Long and Short Games

[Fierce_LiNk]

I'm still embarking on my quest to complete Xenoblade, but that hasn't stopped me from purchasing all of the games for Wii. All of the games.

 

I bought Another Code yesterday and was told that it was quite a short game. My initial reaction was..."I'm cool with that."

 

I don't mind short games, because then there's at least some guarantee that I'll finish it. As much as I love games such as the Legend of Zelda series or Xenoblade, you do have to invest a shit load of time into it. Sometimes shorter games (even games that are linear) are a blessing, because it means you'll get to experience the whole lot in a much shorter time and can move on to the next one.

[Ashley]

I enjoy a long game, but don't really have the time for them. Started The Last of Us about a month ago, and only got about 40% through, and that's with me playing it a lot.

[flameboy]

I honestly don't mind shorter games these days as long as the price reflects it. I mean $10-$15 for an experience that last 1-3 hours in my mind isn't that bad. A single cinema ticket here is $15+, going out for a meal way more, shopping trip to mall more etc...so I think it can be good value. I paid $10 for Dear Esther and felt happy at the afternoon I spent with it. It's nice also to use shorter games as a palette cleanser especially when playing longer games. I'm still working my way through GTA V and revelling in every tiny moment but that hasn't stopped me enjoying and beating plenty of other games during this time.

[Jamba]

I finished The Inner World recently and that only took me about 7-8 hours but I really enjoyed it and didn't feel cheated out of my money or anything.

 

The problem I have with longer games is that if it takes you 20 hours to finish the normal playthrough and it's single player, I'm finding a lot of these games suggesting that I haven't got the vast majority out of it yet. I'm all for exploration and challenges but when I invested that much time in a game, something I have less and less time for, I don't want the act of getting to the content to be a chore.

 

Take Smash for instance, it does a very good job of allowing you to get to most of the roster quite quickly which is great. And if you want you can earn the rest. But contrast that to Virtue's Last Reward... I've really enjoyed my first playthrough on that game but at the end it essentially says a massive "fuck you, you don't get the end of the storyline unless you play through this again... twice." I wouldn't have minded much as each room is a different puzzle so the game would have been different but I've had to read through HOURS of dialogue. I have no interest in trying to figure out which bits I can skip or not and it's completely put me off finishing it.

[Goron_3]

I finished The Inner World recently and that only took me about 7-8 hours but I really enjoyed it and didn't feel cheated out of my money or anything.

 

The problem I have with longer games is that if it takes you 20 hours to finish the normal playthrough and it's single player, I'm finding a lot of these games suggesting that I haven't got the vast majority out of it yet. I'm all for exploration and challenges but when I invested that much time in a game, something I have less and less time for, I don't want the act of getting to the content to be a chore.

 

Take Smash for instance, it does a very good job of allowing you to get to most of the roster quite quickly which is great. And if you want you can earn the rest. But contrast that to Virtue's Last Reward... I've really enjoyed my first playthrough on that game but at the end it essentially says a massive "fuck you, you don't get the end of the storyline unless you play through this again... twice." I wouldn't have minded much as each room is a different puzzle so the game would have been different but I've had to read through HOURS of dialogue. I have no interest in trying to figure out which bits I can skip or not and it's completely put me off finishing it.

 

Well, of all the paths you can take (like, 30?) you do recieve an actual end, though it might be a bad end or whatever. However, the 'bad ends' are required to get the true endings and it's handled in a VERY clever way (if you've played the prequel you'll know what I'm referring too). I get that it might be frustrating but as you can pick which timeline and decisions you want to go down/make you rarely come across the same experience twice.

 

On topic, I've reached an age where I'm all for the experience and I don't care how long the game is tbh. The last games I've heavily got into are Pokemon X/Y (stopped in Victory Road), Pokemon B2 (stopped after the last gym badge), GTA 5 (got bored about 20 hours in) and Bayonetta (got bored near the end). As I'm rather busy atm with Uni and non-academic past times, I find myself with less and less time to really invest in games and therefore I drift in and out of games much more...if I can't get into it easily I won't bother playing it again :/

 

Pick up and play games like Smash and shorter experiences suit me much more if I'm honest.

