Time Investment

re: Time Investment

John Constantine — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:48:17 GMT

Couldn't agree with you more, Amber. The question of length and time investment is particularly irksome when the discussion starts leading to pricing and value. A game can be half an hour long or endless, but that shouldn't dictate how much you have to pay for it.

And, yeah, Final Fantasy. What a mess those games can be as time sinks, especially when it comes to sidequests. The worst offender I can think of is FF X-2. Not only are the crap side quests unbearable (they somehow made lightning dodging worse!) but the game requires you complete ALL of them in order to get the full story.

re: Time Investment

Amber Ahlborn — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:35:55 GMT

A game should be exactly as long as it needs to be. No game should have crap shoved into it just to artificially lengthen it and on the flip side, genuinely short games should probably be priced a little less. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine. I get tired of seeing both reviewers and gamers judge a game's value on its length. It's the content that's important, not how many hours you spend on it!

As for the boss battle mentioned here, I read an article on it yesterday and feel that frankly, this crosses the line. When a game or part of a game is designed to maliciously torment the players, it's time to take the developers responsible out behind the wood shed. Final Fantasy seems particularly guilty of this. Some of the entries into this series force players through the most awful quests to get the good stuff. I will never forgive Squenix for the horribly broken chocobo racing game in FF10 (and the other crap side quests too. Lightning dodging? Really?)

re: Time Investment

Demaar — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:55:18 GMT

When you're getting over 40 hours it's probably time to start leaving stuff on the editing room floor. Or making crap optional.

I felt GTAIV could have used some cutting back on content. Too many missions were mandatory for the main plot.

re: Time Investment

Roto13 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:49:30 GMT

A game should keep going until it's not so much fun any more and then stop. I spent close to 100 hours playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2, but I never got tired of it and I enjoyed every minute of it. On the other hand, half way through Tales of Legendia, I wanted it to be over. Actually, I thought it WAS over. That game does this weird thing where the first half of the game covers the main story and the main characters and the main villains and blah blah blah, and then there's the credits, and then the second half of the game consists of backtracking to places you'd already been in order to learn crap about the rest of the minor characters that, frankly, I didn't need to know.

But anyway, I don't think there's any one maximum time for any game, or even any type of game. That's my non-committal answer.