Let's set our time machines to 1998

14 hours only being worthy of a rental? Shit son, that's like 3 Call of Duty campaigns.

I think it's pretty lame just how short your average game is these days, it only seems to be RPGs that ever exceed the 10 hour mark now. I'm always very wary when buying new games because I just expect them to only last 6-8 hours, I wouldn't have bought Enslaved if not for the bargain bin price I got it for.

Edit: and yeah I know, there's something to be said for quality over quantity but that's no excuse for shipping a full priced retail game that only lasts 5 hours. I finished Dead Space 2 in 7 hours on my first run then 5 hours on hardcore, I'd have loved more from that game.

Well those 3 CoD campaigns have some multiplayer...but yeah-

Wait a minute I can't concentrate, I just remembered how awesome Tomba 2 was.

Oh look... it's Strider 2.

Well, I'm done.

@Doctorchimp said:

Well those 3 CoD campaigns have some multiplayer...but yeah-

Wait a minute I can't concentrate, I just remembered how awesome Tomba 2 was.

I don't think having multiplayer is a very good excuse for a woefully short campaign. It's a massive fuck you to anybody that doesn't like playing adversarial multiplayer.

It's insult to injury when your multiplayer sucks!

Gears of War 3 looks like a good balance between different forms of multiplayer and a decent single player campaign.

I'd rather play a short game that's fun for every second than a long game that's fun every half hour. I'm not using videogames as a timesink, I value my time. Gaming used to be filled with people who didn't. I don't remember any high profile game being only 5 hours. I never played Dead Space but Dead Space being about 7 hours makes it twice as long as it takes to beat any of the "classic" Resident Evil games.

I like that some genres have been getting shorter. Games tended to drag on, with little variation years ago. This gives me time to try out more games and a variety of gameplay elements.

Off course multiplayer has to be considered as part of the package. How much fun (quantity and quality) do you get from your purchase? This is ultimately what justifies the price you pay.

@ryanwho said:

I'd rather play a short game that's fun for every second than a long game that's fun every half hour. I'm not using videogames as a timesink, I value my time. Gaming used to be filled with people who didn't.

A lot of games are still pretty tedious despite being short. So far The Witcher 2 has been 12 hours or so of my time and I'm only just starting the second chapter. Not tedious at all, I'd like more games to be this well made.

L.A. Noire was a game that was probably too long for its own good, though. I was getting tired of it after the first 5 hours.

@ryanwho said:

Dead Space being about 7 hours makes it twice as long as it takes to beat any of the "classic" Resident Evil games.

Well I know you can speed run those games very fast but talking about playing the game normally, without the aid of walkthroughs then you're looking at more than 7 hours for Resident Evil 1, 2, 3 or Code Veronica.

My hardcore run of Dead Space 2 at 5 hours is pretty retarded. (5h25m exact) It didn't even feel like I was rushing as I had to take my time since the punishment for death was so harsh.

I'd rather a short game than a long game, that way I have more time to play other games. I am perfectly happy with paying full price for a game that lasts 6 hours.

@Hizang said:

I'd rather a short game than a long game, that way I have more time to play other games. I am perfectly happy with paying full price for a game that lasts 6 hours.

There's no way in hell I'm gonna buy a game with a 6 hour lifespan that I can't sell on afterwards. I'm pretty much forced to buy the console version of some games because of this.

I don't want a game that is long at the expense of being badly paced or too tedious. I do want longer games that are paced well and provide an enjoyable experience throughout. I would have thought people want more for their money, not less. Again, you can't judge a game entirely on how long it is because like I said, being long is not a good trade off for tedium.

Edit: I thought Mass Effect 2 was well done. It took me 40 hours on insanity with all the DLC. 26 hours on normal with no DLC. Didn't feel like it was dragging at all.

$20 for a 3 hour movie, no one complains.
 
$60 for an 8 hour campaign + multiplayer, "The fuck is this shit?"

@Hizang said:

I'd rather a short game than a long game, that way I have more time to play other games. I am perfectly happy with paying full price for a game that lasts 6 hours.

