(Discussion) How Long Should Video Games Be? - Retro Bird
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
- What's the perfect length for a video game? Well, I'd argue that it depends on the individual game as well as a lot of other factors. In this video, I discuss the different variables that determine why we prefer certain games to last or not last as long as they do.
(Discussion) How Long Should Video Games Be? - Retro Bird / How Much Time Should It Take to Play through a Game? / Perfect Length for Video Game / Ideal / Perfect Length of Video Game
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I typically have one JRPG working while I play various shmups and rouge style games. One game I'm putting serious time into while I take breaks and have micro experiences with short action oriented games.
I have been doing the same thing. I use my phone to play JRPGs, and my XBOX One to play all the action games from COD WW2 to the Megaman Classic series.
I will often do this too!
That's funny, I just played through Xenoblade Chronicles 2 last month and before I was able to start shin megami tensei 5, I had to play some Cuphead as a palate cleanser.
Same here.
For action games, I would love to see a trend of AAA developers releasing $20 games with 4-6 hours of gameplay instead of $60 games with 12-18 hours of gameplay.
This would be great
Ditto what he said. That's what I was going to add.
That sounds like a great idea honestly! Maybe they could release a shorter and cheaper version of the game for those who have less free time to play their video games or just aren't willing to put many hours into a game.
This would help keep games a smaller files size and actually fit on a cart or disc. Maybe then we wouldn't need to download the rest of a game and move away from the all digital future of cloud gaming and streaming. Definitely would prefer it for this and all he reasons stated in this Video.
FPS should be at least 6 hours average, racing like NFS should be 10.
I don't mind longer games, but I hate feeling lost when I come back to them if it's been a while. I really prefer ones that I can play in bite-sized chunks or are easy to pick back up after an extended break.
I'm in the same boat with you there I love playing RPGs but if I'd step away from them for a couple of days but I have to remember where I stopped at and what I'm supposed to do next like for example I'm revisiting the first Final Fantasy remaster on PSP and I'm a few hours in so far and I forgot what I'm supposed to do next but the one good thing about it is that game will allow you to save pretty much anytime you're ready to so if I can only get a few minutes and then I'll just grind for a few minutes then save again and pick up where I left off again next time so that's a good thing at least
:) :)
This is exactly why retro gaming is so appealing as an adult. With modern games, after the splash screens, online and dlc checks and load times it seems like 15 minutes or so before you start the game. If you have a full time job and family sometimes that's all the time you have.
True
I really like the length of the handheld metroidvanias. I usually sink about 10-12 hours into them. Just meaty enough to feel like a full experience, but no filler to pad them out.
I also like a good action platformer that I can plow through in less than an hour if I don’t have a ton of time on my hands.
just finished metroid zero mission the other day, great game. to me, though it was super short, (especially because i dont go for 100 percent), it was kind of the perfect length. just a nice short and sweet adventure.
Spiderman Shattered Dimensions and Web of Shadows on the original DS are like 5-6 hours on a first playthrough and half that on a second. They get right to it. I appreciate that but the 10-12 hour ones are great too.
Which are your favorite handheld metroidvanias? I've played Metroid Fusion and Metroid Samus Returns 3DS.
@@insertscaryname all the GBA castlevanias are great (especially Aria of Sorrow) and the DS castlevanias are all phenomenal games. And Metroid fusion and zero mission are both fantastic on GBA as well
Ideal game length depends on what you're playing for. When I was single and lived alone, my FFXI (MMO) group offered companionship. I played that for 20-30 hours per week for four years. I'd never have time for that today but I cherish the memories. It was the people that made that game worth playing for so long.
I am a parent for two kids and with a full time job, but i recently played through Dragon Warrior VII which is a 100 hour game. (I clocked in at 105 hours just for the main story).
My point is, if you enjoy the game, then just take the baby steps in playing it if you think it’s fun :) it is really the same thing playing such a game for an hour a day until you beat it than just completing an hour long nes game for a night.
Nice. I just got to disc 2 at like 60 hours. Luckily I'm playing on Duckstation emulator and can speed up all the job grinding monotony.
Someone beat that game in 24 minutes but that was with tons of practice and all the game manipulations without Someone did it in about 5hrs again with practice
I had a holiday for 2 weeks and I no lifed persona 5 and did everything in the game 100%. Not sure if I'm proud for doing it or not, but at least it's off the backlog.
