WTF Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 Dunno, second playthrough always seems to whizz past on Uncharted games. The length stems mostly from working out where to go / what to do. Crushing takes longer cos you need to be so cautious in gun battles, but I normally knock it down to easy to collect trophies / treasures, get my headshots up and such, then it is super short. Which raises a good point. If I want to, I can blast through games rather swiftly, but, I tend to be a bit of a wanderer in games, I like to backtrack when I shouldn't (which paid off when I played through Limbo last night) so that adds some time, and complete side quests before continuing with the story. My infamous playtime is huge but that's because I always did all the side missions before the next story bit, then collected all the shards and dead drops before I went on to the endgame. Yeah I do recall subsequent playthroughs on Uncharted to be shorter mostly cause at some point I skipped cutscenes. It was fun the first 2 times to see the dialogue. Not so the third time. I've realised that lately I always go with the hardest difficulty on offer mostly because in all honesty games today aren't challenging enough with a few exceptions. This actually increased my love for some games and enjoyment a whole lot. Now I like a good explore and backtrack in games but I also like it to be challenging. I like some frustration and I like difficulty. Games today are a lot easier than games even 4 years ago. The only problem is once i finished a game on the hardest difficulty on offer for the first time for some reason i opt not to try that again for most games as they're not worth it. I always say yeah I'll go back to it and try to finish it but usually don't. I still have have to finish the 5th difficulty setting of DS2 I will at some point. The issue today is with oversaturation of games, if you're an adult you simply do not have the time to play the same game several times and if you're younger you don't have the money to buy all the games. Not to mention these days every game is exposed and it's hard not to know about a game unlike 10 years ago when unless you lived in certain markets you'd not know about most of the games that came out in Japan or Asia. The oversaturation does have an impact on game length but truth be told if the game is compelling people will play it and enjoy it and even finish it. The issue is that it seems like 10% of games have a compelling experience for over 50% of the gaming population when you look at sales and completion rates. (Of course those stats are made up but I wouldn't be surprised if it were close to that) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saturnine Tenshi Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 I don't mind if BF/MoH/CoD have a short single player campaign as I consider them to be story based tutorials for the multiplayer game. It's somewhere to get a feel for the controls and learn how the gadgets work before taking to the battlefield proper. Similarly, Little Big Planet's single player campaign is more of an interactive tutorial than anything. Then it should be referred to by devs as "Single-Player Tutorial" and not "Single-Player Campaign Afterthought". Oh, it's also worth noting that not all multiplayer interactions are a bunch of brosefs trying to validate themselves with high scores. I find that generalisation somewhat insulting. GT5 online sessions are a great deal of good clean fun and you will often find people apologising for running you off the road, not giving enough space in a corner for an overtake or tapping you from behind when they out brake themselves. It's just good manners. Many online games are civilised affairs, even in BFBC2, I have a regular squad we hook up, play a few rounds, generally do fairly well but we have the most fun when we get pushed right to the end rather than when we steam roll over the opposition. I was typing more tongue-in-cheek there. While I do maintain that people are, by and large, friggin' dimwitted, there are some transient exceptions. People that, for any odd reason, will suspend that trait to be cordial online. I play with my Over 30 Club folk whenever I can for that very reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 I play with my Over 30 Club folk whenever I can for that very reason. I'm 29, most of my friends are there or thereabouts... perhaps that explains it. Thanks for making me feel old. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saturnine Tenshi Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 (edited) Haha... well, I'm nearing it. Most of the fellas I play with are well over thirty or nearing it themselves. That's not to say age is the precursor to maturity, but it definitely helps. We've been dying out lately, unfortunately. Not literally. XD Spread across too many games. Though I predict BF3 will cull us together once more, if temporarily. You so old. The website has moved, but there's an explanation of the group here. If you play anything on PC, we're always looking for folk who value the characteristics we do. Edit: Please don't take my glaring misanthropy and/or perversity as a representation of the group. I usually don't discuss it elsewhere in order to refrain from blemishing its image. Edited July 21, 2011 by Saturnine Tenshi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P4: Gritty Reboot Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 I think RPS is poaching their content from the PXOD boards! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/07/21/tell-us-how-long-is-a-game-of-string/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted July 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 Except I poached this from Gamespot. Both Gamespot n RPS are at Develop 2011. The concept is nice, but it's Kotaky staff who are browsing these boards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted July 22, 2011 Report Share Posted July 22, 2011 The concept is nice, but it's Kotaky staff who are browsing these boards. Am I the only one to find that a bit ... weird? I mean, aside from the Fucking Kotaku thread where we basically just complain against them, we have no affiliations with Kotaku anymore. Why do they even care at this point? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted July 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 22, 2011 Don't forget this time 2 years back this forum used to be known as "the kotakuites forums" so it's not too weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted July 23, 2011 Report Share Posted July 23, 2011 (edited) Yeah, but it's not anymore. That's my point. It's not weird that they were doing it in the first place, but it kinda is that they still are to this day. I mean, granted, I was mostly a lurker back then, but this isn't exactly the same forum it was at the time. Edited July 23, 2011 by FLD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockyRan Posted July 25, 2011 Report Share Posted July 25, 2011 Games should be as long as I want them to last. And I'm not trying to be facetious here. I've played a couple of games that end simply far too abruptly for my liking, and then some that simply last far longer than I think they should, or pad the game with pointless bullshit that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Tales of Vesperia lasted me 51 hours if I remember correctly, but it honestly didn't "feel" too long. That's mostly because I didn't go lollygagging about doing random sidequests (which was mostly because the sidequests were utter BS consisting of "read our minds and do this despite nothing in the game telling you to do it, at this precise moment, or you get nothing"), but the story's pacing was very well told. New plot threads appeared just as the old ones were tied up, and all the game's antagonists weren't dangled in front of you for the entire game's duration, but rather got rid of them just as they introduced new ones. The result was the game ended up feeling fresh more or less the entire time, and the fact that you knew the game didn't treat the antagonists as "forever immortal until the very end of the game" made the story and the game's pacing that much more dynamic. It was certainly a long game, but I don't think it was "too" long. I don't think my stance with game length depends on the genre. I mean, I don't want to say I EXPECT 40-hour RPGs all the time because Oblivion's main quest was like 10 hours and that dragged on far too much (those mandatory runs through the Oblivion gates. Just...ugh). It far more depends on the specific game's pacing and how engaged the player is for that duration of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted July 25, 2011 Report Share Posted July 25, 2011 ADD IN: I appologise in advance if this post is difficult to follow, my head is a mess So do you think you* expect an RPG to last longer because of its more sedate pace? ie wandering around more, lots of text to read, slower paced combat etc. and if more intense games are shorter do you think there is an ideal number of plot points/experiences/set pieces (I cant think of a good word - I hope you know what I mean) for a game and different genres just have that same number but in a different density. I guess then the problem would arise if a game spreads those 'points' too thinly so it seems tedious getting between them and the game overly long. Or if they do not have enough points embedded in the fundamentals of the game and the developer has to add them in artificially. I guess the other problem if you go with this theory is if the density if different to what the player has come to expect from the genre. *general 'you' not anyone in particular. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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