Why we play every game to the end before reviewing

A lot of mobile reviews are written after ten minutes. That's enough to describe the tutorial and nothing else, and the tutorial is never where a game succeeds or fails.

The real character shows up around the mid-game. That's when the economy tightens, the difficulty spikes, and any lazy design starts to crack. A tower defence that felt clever in level three can turn into pure grind by level fifteen.

So we finish things. Sometimes that means an evening, sometimes a week. It's slower, but it's the only way to warn you about the wall before you hit it yourself.

It also keeps us honest about the good games. When something stays fun deep into the endgame, that's worth saying loudly, because it's rarer than the trailers suggest.