The prospect of a forty-hour role playing game fills me with absolute dread, but thankfully not every game requires a mammoth investment of your time. In fact, when we broke the news that Journey could be completed in three hours that revelation brought a sense of relief and joy.
However, the comments that surfaced at the weekend after NowGamer suggested Killzone 3 can be beaten in four and a half hours completely baffled me. Aside from not actually being wholly correct, the news that a AAA first person shooter could be wrapped up in half a day provoked a stunning response from the internet.
“Well its just typical isn’t it!” exclaimed the commentor on the NowGamer piece. “All the hype non stop hype about this game… and they end up giving us a measly few hours playtime. Bulls**t. ”
Some of the comments on the N4G article were similar in theme, with a few questioning the reviews published at the time based on the playtime reported by NowGamer. Even if it was true, the question really should be ‘why does it matter’?
If you’re a die-hard Killzone fan, chances are you won’t be rushing through the game on Normal anyway (which should take between six and eight hours) – rather plumping for a higher difficulty level, but that’s not really the point – if Killzone 3 was just four hours long, why would that a) affect your decision to buy the game and b) affect any of the already published scores?
Game length shouldn’t be dictated by the current market, rather the other way around. Developers that elongate their single player campaigns should only do so when they’ve got more story to tell, not artificially to please the baying masses, and whilst Killzone 3’s plot won’t win any awards, at least it’s concise and exact.
Filler is the plague of many a console game, fetch and collect quests peppering an otherwise enjoyable story bore me senseless – I no longer have time to hunt out anything that’s extraneous to completion of the story so if Killzone 3 asked me to fanny around looking for token collectables I’d have not been impressed: save that for the likes of inFamous – at least the blast shards could be done away from the main missions.
As it stands, whatever time it takes you to get through Sev’s latest adventure, you can be sure that there’s nothing in there that’s not meaty. Sure, it’s far from perfect, but it’s the equal of any of the recent Call of Duty games with regards to exposition and – besides – isn’t Killzone 3 all about the massive online portion?
So why does it matter how long a game lasts? The misconception that games are getting shorter is exactly that: my earliest memories of gaming include some really short experiences and I’m not alone: Peter said Sonic took him four hours back in the day and that’s with a lot of restarts.
And the perception of value? £40 for Killzone 3 gets you (assuming you play it through more than once and try Elite) around fifteen hours or so of single player campaign, countless hours of co-op, the huge Botzone mode and then there’s online multiplayer, which will presumably run as long as Killzone 2’s did – that is, for at least a couple of years.
Games are, and always have been, good value for money. Relatively or otherwise – think how much a ticket to the cinema costs and how long that lasts…
SpikeyMikey23
As long as it entertains me then I’m more than happy. When a game starts to bore me then thats when I turn off. I think the only FPS single player I got bored of was Battlefield Bad Company 1, that was way to long and boring with way too much space between objectives. Apart from that, Ive enjoyed every FPS ive purchased. In regards of other games, I dont have a lot of time to finish them so I have a lot of unfinished stories to get through
Jim H [Teabags]
I’ve been playing KOEI’s Trinity. About 5 hours in now, and I haven’t even beaten the first chapter (I think there are six in total.) Sometimes I do wonder if the game will turn into a grind-fest, but so far it’s keeping me entertained.
Grey_Ghost13
Game lenght should co-incide with the genre. As stated RPG’s can be 100+ hours and that’s fine, you need that lenght the experience everything that genre can give.
Arcade Racers like Hot Pursuit should be fun quick blast games that it doesn’t matter how long tha main game is, all you want to do anyway is get through the game as quick as possible to get the fast cars. And additions like the AutoLog bring you back again and again.
Sim games have long playtimes, like GT5, to do everything in that game is probably going to take longer than most full lenght RPG’s, but again thats fine. A game like that, and other sports sims, you want to practice with until you perfect them.
Narrative games, 3rd person story driven games like Uncharted etc.., will always depend on how much storytelling needs to be told.
FPS games on the other hand can be short, as long as there is replayability and added content. CoD MW2 was brilliant for that, you had the single player campaign, which generally gets a couple of playthroughs. One for the story and one for the innevitable Vet difficulty, you then have the collectables to find. You then get the co-op missions to ace and the massive multiplayer.
