Why we don't review a game after ten minutes

There's a temptation, when a hundred games launch every week, to skim the opening and move on. We've all done it. But the more we tested, the clearer it got: the first ten minutes tell you almost nothing about whether a game is actually good.

Openings are designed to impress. That's their whole job. The real test is hour three, when the novelty has faded and you find out whether the core loop still holds. Plenty of games that dazzled us early turned out to be hollow, and a few slow starters became our favourites.

So we play on. It costs us time, and it means we review fewer games than sites that don't bother. We think that trade is worth it, because a review is only useful if it reflects the experience you'll actually have.