Better yet don't buy any game and instead save for a new brain cuz you need it.

@LordXavierBritish said:

$20 for a 3 hour movie, no one complains.

I sure do. Hopefully streaming totally eliminates the need for physical media soon enough and we'll all be living in a world of Netflix competitors. Already happened for a lot of people

@LordXavierBritish said:

$20 for a 3 hour movie, no one complains.

I sure do. Hopefully streaming totally eliminates the need for physical media soon enough and we'll all be living in a world of Netflix competitors. Already happened for a lot of people

Sucks to be poor, I'm not so I enjoy short good games at full price. Moving on.

@Vodun said:

Sucks to be poor, I'm not so I enjoy short good games at full price. Moving on.

I'm not poor nor is this thread complaining about the price of games. Would I like more for the price of a game? Sure. Am I up in arms about the price? If a game is of really high quality throughout then I'll buy it despite it being short. Enslaved kind of dragged and was also pretty short with no replay value or multiplayer of any kind, so nope I wouldn't have paid full price for it.

This is about the attitude in the review I posted. How 14 hours was considered short.

@LordXavierBritish said:

@Sooty said:

@LordXavierBritish said:

$20 for a 3 hour movie, no one complains.

I sure do. Hopefully streaming totally eliminates the need for physical media soon enough and we'll all be living in a world of Netflix competitors. Already happened for a lot of people

I hope you aren't suggesting a similar service for gaming, because that would kill the industry.

I'm not. I will never use a streaming gaming service because it would make some of my favourite games unplayable.

Fighting games with ping even when playing offline? No thanks. Same with racing games and FPS. Lag is already bad enough for fighting games without adding the delay between you and the streaming service into the equation.

Sucks to be poor, I'm not so I enjoy short good games at full price. Moving on.

@Hizang said:

@Vodun

Sucks to be poor, I'm not so I enjoy short good games at full price. Moving on.

This!

Being poor and wanting more for your money are two vastly different things.

@LordXavierBritish said:

$20 for a 3 hour movie, no one complains. $60 for an 8 hour campaign + multiplayer, "The fuck is this shit?"

$20 for a 3h movie?? are prices that outrageous in the US? Honestly, I find it hard to justify €8 for a 90min movie (+50cents for every half hour extra) these days but damn ...20 bucks??

That said, I'm totally fine with these "roller-coaster" games (usually action games with a tight narrative not based around exploration á la Dead Space, your random FPS or TPS game) being between 6-10 hours as long as they're well made. I specifically remember complaining about games becoming shorter two years ago or so when I noticed how "short" Resident Evil 5 was because I could recall my completion time for a single RE4 playthrough (my first one) being around 34 hours - which is ridiculously long of course but I forgot to subtract the time I left the game on pause and left the room or even the house (might be about 10 hours less or so). But still, that's a long time I spent on playing through it once and I don't know what I did to make it take so long. What's my point? Eh ..I don't know.

I think the biggest problem lies with the difference in time available since the gaming audience gets older and more varied, many gamers don't have that much time to actually play games and thus appreciate it if a game is shorter so they can finish more games. Also, people with a wide variety in gaming tastes (people like me who want to play everything as long as it's good, for example, and people who tend to like only very specific kinds of genres). So it appears to be a matter of different strokes for different folks. There are still a lot of games out there you can sink a lot of time into with new game+ modes or additional challenges beside the main campaign.

I'm gonna end this post now cause I left the edit page open for at least half an hour or so and I seem to have lost my train of thought :D ... sorry

If I remember Heart of Darkness most of those 14 hours were spent shooting black blobby things in a 2D platformer with the same 4-5 pre-rendered background, that is a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to make than a 3D shooter. I think it's pretty great that the graphical power, interaction and online support for games has improved so much over the years but the price has stayed basically the same and actually come down when you look at the prices of the first PS games.

I'm more likely to replay a shorter, well made single player campaign then a padded out shitty one. The quality of the game outweighs the length. Gaming culture has become so disposable this gen. People throw down their 60 bucks, finish the game, toss it aside, and then start the cycle all over again.

