Can a game be too long?

[feauxx]

Also, Assassin's Creed. That game just wouldn't end. I loved it, but it reminded me of Return of the King. Just end already!!

i'm with you on this. i love long games when it's a game i love.
but with the repetitiveness of assassin's creed (one) the story was smeared out way too much to keep me interested. i actually stopped half way though and finished the game almost 2 years later.

a game i liked that suffered this same problem to me was alan wake. when i thought i was nearing the conclusion, the game proceeded to get lost in a dozen other spooky forests. up till the point where it stopped being spooky because it was too hilarious to predict how he was going to end up alone in a forest again. that made me want the game to end.

 

[onewheeled]

The way it's looking right now with Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, I think that game might be a tad bit too long for my tastes. I'm playing quite slow, though, I've been playing for about seven hours or so, with Laharl being level 10, and my other 6 party members (minus my prinnies, which are set at level 5) are all level 7 or higher. I've just beaten the first level of episode 2. Seven hours. One out of fourteen episodes complete. Damn.

 

[PeePantz]

Also, Assassin's Creed. That game just wouldn't end. I loved it, but it reminded me of Return of the King. Just end already!!

i'm with you on this. i love long games when it's a game i love.
but with the repetitiveness of assassin's creed (one) the story was smeared out way too much to keep me interested. i actually stopped half way though and finished the game almost 2 years later.

a game i liked that suffered this same problem to me was alan wake. when i thought i was nearing the conclusion, the game proceeded to get lost in a dozen other spooky forests. up till the point where it stopped being spooky because it was too hilarious to predict how he was going to end up alone in a forest again. that made me want the game to end.

Seriously Alan, stop going in the forest. Or get your shit done during the day.

 

[PhoenixKing]

A game that is too long probably spans about 8 Xbox 360 disks and/or 3 PS3 game disks.

Nowadays, 8 xbox disks is about 1 PS3 disk =P
OT: For me, a game that's too long is any game that I get bored of half way through it.

 

[feauxx]

Hm...the only games that I think can be too long are those games that allow you to play after you have beaten the story. Now, MMOs are the exception to this rule, but a game is about getting to the end of something. For me, this end is the completion of the story in the game. A clearly defined goal of "Save world/rescue princess/claim treasure/get revenge." Once that is accomplished, the game is over. Games like .Hack and Mass Effect 2, which allow you to play after completing the storyline, are too long because there is no longer a driving force. I have seen the ending, and doing anything more just feels like work. When a game feels like work, it has become too long.

mass effect 2 doesn't 'finish' / allows you to roam around after the suicide mission is because of the DLC mostly.

 

[inFAMOUSCowZ]

Final Fantasy 13, my god I tried loving that game, but I just couldnt

Damn ninja'd

I quit like after fifty minutes of cut scenes...and 3 minutes of gameplay--aka the beginning of the game.

I went through to the end, never been so glad to beat a game. It had some really pretty cut scenes though, only good thing about the damn game.

 

[BoredDragon]

Anything with bad gameplay or a very uninteresting story and I will not continue to play it. I recently rented Splatterhouse and I couldn't get through it.

I liked the funny comments that the mask had every once in a while, but they were too far apart to be that noticeable and the gameplay was repetitive. The snarky mask and an ok storyline were not enough to hold my attention when I can just get my friends together and play guitar hero.

 

[BoredDragon]

Final Fantasy 13, my god I tried loving that game, but I just couldnt

Damn ninja'd

I quit like after fifty minutes of cut scenes...and 3 minutes of gameplay--aka the beginning of the game.

I went through to the end, never been so glad to beat a game. It had some really pretty cut scenes though, only good thing about the damn game.

OMG the final fantasy fan base is finally becoming self-aware. Maybe now you can let square forget about final fantasy and let them work on Deus Ex instead of the crappy MMO

 

[IG__]

IMO If a game is "too long" that probably just means it's repetitive. And if a game is "too long" but isn't repetitive that probably just means then you are trying too hard to finish it.

All in all you can't really complain about a game having too much content, that just sound plain silly to me.

 

[Darks63]

I found GTA: San Andreas to be too long by the time I got to Vegas I forgot why I was there storylinewise in the firstplace and i had stop caring about beating those two corrupt cops.

 

[Zannah]

An immersive game can't be too long. A game that doesn't immerse is the too long about five seconds in.

