Short games

Over the weekend, it came to light that the PS4 exclusive The Order 1886 was completed in around 5 hours from start to finish, including cut-scenes. This lead to the CEO of Ready at Dawn to come out publicly and defend the games length, by actually arguing that it isn't possible to complete the game in that amount of time.

Ok, first of all, let me get in real quick and say I know you shouldn't judge a game on the amount of hours required to complete the main narrative arc. There have been a few games I have played which have been tight and enjoyable, if a little short in length. Fact is, said games left me wanting more!

(I should also point out that I am not a fan of overly bloated 100+ hour games. I'm looking at you, Skyrim)

So I throw it out there to you duders: What is your favourite "Short game"? - sub 10 hours to quantify "short"

I'll get the ball rolling with Portal 1 and Portal 2

Tie between Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising.

Runner up is Transistor.

Shit... I just posted an incredibly similar thread to this... I should read before I post.

I'm not opposed to short games, but 5-6 hour games for $60 is total fucking bullshit. I love games like ICO, Portal and Vanquish but I didn't pay full price for any of them.

Edit: I deleted the other thread, but I guess I'll just lay part of my OP here. I was gonna ask which games people shoot through in one afternoon sitting and how long it took the first time they played it.

So I have a few go to games for when I want to have a lazy afternoon that I can shoot through in 3-4 hours. These are games I've played a million and a half times and I can beat without any stress.

I'm writing this fresh off the heels of one day playthrough of Metal Gear Solid. I'm so comfortable with that game now that I was all the way to the torture scene before I realized I hadn't yet saved my game. I'm finally good enough that I might be spending more time in cutscenes than in actual gameplay.

Every once in a while I also break out ICO and Portal, a couple of games I can sometimes finish before my first trip to the bathroom. I also have a friend who can finish just about any pre RE4 era resident evil between a late lunch and an early dinner.

From recent games I played I thought Second Son did everything it intended to do in just the right amount of time.

i like short games because i never end up finishing long games

For me a short game is ~2 hours because I can play it in one sitting. Anything in the 3-10 hour range and I know I'm playing that for anything from a few evenings to a few weeks. So in that range I like games that are nicely segmented so that there are natural stopping points. I tried playing Metal Gear Solid last summer, I'm about half way through and struggling to face going back to it because the story kinda just keep going and I saved somewhere in the middle of something.

So to answer the question: Shadow of the Colossus. 10 hours-ish with well-defined structure which means I can play in 40 min to 2 hours chunks.

Wait, people still consider 10 hours to be short? Weird.

Also, how are we classifying short? Speedrun length? Normal playthrough length? 100% length?

Regardless, I love Gone Home...you can get 100% in well under 10 hours. Same goes for Antichamber. Also, both of those games can been speed ran in under three minutes (as in, you could play both back to back in under three minutes).

@beachthunder: I think what qualifies as a short is a linear game with no branching pathways and no multiplayer that takes about 5 hours to complete and costs full price. That to me is a bad short game, because it's over very quickly and doesn't offer anything beyond the initial playthrough.

There's a lot of games I can finish in less than 10 hours so picking my favourite would be near impossible.

I really don't mind short games at all to be honest.

In fact, I'm more likely to hold on to a game that is 6-10 hours then a game in the 20+ range.

For games like The Order I know (providing it turns out to be a decent game) that I'll play through once on normal, then once on the hardest difficulty and then play though again now and then in the future.

For a game like Far Cry (even though I love the franchise) I know for a fact that I will 100% it the first time and then I'll never play it again. A lot of the longer games nowadays are just short games with side content to pad it out and a lot of the time that side content is fairly "meh".

I kind of wish all of the longer games would introduce a new game plus, removing the need to level up through side content but allowing you to experience the story again.

Sorry to go off on such a tangent but I was literally having this conversation 15 minutes ago.

Ya know, not a fan of the new game+ mechanic... if a game is to be longer, I prefer it to be because of its story and whatnot.

There are some amazing games to play that are under an hour in length- only a few minutes even. A game like The Plan comes to mind.

But probably the best game for it's length and price must be Journey. Best 2-3 hours in gaming in my opinion. Braid is close second.