What happened to replaying games? I really do not understand why this seems to have gone away. In the NES days, I considered a game a waste of money if I only played it once. I guaranty I sunk 30 hours into the original Bionic Commando on NES and who knows how much more than that into Super Mario Brothers. I would sooner buy a 3-4 hour game at full price than a game with 20 hour campaign. If that 3 hour game is action packed and fun from start to finish, I will probably replay it many times through the years, because I can sit down on a Saturday and be done in no time. Most long games more than wear out their welcome with filler and crap that gets added to lengthen the campaign to satisfy folks like the OP (I am looking at you, every Rockstar game ever). I would rather devs make the game they need to make to tell the story they want to tell than drag a decent game out to being too long just to "add value".

I beat RE 2 in one sitting. 3.5 hours. No walkthroughs, no internet, just playing the game. I loved it.

@Sooty said:

Well I know you can speed run those games very fast but talking about playing the game normally, without the aid of walkthroughs then you're looking at more than 7 hours for Resident Evil 1, 2, 3 or Code Veronica

I kind of super disagree. The original Resident Evil game is 5 hours, at the very maximum. Resident Evil 2 is half as long as that, but benefits from having four scenarios to play through. I'd say 3 and CV are around there, though. CV is probably a bit longer, even.

@Doctorchimp said:

Well those 3 CoD campaigns have some multiplayer...but yeah-

Wait a minute I can't concentrate, I just remembered how awesome Tomba 2 was.

*Tombi 2. Thank you, and goodnight!

@Extreme_Popcorn: Duder, 4-5 pre-rendered backgrounds? that's BS about Heart of Darkness, and deep down you know it...

PS: As I was playing Limbo the other day I could not help but think how much it reminded me of Heart of Darkness...

@vdortizo said:

@Extreme_Popcorn: Duder, 4-5 pre-rendered backgrounds? that's BS about Heart of Darkness, and deep down you know it...

PS: As I was playing Limbo the other day I could not help but think how much it reminded me of Heart of Darkness...

You are right but they are very simple backgrounds compared to what you get in Call of Duty. It's just dumb to compare the two.

I'd much rather play a tight and fulfilling 6-8 hour game, than a 20 hour game filled with fetch quests and side missions. Case in point, Red Dead Redemption. If they had removed half of the Mexican portion of that game I would've absolutely loved it, but a lot of that left a bad taste in my mouth, regardless of the fact that it had one of the best endings I've experienced in a video game.

@nick_verissimo said:

I'd much rather play a tight and fulfilling 6-8 hour game, than a 20 hour game filled with fetch quests and side missions. Case in point, Red Dead Redemption. If they had removed half of the Mexican portion of that game I would've absolutely loved it, but a lot of that left a bad taste in my mouth, regardless of the fact that it had one of the best endings I've experienced in a video game.

That's pretty much Rockstar for you, GTA IV was much the same but the distance you had to travel so often was a lot less so it wasn't quite as bad.

But what about a game like Heavy Rain? You pay $60 for it, beat it in an afternoon, and you now know who the killer is so a replay won't be fun.

@Extreme_Popcorn said:

If I remember Heart of Darkness most of those 14 hours were spent shooting black blobby things in a 2D platformer with the same 4-5 pre-rendered background, that is a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to make than a 3D shooter.

Your memory of the game is rather faulty. Heart of Darkness does not contain a single repeated background, just like Another World, every single screen in the game is unique, containing a mix of action and puzzle elements. The game also took a hell of a lot of time to develop, something like six years, so not really all that cheap (but certainly cheaper then modern games). I however doubt that it was 14 hours, probably more in the sub-10 hours range. HowLongToBeat puts it at 5:35, but that's only a single datapoint and probably done by somebody already knowing the puzzles.

Short games are good when they're are a ton of games out there that you want to play. On the flip side when they're are no games out a long game is a good way to bridge the gap in between games.It would be nice if shorter games were cheaper but hay, thats the plight of the gamer.