And killzone, aswell as any other game, is going to be the same, the story may be only 6 hours, but that does not limit your gametime with it to just those 6 hours. Mulitple playthroughs, collectables, co-op and online multiplayer are going to add a huge sum of extra gametime!
loonytoon1982
I may go against the majority of comments in saying this but when I play a game I expect to be entertained for my money. The length of it is definitely important to me as I am mostly focused on the single player aspect of any game.
Unfortunately these days there is far too much focus on the multiplayer side rather than telling a strong story.
In comparison you mentioned how much a movie ticket cost. OK; so for the same price as a game I can watch 10 newly released movies at my local cinema. Given the average running time is approx. 2 hours I’d consider that to be of exceptional value.
As for completing Sonic in around 4 hours it’s an entirely different time in gaming. A game that has been played countless time by countless people for 20+ years now is hard to compare to a game that will be cast aside within 12 months.
However in saying that I have one simple formula:
Price ÷ Hours of entertainment = Value
If I’m only enjoying the game for the length of the single player it’s pretty poor value. Some games are of exceptionally high value, RDR I played for upwards of 350 hours (£0.10 per hour). Others are of very poor value, Demon’s Souls I just didn’t like at all, barely played for 2 hours (£20 per hour).
hazelam
you think that’s bad, i played about 20 minutes of two worlds before i’d had enough, that’s like two quid a minute, sex chat lines offer better value than that.
uh… so i’m told. >_>
jikomanzoku
Glad to see it aint just me how figures out how much they’ve paid per hour of enjoyment on any given title :D Though for me Demons Souls has rated amongst the cheapest per hour :)
DJ Judas
Generally speaking about shooters; I couldn’t care less about the story. I’m no Luddite, don’t get me wrong, I love a good story, but when it comes to shooters if I’m enjoying the gameplay I start to take no notice of story progression. Because of this, if a game is short I feel disappointed when it ends.
Yes it may have a great story that fits perfectly with the games length, but if the gameplay is great I just want to keep playing through more and more environments, pure and simple; I just want more to play through.
Maybe that’s why I’m such a fan of games in the elk of Serious Sam, Painkiller, Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters etc. They just keep going through various modes that don’t simply fall back on the same tired and outdated multiplayer system for longevity (UT excluded ;).
sesameseed
Never mind cinema tickets, you can pay more to watch 90 minutes of football than you do for a game.
DrNate86
I’m not sure I entirely agree with your reasoning on this. Firstly, whilst comparisons between mediums shouldn’t really be made, if you are paying £40 for a game lasting 4 hours, that is the equivalent of paying £20 for a cinema ticket to watch a 2 hour long film, which I’m sure people would think is expensive. People are within their rights to complain about value for money, and I would agree that a 4 hour single player in a full priced game is not good value for money.
The matter is complicated by the addition of multiplayer, and I would agree that a decent multiplayer will vastly extend the life of a game, so FPS like Killzone and COD can get away with a shorter single-player due to the heavy focus on multiplayer. I don’t think you can factor in multiple playthroughs though unless the game is drastically different each time. If there are multiple story paths then fair enough, but just providing different difficulty settings can’t be said to be providing a longer single-player experience.
I may be showing my ignorance a bit here, but surely a shorter game will take less time to develop and cost less money than a longer one? So how can the price be the same and justified?
KeRaSh
I wouldn’t say that shorter games take less time to develop. It all comes down to ho big your team that focuses on the story is and how many people are working on level design.
For the rest of your comment, I completely agree.
3shirts
The shining example for me is Portal. That is a short game but is still one of the best I’ve ever played.
Of course you can argue that Portal was cheap (if bought alone) but I put this down to the fact that it was ONLY the single player experience. Had it been that plus a solid online mode I would have been perfectly happy paying full game price.
jikomanzoku
Not just cheap, they gave it away at one stage a few months back :D Agreed though, it is an impeccably well designed and concise game. Perfect fodder for an evening with mates and beer.
mcwildcard
Game length means nothing to me, I’d rather be left gagging for more (UC2), rather than exhausted by the game and kind of glad to be done with it (Fallout 3). Both those games are outstanding, but Fallout NV didn’t get me nearly as excited before release as UC3 does.
A short sharp story, well told, beats a long epic story dragged out for too long.
R4U Eldave0
Speaking as someone who gets bored very easily, I prefer the sort of game where I can sit down and play through it in a couple of evenings. The only exception to this rule for me is Mass Effect 2, which I’m hoping never finishes ;)