The Video Game Critic

[QUOTE=Vexer]Most games aren't 60-80 hours except for RPGs, most FPS and action games are generally 8-16 hours, which for me is usually just the right length.[/QUOTE]
True Vexer.
Look at Lolly pop chainsaw. 5 hours long.  A very amusing 5 hours but only 5 hours long.

[QUOTE=Jon]Modern games are way too long, lol. My friend just got a PS4 with MLB The Show and he told me because he knows I love sports. He expected me to be interested in playing the game but I find these modern games just way too much of a chore. Playing one of these new games feels like taking a class, it's so demanding. And that's just a sports game. I can't imagine trying to tackle one of these "epic action adventures". I'd probably give up after 5 minutes. To be expected to put in 60-80 hours (at least) just to finish a game, that's unbearable for anyone with a career. After the 5th generation, things started getting really complicated.[/QUOTE]

Great post.  Really a sports game with a story?  I just want to go to sleep and I have just woken up.  Maybe they should put a story mode in Madden? 

[QUOTE=Astrosmasher]They probably are way to long for some people.  They are the people who are just atrocious at video games.  Though if you think games are way too long you might want to get into Titan fall.  There is no one player game whatsoever.  So you play it in 10 minute segments.  Or Metal gear zeros I hear the game is only an hour long. 


I feel completely and totally ripped off when I buy a game and it just ends. [/QUOTE]

Ummm....okay.  I think it's simply that a lot of people who think games are too long simply don't have the free time that they had as a kid to finish them.

[QUOTE=JustLikeHeaven]
Games today are disposable.  Meant to be consumed quickly and then you move on to the next thing.  Most gamers do not replay games over and over again.  There is very little reason to do so.  I would replay games like Contra and Super Mario Bros. ALL THE TIME.  You would pop the game in...play for an hour or so and see how far you could get.  There was a legitimate chance of finishing the game in one sitting.  In fact I would play a game with the intentions of beating it.  I'd say, alright, I'm gonna play Super Mario Bros 3 and beat it today.  That was the challenge.  Sometimes I could do it, sometimes I couldn't.  The challenge is what kept me coming back.  The days that I did accomplish my goal, man what a feeling.    
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These days, some games are long because there's a lot of unskippable, usually unwanted story content.

Some games are long for reasons that are purely mechanical. Let me explain.

The world record speed run for Assassin's Creed II clocks in at just under 6 hours. That means, no matter what you do--no matter how skilled you are--Ass Creed II simply can't be completed quickly. It's a long haul each and every time you choose to replay it (if you choose to replay it). The reason is that it's a very story-intensive game and all but one of the cutscenes is unskippable.

Demon's Souls (my favorite game of all time), one the other hand, is a different beast. There is no mandatory, unskippable exposition. There's hardly any exposition at all. Nevertheless, the first time I played the game, it took me about 100 hours to get to the ending credits. Every time I replay it, however, it gets drastically shorter because I've learned to master its systems. If I chose to really devote some time and learn the absolute ins and outs of the mechanics, I could complete it in under an hour like all the other speedrunners. So that's a 99% deflation in playtime: from 100 hours to 1 hour.

At the end of the day, the question any gamer needs to ask him or herself is this: how do I want to spend my gaming time? If your priority is, above all else, playing a variety of titles to completion, the realities of adulthood are going to force you to choose games that are both short and easy to complete on a single run-through (what JustLikeHeaven is referring to as "disposable" games).

If, like me, your priority is spending most if not all of your gaming time playing what you know you enjoy, you'll probably gravitate towards a handful of games or genres that give you the kind of experience you're looking for and stop kidding yourself that you'll have time for all of "the rest."

Now, don't get me wrong--I enjoy story-heavy games just like DaHeckIzDat. Xenogears is one of my favorites and that took no less than 80 hours to complete when I was in a hurry (as I said in my last post). JRPGs definitely take the slow and methodical approach and frequently try your patience. The good ones, however, are really good. I also enjoy Ass Creed, as I've said before. But it's certainly a game I play once and put away, whereas my favorites, the Souls and Zelda games, occupy about 97% of my total gaming time because I just keep going back to them.

