re: How long should a game be?

quote:

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doing the same hiding/puzzle solving stuff for over 12 hours can wear on you

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Yep, and that's applicable to every game. We have to be careful with our expectations, because our desire for lengthy games is usually served up in the form of filler. Publishers then tout "100 hours to complete" and what it really amounts to is 10-15 hours of actual story, and dozens of collective hours of repetitive side missions, minigames, collectibles, puzzles, etc. that you'll never even touch, let alone enjoy.

Again, hate to bring up the whole "I have kids" topic again alongside Gardoki, but it's a major factor in what I consider worth playing when my gaming sessions may last only an hour, or 20 minutes. Nowadays, it's difficult for me to justify lengthy games in any regard unless I can accomplish something meaningful in a short time -- I can't do highly involved RPGs because it's frustrating when I spend an entire precious gaming session collecting herbs or grinding to level a weapon, or filling in one more notch in a skill tree. Similarly, I never reach higher than 50% completion on Arkham games or the Ubisoft-formula titles that are big on collecting clones of meaningless items amongst clones of buildings on clones of terrain filled with clones of NPCs.

Unfortunately, that means the majority of my gaming money goes toward multiplayer shooters and action games with mostly linear (but compelling) campaigns. It also means my backlog is really just a list of games I have officially decided not to play.