This was because a perfect score review from IGN still carried immense weight; they didn't even release a handful a year. The last perfect score seemed to be for 'Sword of Holy Light' two years ago.

Ignoring the prying eyes and curiosity of others, Marcus opened his computer and looked at the review already published via the official IGN account. The title was: [Minecraft] — 10/10. The subtitle read: "This game gave me nothing, yet it seems to have given me everything!"

The full review was less than fifteen hundred words.

It didn't follow the traditional structure of reviewing graphics, sound, gameplay, and plot. From start to finish, it was a personal account of what he had done and played over the past three days, ending with:

"Minecraft is a masterpiece that has made me rethink what a game is! It gave me no goals, didn't tell me the 'right' way to play, and didn't drive me with task lists or reward mechanisms. It simply placed me there and gave me a pair of hands and some blocks!"

"But I can use these to create anything that exists in the imagination—even an entire world!"

"I am thirty-eight years old and have been reviewing games for twelve years. I thought I had played every genre of game! But only this game made me realize that I had never played a game with true, infinite freedom."

"This game has no plot, no quests, no cutscenes, no boss battles—none of the things a game 'should' have in the traditional sense. Yet it possesses something that any other game would find difficult to..."

"..."

"Score: 10/10!"