games are too short nowadays

[Shawn]

does anyone else agree?

i remember spending hundreds of hours on games when i was younger and never even getting 100% and now i can flat out beat a game within 30 hours.

seems pretty uncool that games get more expensive and shorter.

[Rosencrantz]

I agree so much with this topic

I'd get a game and think "oh hey this is going to be awesome!" and I proceed to beat it in under a week

I mean, I would have loved to have a good ten more hours of gameplay in Gears of War 2



I haven't played many long games in forever. It sucks :<

[triptych]

i remember when i first realized games were getting way too short


i bought jak 2 the day after it came out thinking 'this is gonna be greatttttt'

and it was
but i beat it in 6 days

[Saltonara]

Have definately noticed this. But then again, lets take a look at some things.
When we were younger, our reflexes and shit weren't as quick, and we weren't as smart as we are now.
Example: I never was able to get all the stars in SM64 when I was 7. I got like, 95 or something, and I had the game since I was 5. Yet when I played SM64DS it took me about 3 or 4 days to get all 150 stars.

So it's either that, since we're all geeks who play video games all day anyway so we're experienced now, or yeah, video games are in fact getting shorter.
Both statements are true pretty much.

[tsr moderation staff]

also in many ways our attention spans were longer. i played megaman x for like a month straight when i was little. i beat it in like a week or two but i just loved it way too much

[Kitsu]

Really, games weren't actually much longer. They were just harder, and sometimes genuinely unfair. Therefore, we often ended up spending more time trying to do the same thing over and over until we eventually won.

Also, some of us had limited amounts of time to play in a day/week, so we weren't able to beat games in a few long sessions.

[triptych]

well at least games didn't hold your hand every step of the way for the entire god damned game back then

now when you buy a game the first hour or so is a tutorial being shoved down your throat and then the rest of the game is just piss easy because the casual gamers would get mad otherwise

[buddy1913]

i to some extent agree. games are getting shorter but they are also getting easyer i remember when there was no such thing a save game at best there was a 30 Alphanumeric password to memorise. and with that you have to finish the whole hting in one go and that has a phycological effect too.

[Kitsu]

There are some games that have good tutorials, but they usually double as true "first-levels" as well. As for the rest of the difficulty, I would have to agree that most newer games are definitely easier.

[tsr moderation staff]

imo a game only needs a tutorial if it has something that you wouldn't figure out on your own (like maybe a puzzle game or a particularly innovative platformer). one thing i love in old games is figuring out new moves and things like that.

[GrooveMan.exe]

does anyone else agree?

i remember spending hundreds of hours on games when i was younger and never even getting 100% and now i can flat out beat a game within 30 hours.

seems pretty uncool that games get more expensive and shorter.

> Implying NES games weren't rediculously short and were only lengthened by cheap difficulty.

I don't mind if a games short as long as I have enough fun with it for it to be worth the price tag.

Speed-running through games like Another Code is fun anyway.

[Alpha Six]

Honestly I don't think he's talking about NES games, he's actually kinda right. A lot of games have become shorter nowadays (even if it's just a small difference) but this is mainly because games tell you more of what you're supposed to do. Like shooters. How many people really think Doom or Duke Nukem 64 is long? They're not, the games just has you figure EVERYTHING out on your own. Doom and DN64, in reality, can be beaten in LESS than a day. A day. Compare that to new games like Call of Duty 4. The guys you're working with tell you "okay let's do this," or "let's do that" and there's also an objective tracker on your compass. Thus, the game becomes a bit "shorter" because you don't have to find everything yourself. You can still beat it in a day if you put that much time into the game, skip the loading cinematics, etc.

The games that DO do it best are games that tell you "hey, this is where you go" but then reward you for exploring the area. I don't wanna say "games like Zelda," but... games like Zelda.

I think the reason games are "getting shorter" is because most games nowadays add in really nice, dynamic cutscenes that rope you in (Metal Gear Solid 4, Gears of War 2, etc...) and make you want to watch them, and that cuts down on the amount of gameplay you have because those programs and videos require more disc space (and these cutscenes usually tell you where you're going as well) Although with Blu-Ray, there really isn't that problem, hence MGS4 AND MGO, which takes up the entire disc. And MGS4, while not extravagantly long, is probably the longest game in the series; even though you can beat MGS4 in a few days, and the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 can take you weeks of dedication. Because Metal Gear 1 didn't tell you ANYWHERE you were going, and Metal Gear 2 only told you a few things.
That, and gaming is becoming a lot more like the other industries; if it looks pretty and is fun for at least a little while, people will buy it, and we will get money.

[a babyass man]

more often than not it's a blessing, a lot of games have certain gameplay elements that definitely start to get old after a while. knowing when to quit is a good thing (but it sounds like you haven't played resident evil 4 or dead space before)

[Alpha Six]

resident evil 4

the fucking castle.

[Shawn]

im mainly talkin rpgs. modern consoles are so much more capable than snes and psx, the fuck do we have 15 hour rpgs for??