Great video! As I get older and work and family responsibilities increase, I don’t have as many opportunities for longer games. The sweet spot for a game is usually around 8-15 hours, depending on the genre. But I absolutely prefer quality over quantity. If I want more from a short game, I’ll replay the game on a different difficulty, taking different routes, etc. Rare are the times when I say, “That was good, but I wish that game was longer.” (I feel the same about movies!)
Now that I'm a bit older (22, still not that old lol) I'm really starting to see the value in games I can pick up and play in my spare time in bite sized pieces. Metroid, Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, these types of games. When I was younger, I was RPGs all the way tho lol. I've also grown to enjoy the challenge of some of these 2D platformers more. I was amazed by how I could actually play through the entire Metroid series (in anticipation of dread) in a relatively short amount of time and the games are still fantastic!
I wish we were friends IRL, you're a great conversationalist. Love your videos, from a still-kid born in '86.
Hey man, relatively new to your channel, and have binged watched many of your videos. Excellent content!
To answer your question, I'm mostly an rpg player. So this is odd for me. As I get older, obviously I have much less time and more money than I used to. It's hard for me to make it through super long games these days, as much as I enjoy them. So it's really a matter of how engaging moment to moment the game is.
I just beat Ys IX, and I had an absolute blast. It was also pretty short for an rpg. It took me a little over 30 hours and I completed all quests, although I didn't get every weapon/collectible.
So now. I'd say my sweet spot would be 25-35 hours, and I hardly complete all side content these days. Yeah back in the day I'd milk every game for everything they had, but I just don't have it in me anymore.
Edit: also more importantly, I really appreciate your love for bananas, and I to am a hardcore banana enjoyer.
Glad to have a fellow lover of bananas on the channel! Thank you for the kind words 😊
Haha time is a killer. Thanks for another thoughtful and thought-provoking video.
I have recently obtained a large number of games, and I now need to figure out how to schedule playing time. Until then, I’m playing only in short snippets- mostly racing games and basic platformers. Anything requiring any level of actual attention is getting ignored for now.
Thanks as always!! Take care
As time has gone on (I'm born 85) and I feel I've been gaming long enough to see the main evelution of games feel we are hitting a ceiling when it Comes to how big certain games are, they are so big most people won't play them. Looking back I think the ps2 /gamecube era was the sweetspot.. The games where big enough to feel epic but small enough that they could make 2 sequels in a Console generation.. We should go back to that size games but ofc keep pushing the visuals.. I'd rather see how they evolve over 3 shorter games than one pr decade
Oh Battletoads! The game that started my baldness early in life. I was so proud of myself when I completed the vehicle stage. Then came the snake stage along with my rage quit. The 10 year-old boy within me changed forever. I started concentrating in school more rather than gaming.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was my breaking point on game lengths. I don’t have a minimum time limit as long as I’m having fun the amount of time doesn’t matter. I replay Super Mario Land every few months because it’s an enjoyable experience that can easily be beaten in 30 minutes and I’m completely satisfied. My maximum limit is usually 20-25 hours. I don’t necessarily want to spend so much time on one game that I don’t get to play other things. Some of my most replayed games are on the shorter side because they aren’t as time consuming. I consistently go back to Nintendo games for this reason.
Looking back at me when I was unemployed and put 121 hours into elden ring in around 2 weeks. That game now would take me months to finish
Totally agree. Longer games were more desirable when i was younger but not so much now. A good game is always welcome but the thing about a longer game is you can't take a break for too long without completely forgetting what the the heck you were doing, where you were going and if it had story good luck keeping up with the plot points and character progression.
That banana was medium well... delicious.
Yay! I'm first again!😁. Already know it's going to be great content before I even watch it!
I hit "publish video" and your comment was immediately there right after.
This is exactly why with my schedule, platformers are usually the go-to game when I have some free time. Just getting the edge off by enjoying a video game where I'm in and out just resonates better. Don't get me wrong, I love action/adventure games, RPG's/JRPG's, but they've got to really peak my interest for me to pick it up these days. Great video as always.
Even short games take me weeks to beat at this point due to time constraints and a short attention span. It does make the games feel more worthwhile when I finally do beat them, so I can't say I'd prefer them to be shorter. Still, it's nice to be able to grab a game and make legitimate progress every now and then.
