Add feature: game length?

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Aeneas

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#1  Edited By Aeneas

In light of all the Mass Effect 2 hype I expect coming out of E3 in the next few days, I thought I might replay the first Mass Effect. However, I still have Chronicles of Riddick sitting on my shelf, and in trying to decide which to play first, I wanted to know how long a play-through of each would be. I know that generally Mass Effect is probably a much longer commitment than Riddick, but since I deleted my Mass Effect save and I've never played Riddick, I don't know by how much they differ.


So I came to my dear Giant Bomb looking for help, and I came up slightly empty. Digging around in each game's forum page answered my question well enough, but I think it would be easy to implement a "play time" range in a game's General Information box. I would love such a feature, and it would go even further toward making Giant Bomb the place to go for everything to know about any game ever.
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mike

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#2  Edited By mike

I think this is far too subjective of a thing for the wiki...what takes one person 40 hours may take another person 10. Then you have difficulties, collectibles, side missions...

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JoelTGM

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#3  Edited By JoelTGM

Hmm... maybe a good idea.  Or at least someone could put it somewhere in the description.

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Origina1Penguin

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#4  Edited By Origina1Penguin

I try to incorporate play time into my reviews.

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Aeneas

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#5  Edited By Aeneas
@MB: Well clearly it couldn't be definitive, but even a ballpark would be helpful. Something like a sports game or Halo 3's multiplayer wouldn't work at all because they go on forever, but Halo 3's single player probably takes people around the same amount of time....
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TrashMustache

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#6  Edited By TrashMustache

well let's put i to the test, how long did it take you to beat fallout 3? (just the main quests and maybe some side quests)?

26h 29min

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Mithlas

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#7  Edited By Mithlas

This sounds to me like something that might have a place with a sentence or two in the description, but not Feature.

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natetodamax

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#8  Edited By natetodamax

The time it takes to beat a game is debatable.

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fastkilr

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#9  Edited By fastkilr

Was thinking about this earlier today and could not figure out a very good way to create such a system. Aside from games being implemented with some kind of feature which records people's actual gameplay time, I did not come up with a sensible solution. The reasonable thing to do, in my opinion, is to just be as descriptive (albeit brief) as you can about the contents of the game, such as the amount of levels, level sizes, unlockables, side-missions, stuff which will shorten or extend your experience with a game.
 
As some have already said, length is almost always subjective - there aren't many people who complete the same parts of the same games in the very same time frame. Just can't work that way. Interesting post, though.

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L33tfella_H

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#10  Edited By L33tfella_H
@MB said:
" I think this is far too subjective of a thing for the wiki...what takes one person 40 hours may take another person 10. Then you have difficulties, collectibles, side missions... "
what could be done is an average length system where users input generally how long it took them to finish it, and it just goes about the average length it took to finish it. 
 
I don't know if it could be possible with the way the site's code is done, but that's one way of putting it. Although you do have a point in the fact that people wouldn't be able to tell wheter the length was due to just finishing the main quest/storyline etc.. or wheter side missions, collectables and all that factor in.
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Lashe

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#11  Edited By Lashe
@L33tfella_H: I think an average system would work great so long as 
  • People actually used it - prolly the hardest to judge
  • It was restricted to singleplayer
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#12  Edited By rallier

A "time spend playing the game" for user reviews would work though.