Btw, considering a game short if it's under 10 hours is ridiculous. Majority of video games are below that if you exclude a couple of genres (RPGs, open world games etc.).

I think that asking which game under 2-3 hours is a much better question...

Everything by Drinkbox so far. Those guys make great short games.

Steamworld Dig is also a really good short game.

But my favourite short game is probably Hotline Miami. In a time when I barely play games more than once, I think I've finished this about 7 times now across three different platforms.

To be honest, I much prefer a well paced, if short campaign full of brilliant content than something made longer for no good reason. In terms of my favourite short game (which I would classify as under 6 hours really) it has to be Portal, that game blew me away and made me complete the whole thing in a day.

Journey. Not contest. That game is as close to being perfect as any game has ever been.

Super Metroid is my second choice probably. But it's not THAT short the first time you play it. Journey is at most 2 hours long, and NG+ has hugely diminishing returns.

I'm not sure if the recent Metal Gear prologue counts so ignoring that I'd say Brothers was good.

Favorite short game of all time? Zone of the Enders 2. Played that game countless times. Could be completed in 3-4 hours i think? Still was a blast to play every single time.

Rock Bank or Guitar Hero. Grab a guitar or drumset, turn on the old console and enjoy a few songs. Probably the most fun in a small amount of time i ever had in games. Every time i booted rock bank up i never had a bad time, if it was 5 minutes on one song or 3 hours playing online with random people in random "bands" or multiplayer

Under 10 hours? I dunno, Super Mario World.

Pretty much all my favorite games can be completed in under 10 hours. The only real exceptions are the Mass Effect games.

I'm afraid you will have to rephrase the question.

Amen.

10 hours is not short at all. jesus.

Anyway, Journey, Journey, and also Journey

@frostyryan: Yea, Journey is kinda the best. Limbo, Braid and Bastion are right up there too in my opinion.

Singularity is a fantastic short game, perhaps 6 or 7 hours if you play at a normal pace.

I'm in agreement with this. Anything over 2 hours to me is no longer considered short, really. But then again I just don't have that much time, so that certainly shapes it. As far as my favorite short games go... Well 90% of games I play fall into that category, so it's hard to say!

Yeah, anyone who thinks games that fall under the 10 hour mark are short has been spoiled by RPGs and open world games.

Plenty of good ones mentioned already. My personal top 5 would be Journey, Metal Gear Solid (although it did take me about 13 hours my very first time with it back in '99), Hotline Miami, Braid and Portal.

Journey, Gone Home are probably my go-to short games.

The Swapper took me about 5 hours to beat. Some of the best 5 hours ever. Amazing puzzle game with a great atmosphere.

In terms of full priced retail game around sub 6 hours (because sub 10 hours seems too long to me), probably Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner.

Must say I'm a person who considers under 10 hours 'short', since I could easily finish it in one or two sessions if I wanted. I'm well aware that a ton of games are around that kinda length, but I play a LOT of RPGs so they're short in comparison.

Tough choice but my favourite 'short' game thats not childhood-nostalgia-ridden is actually probably Doctor Who - The Eternity Clock (yeah... not saying this is a good game but I really love it).

Well both Portals are the obvious answers.... But as my avatar indicates I loved Mirror's Edge (I think I completed it in about 6-7 hours).

Journey. Hands down. Only thing even remotely close is the first Portal.

Bastion is my favorite short game.

I don't mind short games at all, but if I pay sixty dollars for a 5-6 hour game, I'd call bullshit on that too. However, people loved the shit out of that 40 dollar demo for Metal Gear Solid 5, so what do I know.

@random45: $30 on PS4 and XONE, $20 on PS3,360 and PC.

5-6 hours is not so short. I mean, in comparison to stuff like Skyrim and Dragon Age: Inquisition it's short, but there are many games that clock in with a single player campaign of around 5-6 hours. I know that the more I see of the game, the less excited I am about it but I think that's more a worry of what the gameplay will be like, not the length of the campaign. I like the steampunk aesthetic and I liked the idea of being almost an old-timey Ghostbusters, but seeing gameplay where you shoot real people is just, meh to me. So that's my fear, not the campaign length.