Actually, some games like Sim City are arguably open-ended - there's no real length, I think as a pre-teen I spent countless hours on that game (SNES version, Mac System 7 version too). My dad (then in his late 40s) also stayed up late playing it, and we would show each other our cities after lunch on Saturdays and discuss tactics. He'd load up my game and wonder how I got 2/3rds of a commercial block with a full residential "on top" of it, or a partial fire station ;)
These games have practically infinite replayability.
You're right! Some games are definitely open-ended.
I miss good quality Sim City Games like Sim Tower
@@jthespiceoflife Oh man, I have the box of Simtower that I got at Costco in like 1998, but the CD is long gone. I guess I could just burn it....
@@the_kombinator i got both box and CD. I spent most of my young teen years playing that game. Has anyone played skylines? Great sucesor to SimTower!
I just played and completed Toe Jam and Earl Back in the Groove on the Switch. Aka the perfect amount of time for a game.
I played Elite Frontier on the Amiga for about 3 Years every Day. Now I’m happy when I have time to play Tetris for 10 Minutes.
Your content always fun and entertaining
These conversations would make excellent podcasts. Much to think about & much enjoyed 😄👍
Depends on the pacing of the game - I feel a lot of 80+ hour games are filled with a lot of fluff side missions or cut scenes. Not really my cup of tea. It's also the reason why I play the main story and then call it quits. Horizon Zero Dawn is about as long of a game as I'll go.
Good video! To address the question, I think as long as the game isn't wasting my time the length is generally pretty appropriate. And I hate to say it but this mostly applies to overly long RPGs or any game that insists on excessive grinding. For this reason I've never played an MMO. These days I generally prefer my AAA single player titles to be around 8-15 hours with maybe another 5 if I'm going for 100%. Older platform and action titles anywhere between a half hour to about 5 is usually about right. The new Metroid game's length was perfect.
My first completion of Dread was a clear time of about 13 hours (longer to actually play and die and figure it out etc). Then 8, then 5, then 3 hours 30 mins.. great game. Nice scenes, good stuff!
An older friend gave me a copy of Shining in the Darkness when I was a teenager, saying he didn’t have enough time for it anymore. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. I find myself playing shorter games on my Atari or NES, or other games on later consoles that I can pick up and play a few minutes at a time.
Love your channel. You my friend are the NSAVGN - the Not So Angry Video Game Nerd. Good content, good humor, good non angry cheer.
Thanks for the positive vibes my friend!
At least 25 years to become retro.
If it's 25 years old or older
then it's an antique 🕹🤩🕹🥳
Nice, two of my cars are in that category, with one more coming up to it in 2 years ;)
Funny to think that Super Mario Bros is almost 37 years old.
As a Dad with 2 under 2 I completely understand a game being too long. I like a game to be around 10 hours now, whereas I used to love longer games. Plus it’s hard on my when control schemes stray too far from normal, because if I have to go a long time between sessions I forget the controls and basically have to relearn how to play
Another fun video RetroBird and excellent points made. As a kid I loved rpgs but now have a lot of trouble sticking with them because of having to step away and forgetting what was going on.. So a 6 to 12 hour rpg/adventure is about perfect and I’m often playing one game like that while mixing in a lot of shorter run and guns, shooters, platformers, etc for variety. This allows me to try a lot more but no matter how many games I check off my list it still keeps getting longer.
Thank you for watching as always!
I have to say thank goodness for save states for classic and retro games! Yeah, some classic games can be short (if you are skilled and know what you are doing), but, as you mentioned, required you to beat it in one sitting. It is great to have a way to just pick up where you left off and not worry about having to start the game over every time you play.
The proper length of a game is the one that fits into the cartridge port
Love your take on this topic.
I tend to side with wanting higher replay value that length. So many issues arise from too long of a game. Like being in the middle of a game, the midlog if you will, not coming back to it for a while so you have to relearn how to play or forgetting the story... Im looking at you Red Dead Redemption 2. Or what about avoiding certain games or series because you know it's long? I still haven't played Skyrim for this very reason. I also haven't played a single GTA game all the way through. Sure I own many of the GTA games but I've never been able to get through them dreading their length. Final Fantasy is another series many are surprised I haven't played beyond the 1st NES game. I own some of them just haven't had the time to delve into them.
