Review
Lot 001 · The Gaming Saleroom
Every game goes under the gavel.
London's gaming blog appraises releases, hardware and esports like lots at auction — weighed, catalogued and given a verdict you can trust before you spend a penny.
Hardware
The handheld that wants your PC gone
Esports
Inside the Wembley grand final
Retro Lots
What sealed cartridges really fetch
Est. 2016 · Holborn, London
A saleroom for gamers who read the small print.
We started ThunderRaidFrontier from a two-desk office on Lamb's Conduit Street because the reviews we relied on had started reading like press releases. Our answer was borrowed from the auction house across the square: catalogue every claim, examine the goods in hand, and only then bring down the hammer.
Roughly 40,000 readers now open our Tuesday and Friday dispatches. No sponsored verdicts, no early-access embargoes we can't disclose, and every score comes with the hours logged to earn it.
620+
Titles appraised
2×
Dispatches weekly
0
Paid verdicts
How the hammer falls
From unboxing to verdict, in four lots.
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STEP 01
Cataloguing
We log the build, platform, price and every publisher claim before a single controller is touched, so nothing gets graded on hype.
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STEP 02
Time on the goods
A minimum of 20 logged hours per title, on retail hardware, with day-one patches applied exactly as you'll receive them.
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STEP 03
Second opinion
A second editor replays the contentious sections, because a verdict that only one person can defend isn't worth the hammer.
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STEP 04
The gavel
One score, one buy/wait/pass call, and a plain-English rationale — published with the full hours ledger attached.
What we cover
Four desks, one saleroom standard.
Full reviews
Scored verdicts on new releases across PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch — from £0 free-to-play to £59.99 blockbusters, with a hours-logged ledger on every one.
Hardware appraisals
Handhelds, GPUs, headsets and controllers benchmarked in our Holborn lab — thermals, battery and pounds-per-frame, never the spec sheet alone.
Esports & retro lots
On-the-ground reports from UK finals plus our monthly retro column tracking what sealed and boxed classics actually fetch at auction.
Hover a card to reveal the detail.
From the readers
Trusted before the wallet opens.
★★★★★
Their hours-logged ledger talked me out of a £59.99 pre-order that turned out to be a mess at launch. The gavel column has genuinely saved me money.
★★★★★
The handheld teardown was the only review that actually measured battery under load. Bought on their pounds-per-frame call and haven't regretted it once.
★★★★★
I collect boxed retro carts and their monthly auction column is spot on — the price bands matched what I actually paid at a Bermondsey sale to the pound.
The Tuesday & Friday dispatch
Get the verdict before the hype does.
Two dispatches a week — the latest gavel scores, hardware calls and retro price bands. No spam, no sponsored verdicts, unsubscribe in one click.
You're on the list! Look out for the next dispatch on Tuesday.
Reach the newsroom
A tip, a title, or a correction?
Publishers, PRs and readers all use the same inbox. We reply to every serious message within two working days.
- Phone
- +44 20 3300 2456
- Address
- 56A Lamb's Conduit Street, Holborn, London WC1N 3LL
- [email protected]
- Newsroom hours
- Mon–Fri, 9:00–18:00 GMT