I think many of these short games get away with it due to the possible long play times of the multiplayer. However, if it's a single player only game? It better have a decent length or overall be spectacular to warrant a purchase, in my opinion.

About game length in general: It's not length that matters, but that the game feels complete. The thing that bothers me these days is that games often lack any kind of proper intro to the characters and the world, as well as a conclusive ending. You get dropped into a world, shoot some things, run to the end and don't even get a proper ending, just a "buy the sequel" cliffhanger.

@Extreme_Popcorn: OK I see your point and I accept it, but... 1. Yes, its dumb to compare HoD to CoD, but not because of "backgrounds", it's because of the completely different and uncorrelated art styles (mainly fully pre-rendered vs. polygon based engines) and 2. Come on, you can't call fully animated 2D environments "simple", I mean look at this(not counting the CG scene parts) there is a lot of work that animators had (and have) to do to create these things (you should look at the Oddworld games and Final Fantasy IX too), I think it's insulting to the artists and the developers to call their work "simple" no matter the game...

On topic: I don't care if a game is 80 or 8 hours as long as it's fun and it has a good story and gameplay to back it up; case in point Uncharted 2 and Fallout 3... Uncharted 2 felt like it should have gone on for a couple of hours more, but I think the story might have suffered if it did, and Fallout 3, I could easily have done 150+ hours of that game if it had the sidequests to fill in the time, the world was just glorious to explore...

A game should be short if it was designed to be short. However, it should AT LEAST give you reasons to replay the game.

New 5 gum...Mmmm

I work around 80 hours per week in my current job, so I actually prefer shorter games. 6-8 hours is my sweet spot because I just don't have time to get through anything else. Still, in my younger days I certainly wanted games to last as long as possible.

My only two cents is that I am definitely in the camp of quality over length. It doesn't matter to me how long a game is if the quality is there. Braid took me about 4 hours to beat the first time and I enjoyed every minute of it. (even the urge to destroy my control on some puzzles). Mass Effect 2 took me a good thirty hours and again I enjoyed every minute of it. The ultimate criteria for me is "did I enjoy playing this game for the time that I played it" if the answer is yes than it's a good game to me.

Wow. Joe Fielder wrote that review? That guy is making the next Bioshock game. It's weird to see the trajectory of some of these game journalists and see where they've gone.

Anyways, I still like my games to have a certain amount of meat on them. Of course, I'd rather have a tightly paced game than one that is bloated by unnecessary filler. Dragon Age II was an example of that, and if that game was 15 or so hours shorter it would be a better game. Of course, you can have it both ways. As a counterpoint, Dragon Age Origins took me only a few more hours to complete than DA2 but I feel like that game had more than its fair share of interesting scenarios, notwithstanding the unfortunate overly-long slog that was The Fade.

@sonicrift said:

But what about a game like Heavy Rain? You pay $60 for it, beat it in an afternoon, and you now know who the killer is so a replay won't be fun.

Multiple endings. Also, you have the option to make different choices throughout the game which will have different effects on the overall story. At least, that's how it's been pitched to me. Heavy Rain is definitely not a strictly linear game from what I've seen.

I've put thousands of hours into Counterstrike, League of Legends, and Team Fortress 2, yet there's no single player campaign. 0 Hours to finish the story. What a ripoff!

If that's your screen, I see that you use internet explorer and my E-respect for you has gone down.

That being said yeah, 14 hours is a decent length for a game nowadays, sad but I feel the pacing for alot of those games is actually pretty good.

It makes a difference what type a game it is.

If it takes 2-3 hours to finish but it's different every time you play it and requires some arcade skill then it's more than long enough.

If it's a linear hallway shooter with 100% scripted events, enemy placement, and no alternate paths then yes, it's a rip off.

Just don't talk to your past self.

14 hours is great gameplay. call of duty games are only like 5 hours long. a lot of games are pretty crappy with being long.

Shit man, if most games were 14 hours these days I'd never finish most of them except the really good ones.

I lost my time machine.

I think 10-12 hours is a good length