And I'd like to make a slippery comment about how penis' can definitely be too long (I suppose so), but with my experience limited to one partner, I can only comment on what size is exactly right

 

[Okuu_Fusion]

A game can only be too long when it starts to get dull and repetitive...

However, if it starts throwing newer and more insane stuff at me 20 hours in, it can be as long as it wants... Just as long as it keeps it up...

 

[thePyro_13]

Yes they can be too long. Rarely in a game-play sense, but often in a story sense.

Many movies suffer the same problem. It gets to a point where it felt like it should have ended, then the plot no longer becomes engaging.

It's more to do with pacing than game length, but as the length of the story grows, so it becomes much harder to keep the pacing from going out of control.

The reverse can be true of games which are too short, the story sets the player up for a longer tale, but then the game ends abruptly.

 

[The Seldom Seen Kid]

Final Fantasy XIII

God yes, way too long.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Hm...the only games that I think can be too long are those games that allow you to play after you have beaten the story. Now, MMOs are the exception to this rule, but a game is about getting to the end of something. For me, this end is the completion of the story in the game. A clearly defined goal of "Save world/rescue princess/claim treasure/get revenge." Once that is accomplished, the game is over. Games like .Hack and Mass Effect 2, which allow you to play after completing the storyline, are too long because there is no longer a driving force. I have seen the ending, and doing anything more just feels like work. When a game feels like work, it has become too long.

mass effect 2 doesn't 'finish' / allows you to roam around after the suicide mission is because of the DLC mostly.

Agreed. However, none of the DLC directly affects the main storyline. Because of this, I play the DLC before I launch the suicide mission, that way they feel like they have context. Playing them after just doesn't feel right.

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

Games can easily be too long when the main story tends to lose interest and there is a lack of evolution in gameplay. I still believe that too much content is better than not enough...however, delegate tons of extra content to side quests...much like Dragon Age: Origins did.

Yeah, Dragon Age was bad.

It's even worse when you realize after all the ambushes and endless trekking back and forth for each mission, that the leveling doesn't even matter! I don't mind a long game but I would like to feel like I've gotten something out of it =(

Yeah,the combat wasn't really that great.Personally,all the talking killed me.I just plain don't care about the lore when everyone sounds stereotype 12th century drunk.Really,I don't know anyone from Europe who talks like that and some of the people I have known were from Wales and England

But do you know any Irish?

No,I can't say I know any Irish,though knowing me,I probably have known and forgotten of as is my bad habit in memory.Why,know a friend that moved to the states?

 

[evilartist]

Wolfenstein 3d. The combat is too simple and repetitive. Before you all jump down my throats, hear me out: this would ordinarily be an unfair assessment for a game from 1992, revolving around a very new genre. What made it too long was including six episodes, rather than the standard six you would expect from a typical shareware model. If there had only been three, the novelty of its groundbreaking gameplay may have lasted up to the battle with Hitler. Unfortunately, things got old during episodes 4-6.

Again, I know this seems unfair, but damn, I can only take so much of the same thing over and over.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

It can be if it has run out of gameplay options and continues to throw the same situations at you, time and again ... where a player isn't expected to come up with new ideas or aren't thrusted out their comfort zone with specific time honoured techniques of dealing with obstacles.

For example ... shooters;

If theres a specific weapon + 'power' that works on all enemies and every situation can be 'defused' with said combo.

If a game doesn't force you from constantly using these combinations for the entire length of the game it's boring.

Mass Effect 2 for example shook things up.

Having an rpg component allowed, say, the infiltrators an assassin cloak. Which made cover based shooting a long-term thing ... but rather fosters a player who, up till that point due to low HP, was foprced largely into cover half of the time.

But with the assassin cloak? The Infiltrator could assault into enemy's close quarters to pistol whip[ oppositioon and attack the enemy from multiple sides and make a quick succession of movements across the battle ground to maximise their effective fire with generally reduced amounts of ammunition.

Shaking things up. As the enemies got tougher and harder, the most effective means was changing from defensive to offensive play everytime a player could.

RPGs?

I think solid rpgs are the most able to 'play well' from start to finish. Honourable mentions to Vampire: Bloodlines, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate series, PS: Torment, Morrowind ...

High customisability, high divergence each and every time you played, strong ethic of delivering divergent skillsets to new situations and forcing one to change their game playing policy from game to game, session to session, battle to battle.

Even if you didn't want to do the whole 'spell thing' in D&D games, being a fighter possessed no less reason to adapt new gameplay techniques in the face of conundrums.