If a game is going to be long, I like how you put out the argument about making it count. Some games are good and mix up the game play enough to keep it fresh that you don't mind it being longer. Mario games come to mind. But for every one of those you run into the damned fetch quest filled nightmares. As much as I love the Assassin's Creed series, the last few titles have been chalk full of those bastards.
This is a major reason why I will always favor the NES. Even the longer titles can typically be beaten in a day. Others are challenging enough to keep you coming back. Finally there are just those that are so damn good you keep coming back to them despite them typically being shorter games.
For what it's worth, I have enjoyed Metroid Dread a ton. I can see myself playing through it again.
Even as a 20 year old back then, I just did the main missions for games like GTA and other open world games. I have a 3rd daughter due Dec. 3rd. I wish I had time for a lot of games. I just beat Dread last night. I bought it day 1. Lol. That's how much time in a week I have. It's tough.
you are absolutely right , i think short games with great gameplay better 1000s time than normal modern long game ,
As an adult I don't have nearly the amount of time I did as a kid for those marathon play sessions. So in a way the length of a game helps me decide what to play. My current preference is for shorter games with lots of replay value (think like arcade games). The Switch in particular is my favorite system because it allows me to play for short stints (30mins) and save any game at virtually any time through standby.
Slay The Spire has done that for me lately
Should consider game pass cloud streaming if your not home to play these longer games, just need to bring a controller
@@cornpop2630 These days I'm at home 24/7, just don't have time to play games for longer than an hour at a time. 😷
04:50 "My goodness! You dirty dog of a game!" Haha! facts right there!
For me, i have big chunknof games which take up to 15-20 hrs to beat. A good lenght in my opinion. At the moment i play the Soulsbourne games and they can go on forever for me. I love them.
It's really just long enough to get the point across while staying fun. Some games need more time to breathe, because exploring and soaking them in is what makes them fun. Others need to be brief so as to avoid becoming repetitive. Like, and arcade beat 'em up that lasts more than half an hour is usually too long, because gameplay starts to get same-y unless you have wild new set pieces everywhere. A shooter (shmup I suppose) also generally needs a similar run time. A metroidvania has a lot of flexibility as long as it maintains a pace of discovery and progress. Each has its place, and along as it hits its intent without getting boring, then it's the right length.
As an adult with a full time job and kids, I appreciate games with quick action and short gameplay (2d action/platformers) or games that might be longer but have standard controls, simple gameplay, and short enough segments to be have some sense of accomplishment or closure with only 30-45 minutes of play with a total of 10-15 hours.
As a 13 year old retro gamer who’s homeschooled and only exercises for 2 hours a day…my games can be any amount of time, usually I’ll play some arcade style games that are just pick up and play, but I’ll play them for a solid 3 hours before moving on. XD and then I’ll play some 2d action platformers as well, and sometimes I rarely switch it up and go modern and play some Dark Souls. But on the occasion, I’ll play other RPG’s like The Legend of Zelda which I devote a week out of my life to complete!
@@SirSiegward
The Legend of Zelda is a great game and deserves a week to itself. I have a lot of memories tied to that game. I think it’s a masterpiece. Devoting an entire week? By all means! 👍🏻
@@totallyfrozen I actually like The Legend of Zelda 2 which is funny considering it’s the black sheep of the family…ocarina of time or A Link to The Past have to be my favorites though! Zelda 2 was the only Zelda game my dad had growing up, so he handed it down to me…and that’s what I played as a youngin.
@@SirSiegward As someone who just finished Majoras Mask, I highly recommend it! It's all the good from ocarina of time but in a whole new world and adventure. :D
@@epicstacker413 I know! I have all of The Zelda games in my collection, just not the awful CDI ones. XD
I think you make alot of great points. For me, I will make time for a game if it is good enough. I really liked Fallout New Vegas' approach concerning time, you could go all out, explore every single bit of the map, and spend 150+ hours including main story, sidequesting, and looting and have a very deep story and know all there is to know, or you can just do the main questline and spend somewhere under 30 hours to complete and still get the core of the story. I think the big rule for me is that if I'm going to spend over 15-20 hours on a game, the story has to be very good to justify it. I do find that I enjoy shorter games more and more as I get older. I really like the balance of some of the older Tony Hawk games for example, You can sit down on a Saturday morning and have the game beat by noon.
8:07 that banana has achieved peak perfection for immediate mastication.