[Jamba]

Well, of all the paths you can take (like, 30?) you do recieve an actual end, though it might be a bad end or whatever. However, the 'bad ends' are required to get the true endings and it's handled in a VERY clever way (if you've played the prequel you'll know what I'm referring too). I get that it might be frustrating but as you can pick which timeline and decisions you want to go down/make you rarely come across the same experience twice.

 

See this is the bit I disagree with. Considering how storyline based it is, you don't get any sense of closure and the only "ending" of sorts that you get is essentially the whole game whiting out from what I remember. Then to get the real ending (you know, keeping in mind that the basis of the entire game is it's storyline) then you have to retread through all of the dialogue just in case there's something important that you shouldn't miss. You may have enjoyed it but I have no interest in another playthrough if it's going to be like that.

[Goron_3]

See this is the bit I disagree with. Considering how storyline based it is, you don't get any sense of closure and the only "ending" of sorts that you get is essentially the whole game whiting out from what I remember. Then to get the real ending (you know, keeping in mind that the basis of the entire game is it's storyline) then you have to retread through all of the dialogue just in case there's something important that you shouldn't miss. You may have enjoyed it but I have no interest in another playthrough if it's going to be like that.

 

But there's never a need to retread any of the dialogue. Again, I can't justify why because it's a massive spoiler but you take different paths and get a completely different view of what is going on and different information based on that. I disagree on the closure part too as there is only one actual end; the ends of the paths you get are basically just end of chapters. They follow on from each other until you get to the end. It's hard to explain without dem spoilers though, but you never have to play the same 'chapter' again, instead you go back to parts where you had to make a decision like 'ally or betray' and venture off into a different path. Anyway, there's a thread for that so I'll stop going off topic :p

[Retro_Link]

Having just played Journey the other day, I do love a short game.

 

I haven't played all that many games lately, but Journey (2hrs long) and The Unfinished Swan (3-4hrs long) have been two of the greatest gaming experiences I've had this generation.

 

A short game can allow for such a high quality experience to be sustained throughout and create such a compact, thoroughly engaging experience. It's like watching a good movie, you come off of it feeling that was all you needed, you've just had one of the most enjoyable times spent gaming.

[Jimbob]

I don't mind short games, they give a welcome break from the RPG-style games. As it's been said, they can give a high-quality experience which can only be a good thing. But on a bad side, short games are over quick.

[Jonnas]

I like longer games when I'm the mood for a big, sprawling plot/adventure (much like when I start watching/reading a big series). Shorter, more focused games tend to be more up my alley recently, though (Civilization notwithstanding).

 

Regarding the "multiple ending" issue that Jamba brought up, I have a different opinion. Videogames are pretty much the one medium where different endings can actually work, and be part of the overarching theme of the story, and it doesn't need to be a pain in the ass if it's done well.

 

Sure, some games will give you the one decision at the end, but in games like Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, the ending you get depends on some early choices that affect the entire game, not just the beginning, so the new playthrough is very much unlike the first one, and it gives you different perspectives on the same events. VP:CotP is a Strategy RPG that lasts 8 hours tops, so the 3 different playthroughs still amount to the same length as many other single-player RPG experiences.

 

No One Has to Die is a flash game that also makes the different endings part of the same overarching plot. The puzzles are practically the same in each path, so it's only the plot that makes each path different, essentially. I don't know how Virtue's Last Reward does it, but it sounds just like that, and it's entirely possible that those replays are part of the full, intended experience. Just saying, like Goron says, it doesn't have to be a chore if you only need to go back to the decisions and make a different one.

[peterl0]

When money was a bigger issue I used to dread short games.

Now I have no time and money is less of an issue a short but sweet game is actually better.