Games you feel have too much padding

[Hard-Target]

So i recently beat the final section of Bioshock: infinite and one problem i feel in it is how large sections of the game seemed to last way longer than they need to. You know that feeling you get on the final part of a game? That feeling when they tell you is time to go take down the bad guy so you upgrade all the weapons and powers you feel your are going to need and pump yourself up? That feeling in Infinite seems to last for HOURS.

To elavorate...

Spoiler

after rescuing Elizabeth from the asylum she tells you Comstock is at his main Zeppelin. So you fight your way to a small carrier air ship to ride to the zeppelin, only to fight your way in said small ship to get towards the zeppelin, only to then fight your way to the top of said Zeppelin, to then confront Comstock in a cutscene, only to THEN protect the Zeppelin from the Vox so you can reach and destroy the Siphon. It's adding hours of struggle that only needs to be a few small fights fallowed by one big final confrontation. It's ridiculous...

I then realize how the game treats almost all your objective that way. You can't ever just go to where you want or need to go. You have circumvent your way through every mission. The Gunsmith quest and Comstock's house gate come to mind as other examples.

I get that it wouldn't be much of a game if every mission was just a walk down the street but the game makes me feel like a horse fallowing a carrot on a stick. Every time i get close they just pull the carrot away from me.

Spoiler

Come to think of it, was that supposed to be one of the points of the game? To feel like a slave? I don't know. i'm told i'm AWFUL with subtext.

Anyway, it got me thinking about other games that run into that problem. So, my fellow escapists, any recent or old games that bork the pacing just to add hours to gameplay?

 

[Mikejames]

I think this was hit and miss for Alice Madness Returns. I loved the art style and atmosphere for all the different areas, but the prolonged length of the platforming sections were pretty noticeable by the final stretch.

 

[Coakle]

Wasn't DMC 4 famous for padding out its game length by making you fight each boss two times?

 

[Hard-Target]

You must be new to the Bioshock games, because the other games in the series are like that too. (The first game especially so)

On more than one occasion, all you have to do is cross to the other side of a room and go through a door. But before you can, something bad always happens to block your path, and it forces you to go on some side trip (one of them is a collection mission) just to reopen the door again or unblock your path again.

I actually played the first Bioshock and the System Shock games if you count those as part of the same series. Granted it was way back when i was in middle school so about 4 to 6 years ago. I was also one of those few people that felt bioshock didn't need a sequel of any kind to begin with.

I don't know. Maybe the first Bioshock was better at hiding it than Infinite or maybe i just wasn't paying enough attention to the all the actual aspects of the game. Back then i was happy enough just playing my games. Now my grumpy bitter adult self can't help but pick apart and complain about any new games i play.

 

[Pink Gregory]

You must be new to the Bioshock games, because the other games in the series are like that too. (The first game especially so)

On more than one occasion, all you have to do is cross to the other side of a room and go through a door. But before you can, something bad always happens to block your path, and it forces you to go on some side trip (one of them is a collection mission) just to reopen the door again or unblock your path again.

I actually played the first Bioshock and the System Shock games if you count those as part of the same series. Granted it was way back when i was in middle school so about 4 to 6 years ago. I was also one of those few people that felt bioshock didn't need a sequel of any kind to begin with.

I don't know. Maybe the first Bioshock was better at hiding it than Infinite or maybe i just wasn't paying enough attention to the all the actual aspects of the game. Back then i was happy enough just playing my games. Now my grumpy bitter adult self can't help but pick apart and complain about any new games i play.

Would it really make a difference to you if that didn't happen, but there was still the same amount of gameplay? Then again I'm one of these apparently odd people that likes the gameplay in Bioshock.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

A 20 minute fight stretched to an hour is not really how I interpreted "padding" when I clicked on the thread.

Far Cry 3 had too much padding. Hundreds of optional objectives that added up to 40-50 hours of dubious "game play" all by themselves, bundled around a ~10 hour story. Don't get me wrong, I liked it a lot...but it's a good example of a "padded" game. Kingdoms of Amalur is another one, almost 75% of its running length is padding.

If you're cynical, or consider exploration utterly secondary to the tedious main stories, you could also consider all of Bethesda's open world games to be heavily padded.

One of the more notorious methods of padding old school RPGs was to introduce a labyrinth or three, often jammed to the gills with respawning enemies. Spend hours and hours being lost in identical corridors! It's technically game play! Put "200 hours" on the box and ship it!

 

[King Billi]

I don't think this is really an example of a game being too padded but I've noticed quite a few games I've played strangely continuing on for several hours after their supposed climax.