I like long games but as a father of a 1 year old I can only play about twice a week maybe 5 hrs all together..last weekend I been playing dragon quest 8 ps2 an mass effect trilogy for months lol about done with both now..keep flying bird
For me, I’m really not concerned with finishing a game. I like to PLAY the games. It’s the gameplay that I enjoy, not some sense of “accomplishment” for finishing a game. So, with that in mind, I don’t care too much how long a game is. I do have a problem if I can’t get back to the game in a reasonable time because I forget what I was doing or even how to play the game. I could go a few rounds of spade invaders or get into an RPG, either way. For me it’s about the act of playing it and being able to find the time to get back to it.
Yeah I've been finishing games lately and sometimes it's not always rewarding especially when you finish a game you really enjoyed playing. Then it's like what game do I play next lol... You're right it's really just about enjoying the game and not forgetting where you left off on a RPG
Particularly for older games, the lack of save states make it imperative that the game isn't longer than 2 hours. New ones as long as the monotonous side content isn't really present.
Well without saves or passwords. I have likely played 500 hours of castlevania so now I can beat it in 30 minutes or less... and I keep coming back
@@AxiomofDiscord which one the NES, or Playstation
@@Jburneyjr I mean Castlevania the first one on the NES. I am still not happy with how I perform on that game so I just keep playing it. My goal is to beat it without continuing the best I have done is to continue once and I have done that only twice.
I plan to move to Dracula's Curse after achieving that which is likely the game that I played the second most. I never really cared for the Metroidvanias term or the game style. Well ok, I enjoyed them but not nearly as much as the classic-style games. I felt the leveling up made the games a bit too easy and padding the game out and flipping a castle was the ultimate insult in regards to padding. The game was made super long in comparison just because it could be made super long. Outside of that, the gameplay was solid and it was fun. I just beat it once and don't really plan to play it ever again and never finish any of the handheld ones.
Another A+ video.
Thanks :)
12 stages in battletoads? that's awesome :) playing this since nes in like 1992, and with all continues i can get to stage 5 i think, the one with snow and that snowmans, turbo tunnel is crazy, i was able to beat it as a kid, and as an adult also but with lots of repetition....i know i can easily beat that with save states, but i don't wanna do that, i haven't even saw stage 6 and beyond...also playing arcade version now, it looks so much better then nes, and also got to snow stage, but nes has special place in my heart because i play that everyday in 90s with my best childhood friend :) also probotector II...we had so much fun with that
Cool vid and nice work getting a banana in there, banana nut muffins are great. As for game length, it's like you said, it really depends on the game and genre. I've poured hundreds of hours each into Okami, Skyrim, and Forza Horizon games. However, as an adult w/a family and responsibility long games aren't always in the cards. That's where quick games you can jump in and out of work. A lot of classic and arcade games fit in here. Games like say Sonic, Street Fighter, or just last night Smash TV let you have some quick fun. There's room for longer games and quicker stuff, you just have to know what fits into the free time you have available. I save the linger stuff for the weekends.
One of my top ten games on the Sega Saturn is Super Tempo. It can be finished in under 3 hours. Desperately in need of a fan translation, Super Tempo is hilarious.
I’m so glad you mentioned Red Ded Redemption 2. I loved the first RDR, but the second one was just plain boring. I pushed myself to beat it, but I honestly didn’t like it. I also felt the same way about Persona 5. Because I heard so many great things, I put 116 hours into Persona 5 to beat it, and I was left very disappointed. I would say half of those 116 hours were teenagers texting each other and summarizing what already happened in a cutscene, and the teenagers going out to eat sushi. Very boring, and way too long.
Agree with a lot of this statement, except P5, if you go into options & enable scrolling through continuous dialogue, it is MUCH MORE BEARABLE! I agree that it's repetitive & long, but this single feature helps a TON! Not sure why it isn't the default feature.
Great videos. Great content.
Thank you!
I loved RPG's and longer games back in the day. Sunk 100+ hrs into FFX, that said I've fallen harder into NES, SNES ect.. the older I get due to lack of time and their pick up and play style.. darn ⏳
I enjoy having options for game lengths. Back in the day, I would buy wrestling games and puzzle games for getting those shorter play sessions in, and buy Action RPG games for longer sessions. Just today, I don't have as much time, so I mostly just do my daily routines in Animal Crossing Wild World and New Leaf. Just would be cool if new games could be released with different prices for shorter games like Legends of Oz for 3DS (which I bought on sale for $10, but I later learned that the original buyers actually had to spend $30 for it).