On the question of favorite short games, I think I would have to say that Costume Quest was super fun and had a cute story, but was very short. It probably took my about 5 hours to complete, and I got every achievement and squeezed every bit of content out of it. Another great, short game is Amnesia: The Dark Descent and I'd even include the sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Both took me maybe 4 hours to complete, the first taking more time than the second, but both have interesting stories. If you only try one, go for the original. It's a bit more coherent and a bit more of a game. The second lacks some mechanics that make it not so much a game as a walking tour of an interesting world. But that's a discussion for another time, I suppose.

Also, a short game that has an interesting story that you kind of have to tease out is Little Inferno. It took me about maybe 3-4 hours to complete, and I was definitely trying to get everything out of it that I could. But the story, as it is, is pretty interesting and I would say that it honestly managed to get a pretty strong emotional reaction out of me, even though it's not a normally presented narrative.

I'm a slow player by nature, so 5 hour games take me 10 hours. I have to say that CoD2 Modern Warfare while short was pretty satisfying. Yet I have to say I tend to play longer games like Dragon Dogma where you might spend 30 hours on a playthrough. I played at least 30 hours of Assassin's Creed 4, and I'm sure I actually played more.

I'd have to say my "short" game is Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. A run usually takes me about an hour or so to do. Not sure if that counts since I have technically seen all of the story and the idea of what each level is. But I have not unlocked everything.

Hm, I'd have to think long and hard about actual favorites, especially since I don't have hour-counts for many of the games I played, but some excellent short games off the top of my head would be:

Rock of Ages (!) - campaign took me about 4 or 5 hours and it's glorious

Trine and Trine 2 - each one pushes just about 10 hours but I experimented quite a bit

Gunpoint - Steam says 8 hours = my slow initial run & a quick second one with my brother

Botanicula - this kind of represents what a modern point & click should be; 4 hours short and very sweet

Alan Wake's American Nightmare - 8 hours with some arena runs on top of the campaign

The Stanley Parable - just short of 10 hours but that includes me hunting for everything, including THE MOST SERIOUS ROOM of them all

Of course none of these ever sold for 60 bucks. Some fantastic "short" games like Hotline Miami, Papers, Please, Bastion, Transistor etc. took me a lot longer because of great replayability.

And then there's SpecOps: The Line. It does everything it needs to for the narrative in under 10 hours and being any longer would probably really hurt the game. But I'm not sure if I would've liked it as much as I do had I payed anything close to the initial full price.

So, preliminary favorite after that brainstorm would be Rock of Ages but that experience is still really fresh for me. Short games are cool. Maybe even neccessary to advance the medium. I can't imagine many situations where they should exceed prices in the €15-30 range though. Not that it's impossible.

My secret favorite "short game" is that next TOME, Ziggurat, Abyss Odyssey, LUFTRAUSERS, Tetris run or just the next round of SolForge.

Edit - @jadegl: Ah, yes. Little Inferno is a pretty good call. I'm not entirely sure if I'd personally put it up there with my other examples but it certainly is a good, very short game. That ending does a lot.

Any of the Metal Gear games can be beat even by a novice on normal difficulty in less than 10 hours.

Portal 1 is pretty short too; and even on the first play through, I don't think any of the puzzles are so hard that it would take anyone so long to beat.

But, like others, I don't consider 10 hours to be a short game. Maybe 5 or less.

Bastion is probably my favorite short game. It is near perfect in pretty much every single way. The only complaint I can think of is when the ground is falling from beneath you. You fall and lose some health. Then you land on another piece of ground, which falls before you can even move. It happens very rarely, but it does happen. Honestly if I had to choose a game to say as the "perfect game" I would say Bastion. No game is perfect, but Bastion comes closer than any game I can think of. It isn't my favorite game ever(it's very close), but I think my favorite has more issues than Bastion does.

Probably Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. It's not necessarily a great game, but it's one that I enjoy a lot. Could be nostalgia, but there's something that always draws me back to it.

Portal was my favorite short game. Great pacing.

Generally I am one of those gamers who really prefers a longer experience - I don't feel the need to finish a game unless it's good, but if it is good than that is time very well spent. I am quite grateful my time with Skyrim or Red Dead - I completely lost myself in those worlds: for me the time commitment was at least part of the immersion.

Actually quite glad there isn't a movie like "standard" for game length. Skyrim was the perfect length for me. So was Portal