Why we don't review games we haven't finished

It's tempting to write a review after an hour. The opening hours of a game are usually its best foot forward, polished to hook you fast. But that's exactly why we don't trust them alone.

The real character of a game shows up in the middle — when the tutorial glow fades and you find out whether the core loop can carry the weight. Plenty of games that dazzled me early became a slog by hour ten.

So we play through. Sometimes that means finishing a story, sometimes hitting the point where progression clearly repeats forever. Either way, we wait until we actually know how it feels to live with the game.

It's slower and it means we cover fewer titles. We think that's the right trade. A review is only useful if it's honest about the whole experience, not just the honeymoon.