Single Player Dying?

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fun-with-a-gun

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Jul 30, 2009
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Let me ask you, which difficulty were you playing on, and if it wasn't veteran, go back and try again. let's say that takes a bit more than 6 hours. A lot more.
 

Xanadu84

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Apr 9, 2008
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I personally like think in the long term. Sure, MW2 may last 7 hours. However, it is a quality enough game that I will most likely replay it. Maybe Ill restart it on a harder difficulty (14 hours). In a few months, ill replay it again (21 hours). Now lets say that, even though I usually prefer single player experiences myself, I still try the multiplayer, play it 2 hours a week for the next few weeks, and average playing for 2 hours every month for the next year (49 hours). Now Modern Warefare 3 comes out down the road, and I decide I want to revisit the old game once more (56 hours) and many many years from now, I have a fit of Nostalgia, and decide to play a classic game (63 hours). Doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Comparing the price of a game to the price of a movie in terms of length, even with just 1 playthrough, is still not terrible math. I can deal with it, especially since an awesome experience is more important to me then a long one.

I think its not lazy developers, its that a lot of people prefer there game shorter, but with more cinema to it. I imagine that programing every "Mini game" in MW2 requires a good bit of programming, and the variety on MW2 is what makes it so good. So people will pay for a lot of Stuff smashed into a shorter game. DLC isn't so much an issue really. We are well informed of what a game contains, and we make informed decisions about our purchases. We know what we are getting, and releasing DLC doesn't change he fact that we exchanged money willingly for a product that we felt was worth it. The trickiness of DLC is in appealing to our inner collector, where not having the paid DLC makes it feel like we are missing something. Basically, buy 8 ounces of peanut butter in an 8 ounce jar for 2 bucks, your fine, but buy 8 ounces of peanut butter in a 12 ounce jar for the same price, and you feel like you were ripped off. This manipulation of our inner OCD is offset by the capacity of developers to offer more options to players, and inject more content into already great IPs.

Of course, there are choices for value shoppers who want a large amount of content on there plate for there first play through. RPGs are the obvious choice, and Dragon Age is a great choice (I'm loving it myself, 30 hours in I feel like ive barely scratched the surface). RPGs tend to have a lot of content, I assume because RPGs require more designing and less programming in comparison to other genres. For bang for your buck with shooters, there's Borderlands. Maybe i'm the only one who likes it Single player though, but I find that even preferring single player, Coop frequently fills the same niche. Also, cheap older games and mods can pull out a games content exponentially. The evolution of video games into favoring a social experience is good, by and large, but single player isn't left in the dust quite yet.
 

tkioz

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May 7, 2009
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I guess I'm in a minority, but I don't consider replay to be part of a games length, there are only a handful of games I'll ever fully replay, oh sure I might think I want to replay a game, but after an hour or so I'll switch to another game.

Mass Effect, Fable 2 and Fallout 3 have been only games this year I'd replayed fully, I'm sure Dragon Age will be another one I'll replay.

To me game length is the time it takes to play it from start to finish with a moderate amount of side content explored, Mass Effect's side content was horrible for example, not worth playing a lot of it, but Fable 2s made the game, where as the main story was horrible, not just short, but pathetic, cliché, and stupid.
 

More Fun To Compute

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Nov 18, 2008
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If you mainly play for the single player then I think that many recent games have not been very good value for money for one reason or another. Personally I find them not to be good value more because they are boring and not at all to my taste than because they are too short but the amount of content does affect my buying decisions. The prices of many games drop fairly quickly though so they can offer good value in that way.
 

Chameliondude

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Jul 21, 2009
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Not really getting why people are defending horrifically short games, My friends completed
MW2 in less than 6 hours, all of them, that is sheer robbery when you think of the extra price hike they put on it, and when you get games of equal if not better like Uncharted 2 racking up around 12-15 hours of gameplay and still running multiplayer, all with better grafics for the same price,

even the n64 had titles way longer and compelling. WTF developers. I am expecially annoyed with MW2, because they definatly had the resourses, time, and money to make something far superior to what they produced, but as they knew people would blindly buy anyway, they skimped on the game and pulled a nintendo. Because they knew it would make a sh*tload regardless
 

slipknot4

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Feb 19, 2009
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Stay with the RPG's?
Dragon age origins, TES 4, Fallout 3
FPS games are multiplayer, if you buy one for the single player experience you're stupid.
/thread
 

Thunderhorse31

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Apr 22, 2009
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Bioshock, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, Uncharted, Infamous, Metal Gear Solid, Fallout, TES, Dragon Age, Metroid, Zelda, any Mario game...

Yes, Single player is indeed dying.

Yutz.
 

Hiphophippo

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Nov 5, 2009
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I'm afraid that if we get hung up on quantity then we'll forgo quality, honestly. A shorter game makes me more prone to a rental, such as MW2, but games like Dragon Age are a day one purchase.

Both enjoyable. Portal was probably the best game I played the year it came out and it was what? 2 hours? There's room for both.
 

Woodsey

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Aug 9, 2009
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Arkham Asylum isn't short if you complete all the riddler challenges, get all the achievements/trophies and play the game through twice at least (which everyone must do). And the challenge rooms can be offline as well.
 