I've just recently played the most recent Tomb Raider(pretty damn awesome in my opinion but thats beside the point) which right from the offset builds slowly and steadily towards a pretty explosive climax with lots of cool set pieces and explosions and it felt very much like the end... until it just dosen't end and instead slows right down cuts back the action heavily and starts building once again towards a second climax. The real ending.(Which admittedly was even more awesome than the first one so I guess I got no complaints)

Bioshock I feel was the same way, the meeting with Andrew Ryan just feels like the natural ending while in fact the game continues on for quite a while afterwards. I even understand that alot of fans prefer to see this moment as the actual ending as the rest is commonly viewed as being largely unecessary and tedious.

As I said before though I don't know whether this is really an example of padding as it is more a case of just pacing being handled differently in video games opposed to other forms of media, it's just that it can seem a little jarring at times.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Mass Effect 2 ruined its pacing by putting in the ridiculous padding of the planet scanning crap, luckily it isnt as bad the next time you play as you get bonus resources but really there was little reason for it to exist other than to artificially elongate the games length and make it seem slightly less linear and corridor shooty than it was.

Theres Ghosts and Goblins with its classic cheap way to lengthen play time i.e play the exact same game over again.

Assasins Creed felt very padded out keep doing the same 3 quests over and over before each assassination attempt oh and er collectables everywhere because otherwise theres no reason for people to explore this city and ofc theres the Desmond sections which made the game weaker by being there and served no purpose other than to support a very weak partially related story.

 

[Foolery]

Padded? The first Witcher. That game really drags shit out with repetitive fetch quests for no good reason. It's not like you can collect a large number of quests and then try to complete them along the way, there's a ton of backtracking.

 

[Batadon]

Skyward Sword basically redefined padding for a new generation.

I was fine with the extra sailing/exploring in Wind Waker but Skyward Sword was just egregiously over the top about it and worse, BORING.

 

[sanquin]

Skyrim. Yes, the game's intention is to provide an open world with tons of small things to do in it. But the main story suffers because of it. Heck, some side-quests are better than the main storyline. If you put a main story in your game, you should damn well make sure it's at least as good as any other quest, instead of filling the game with dozens of generic dungeon crawling ones.

 

[Amaror]

Oh were to begin:

Dragon Age 2 was basically padding made into a very very stupid excuse for a story.

Oh and Portal 2 was horrible in that aspect. Yes, Engine, i know you can make pretty environments, that doesn't mean i want to play "Find the white patch of wall" for hours on end, without any realy puzzles.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm replaying the original Mass Effect and while I do like the Elevator moments (because squaddies talking to each other is pretty cool) it feels like padding. So too does the, "you can only fast travel where we say you can fast travel" thing on the Citadel...reading some of the other comments makes me feel Bioware RPGs in general are well padded...

Skyward Sword basically redefined padding for a new generation.

I was fine with the extra sailing/exploring in Wind Waker but Skyward Sword was just egregiously over the top about it and worse, BORING.

Another factor that padded out my gameplay of SS was the near-constant re-calibration of the Wii Mote...swing your sword, re-calibrate the Wii-Mote, Swing your sword, Re-Calibrate the Wii-Mote, etc...

 

[BrotherRool]

I'm annoyed that I can't think of a specific example right now, but whenever you have a game where you get to the last mission and it tells you 'ah but you've got to do X extra crud before you can play it'. It didn't happen to me, but if you haven't maxed out your Karma in inFamous 2 it does this.

I'm replaying the original Mass Effect and while I do like the Elevator moments (because squaddies talking to each other is pretty cool) it feels like padding. So too does the, "you can only fast travel where we say you can fast travel" thing on the Citadel...reading some of the other comments makes me feel Bioware RPGs in general are well padded...

The lifts in Mass Effect 1 hid loading screens, so I don't know if that's padding per-say

 

[Benpasko]

Dead Space 3. I actually really liked the game, but there's one awful bit near the end where they reuse the same bunker 4-5 times with no changes. It really soured what was otherwise an unoffensive to great-at-times game. Oh, and the ending was bad, but we don't talk about that.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I didn't mind most of Bioshock Infinite, but that section where you had to defend the airship from wave after wave of enemies seemed unnecessarily long and tedious.

 

[legendp]

I wouldn't have used bioshock infinte as an example, it is already short. I would personally say most RPG's and open world games. thing I like about mass effect 2 was it felt focused and a little more to the point than dragon age origins. origins just felt really padded out, the gameplay, the story. I have nothing agianst long games, the problem is most long games are only long because of padding. the first mass effect game also had too much padding, despite being shorter tha mass effect 2 (with all dlc).