The long unskippable cutscenes seems to have taken the focus away from actually making the games fun though.  

I can enjoy enjoy story if it's done correctly.  Very few games get it right though.  I'd rather just read a quick blurb after a level and be onto the action faster.  I don't want to see some poorly scripted cutscene.  

It's funny because I remember being floored by cutscenes back in the day.  When games routinely began coming with intro cutscenes and things like that, I was floored.  The cutscenes had extraordinary graphics, no voice overs and plenty of action.  They were a treat to see.  

Think about what a typical cutscene in a videogame is now.  It is usually in-game graphics with the main character models being staged around like an awkward soap opera.  Arms and hands waving around unnaturally...  It doesn't look good, realistic and it's not fun to sit through.  Very few games have great voice actors AND exciting, fun to watch cutscenes.  

[QUOTE=JustLikeHeaven]The long unskippable cutscenes seems to have taken the focus away from actually making the games fun tough.  

I can enjoy enjoy story if it's done correctly.  Very few games get it right though.  I'd rather just read a quick blurb after a level and be onto the action faster.  I don't want to see some poorly scripted cutscene.  

It's funny because I remember being floored by cutscenes back in the day.  When games routinely began coming with intro cutscenes and things like that, I was floored.  The cutscenes had extraordinary graphics, no voice overs and plenty of action.  They were a treat to see.  

Think about what a typical cutscene in a videogame is now.  It is usually in-game graphics with the main character models being staged around like an awkward soap opera.  Arms and hands waving around unnaturally...  It doesn't look good, realistic and it's not fun to sit through.  Very few games have great voice actors AND exciting, fun to watch cutscenes.  
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The only times I remember not hating unskippable cutscenes were in Final Fantasy games, which always featured some kind of breathtaking choreography, music, or visual effects. I too miss the time before voice acting became widespread, where cinematics were all about highlighting key action, not reading a soap opera script. The FFVII-IX cinematics have this silent-movie charm that was lost when they started using in-engine voiced cutscenes right and left.

I think most cut scenes are pretty well done so I don't mind sitting through them one bit, though all games should give you the option of skipping them(and pausing them, as I hate being interrupted while i'm in the middle of watching a cutscene and having no way to pause them), there's very few games I can think of where the voice acting stands out as being truly awful(Ride to Hell and Vampire Rain are the only ones that immediately come to mind).

[QUOTE=Vexer]I think most cut scenes are pretty well done so I don't mind sitting through them one bit, though all games should give you the option of skipping them(and pausing them, as I hate being interrupted while i'm in the middle of watching a cutscene and having no way to pause them), there's very few games I can think of where the voice acting stands out as being truly awful(Ride to Hell and Vampire Rain are the only ones that immediately come to mind).[/QUOTE]

I must partly agree with Segatarious in that most videogame exposition is garbage and painful to witness.

I do not, of course, maintain that it's logical to extrapolate that videogame exposition can't be good. 

Inconsistent writing/translation quality aside, there's some real storytelling genius to be found in the classics (FFVII, The Last of Us, MGS)--it's why they're considered classics.

Members like DaHeckIzDat and I have an affinity for good stories in games, good being the operative word. Some of us simply aren't looking for that kind of entertainment from our games, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The general consensus among members of this board, however, seems to be that most kinds of videogames have no business running their mouths so much. Less talking and more hitting things please. This is also my viewpoint regarding the Skyrims, AssCreeds, and Calls of Duty out there.

On the other hand, I do think the industry has fetishized Half Life's passive narration style to an extreme, and that sometimes there's value in having the player sit down and get primed on the story so far (since so many plots tend to begin in medias res). There's a place for entertainments like Final Fantasy, Tales, or Uncharted. 

When I was younger and 3d was in its infancy, I dreamed about playing open world games like they have now, Assassin's Creed type games. Then I realized that it just wasn't worth it. When you get to my age, you only have time to play video games sometimes. And when I do, I'd just assume play some crazy 2d shooting game that takes a half hour to complete. Heck, a lot of those games have more replay value than today's games. To me, a game like Twisted Metal 2 or Goldeneye is the limit to how big I want a 3d world to be.