GamingAwesome1

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May 22, 2009
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I don't like how developers are for going the notion of an excellent single player to work on multi player. Multi player is no bad thing, but that's no excuse for having a shit solo campaign.

Sometimes I don't wanna play online with a bunch of people who glitch, suck or kick my ass super hard. But in games like CoD and Halo, I can't because their single player stories are short and to be blunt, cookie-cutter.

I'm holding out hope for BioShock 2 to prove that both can be juggled equally as well.
 

USSR

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Oct 4, 2008
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tkioz said:
Video Game, $109 new..
..excuse me?

Where, if I may ask, in god's name do you shop?!

They average market price in America for a new game is 50-60 dollars.
 

toapat

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Mar 28, 2009
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slipknot4 said:
FPS games are multiplayer, if you buy one for the single player experience you're stupid
wrong. FPS games have to be made specifically and only for Multiplayer to be good in multiplayer. MW2 sucks for this reason. this is why the single best FPS made so far is Battlefield 2, as bad company also fucked up it's priorities.
 

ChromeAlchemist

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Aug 21, 2008
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sasquatch99 said:
Furburt said:
I think that 6 hours is a fine length for a game. It's longer than a movie you might pay up to 30 quid for.
Nailed it in one.
Taking MW2 for an example, the campaign is short, yes, but at least it's twice the length of any movie I know off.
And the SP campaign is better then most of them as well. Same goes for Batman: AA and Halo 3 as well.
That being said, it's also three times the price of a DVD and over twice the price of BD.
fix-the-spade said:
Personally I think games are gettin too short, with the 'it's more convienient for people with lives' thing just a refuge of the deperate. Better to play one game for three months than three games for one week.

For full price game 6 hours is pathetic (seriously £10/hour, to paraphrase, GTFO), even if it's fantastic all the way Metal Gear Solid was much longer than that and it got lambasted for it's lack of length. If I'm paying full retail I expect either fantastic, massive multiplayer options or a single lpayer that's more than 15 hours or needs multiple play throughs to really have fun with.
Damn right. £40-odd isn't worth it, but since all games on specific platforms are locked in price, it's something we have to live with...

Makes me wonder how much shorter the games will be next generation, and how much more expensive they will be...
 

esperandote

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Feb 25, 2009
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i have never played an online *looks akwardly at people staring* game neither i intend to do it any time soon, call me old school if you want, i dont like to play fps's or mmo's the only game i look foward to play on line when a get a new gen console is street fighter IV because i like fighting games (and KOF XII in case it haves an online mode, i dont know)
 

GoldenRaz

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Mar 21, 2009
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Well, MW2's campaign is well worth a replay, and then there's the whole Spec Ops part of the game to finish as well, so it's quite a lot more than just 6 hours if you actually take your time with it. Sure, some of the Spec Ops missions requires 2 players, but that's where your friends enter the picture.

Besides, if you think they cost too much for too little, wait until the prices drop before you buy them. For example, my brother got Wanted: WoF at about a fifth of the original price, and it can be finished in about 4 hours on normal difficulty and it completely lacks a multiplayer portion. But that's still more content than what I would have gotten for a DVD at the same price, so it's not all that bad.
 

Numb1lp

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Jan 21, 2009
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I agree. I am not much of a multi-player person anyway. I would like to see some longer 1st person campaings.
 

Del-Toro

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Aug 6, 2008
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Howdy fellow rarity, I don't really care for multiplayer either, I just don't like the people that tend to frequent those. Besides, if the single player isn't worth playing then you can be sure that multiplayer won't excuse it.
 

Ace of Spades

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Jul 12, 2008
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You can't have every game be long. If you want long games, stick to RPGs. Borderlands took me quite a while to finish, and in theory you could go through it several times without it being quite the same. FF12 also sticks out in my mind as the game I sank more than 50 hours into.
 

slipknot4

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Feb 19, 2009
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toapat said:
slipknot4 said:
FPS games are multiplayer, if you buy one for the single player experience you're stupid
wrong. FPS games have to be made specifically and only for Multiplayer to be good in multiplayer. MW2 sucks for this reason. this is why the single best FPS made so far is Battlefield 2, as bad company also fucked up it's priorities.
Bad company was a game you played for the story. A game without a campaign mode is nothing but a disc with a physics engine and a graphics renderer.
Battlefield 2 was a shallow game without any appeal. BFBC on the other had must have been one of the best FPS's ever made alongside Modern warfare 2.
But playing a FPS for the story only is stupid.
 

Carnagath

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Apr 18, 2009
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Woodsey said:
Arkham Asylum isn't short if you complete all the riddler challenges, get all the achievements/trophies and play the game through twice at least (which everyone must do). And the challenge rooms can be offline as well.
Yeah that's how it seems to work these days, devs make terribly short games but ALWAYS with a pinch of "sandbox-ness", then dump all kinds of little shit all over the game world and basically tell players "There, now the game is twice as long". Bull. Fucking. Shit. I can never be arsed with that crap and I know tons of other people who also can't. Secrets and stuff like that are supposed to be a cool little ADDITION to a game for those psychotic enough to go after them all or stupid enough to be alt tabbing to a gamefaqs guide every 5 seconds, NOT a way to make a terribly short game become of decent length.