I remember playing Conker's Bad Fur Day, and it was 20 hours long. Sounds bad, but ultimately worth it. The game constantly put you in new environments and new gameplay mechanics along with hilarious scenarios that made you keep wanting to play. And then when it suddenly ending, I was sad, because I got so used to it and I know there isn't a sequel.
We need more games like that, rather then having filer simply because it's quicker to make.
I think it's a very important factor in game design, and one that's a bit of an oversight for a lot of developers. A lot of my favourite games are relatively short, and exciting throughout. It's much easier for lead developers to consider how specific sections affect the game's pacing and overall enjoyment if they have the whole game in their head. It's much easier to design on those terms if you're making a game like Portal rather than something like Grand Theft Auto IV. Short games are more likely to have a lot of exciting one-off ideas, and they're much more welcoming to replay. Kirby's Dream Land is one of my favourites because it takes less than an hour to finish, and it has a lot of fun introducing whimsical and silly ideas and instantly moving onto the next thing.
That's not to dismiss the appeal of long games, though. If a game takes place in a rich, compelling world, and the gameplay has a lot of depth and options, it's annoying if the game doesn't take at least 40 hours to explore all of that. I'm much more welcoming of slow, methodical gameplay if it brings me closer to the minutia of surviving a huge hostile environment, like in Red Dead Redemption or Death Stranding. If a team are really skilled, attentive and careful, they can make huge games that remain exciting, fun and varied throughout, like Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Quest XI.
I think games are much more fun and interesting as a result of all their different lengths. Not every game should be a huge open-world experience, and it's also great that we've gone so far beyond shallow hour-long arcade experiences.
RPGs were always my favorite genre growing up because of the hours of gameplay, which was great as a kid, but now as an adult, I find it difficult to finish most RPGs. For instance, I bought Breath of the Wild years ago, sunk over 120 hours into the game, and because I'm a completionist, I put it aside over a year ago because I knew it'd probably take another 100 hours to get everything. I just have too many games to play, not even including my retro games that I play often. So nowadays, I'd prefer the games to be under 20 hours to finish everything. Anything beyond that, and it often ends up being a game I come back to a few years later and am like, "Oh yeah. I guess I should finish this one finally." I'll finish you one day Dark Souls trilogy, but I'd rather play Comix Zone or Sonic 3 & Knuckles on my Sega Nomad for the 1000th time instead.
Would live to see some text summary at the end. Seeing everything in one place would be good to spark discussion.
I get this urge to play an rpg all the way through, and tell myself I'm going to have a weekend where I play through it non stop. I get a few hours in and don't feel like hearing out another 30 min cutscene or grinding to beat a boss and I never play it again.
As an adult, I try to play shorter games due to having less time. The worst games for time are not the long ones but the games that use a real time clock like Animal Crossing.
A Short Hike was so short, it was therapy after completing. I got half way through Ni No Kuni 2 on PS4, am on a three year break.
Crystalis for NES took me forever as a kid to beat. It's kind of an every-other-Christmas break playthrough, which I can do with a bottle of scotch over the 2 week period. It brings back great memories.
That game could have been longer, actually ;)
For PCs, Star Control II - just... weeks, even months if you actually stop to do some of your homework and assignments ;)
For me the most important part is: how much fun is it to play a game.
I mentioned in lot of your comments section that I love Beat'em Ups (like Final Fight, Streets Of Rage). Those are imo short and I love to replay them.
The newest Ratchet And Clank on PS5 was short, but hell I had so much fun, that I put on a second walk through the game.
But then are those games like Dragon's Dogma or Kingdoms Of Amalur, which aren't that short but I replayed them two times minimum. Also been a big fan of The LOTR game Shadow of Mordor.
What all these games have in common for me, I always had fun going through them.
I can totally understand that "time" for us adults is on of the biggest enemy to our hobby (and in my case other hobbies, too 😂). The Witcher 3 is a good example from my experience, that I loved playing but stopped with nearly only a third of the game. It wasn't the fun, the big world, or all the storylines, it was that other games have come around.
Here I definitely would like to game on. It is easier here to replay a Zelda OOT than a Witcher 3. And in times where good games are around the corner felt like twice a week, those long games fall back. But in the end I always found a to play them, and because I had to, but because I wanted to dive in again.
I think having a mixed bag of these long games and short games has been a good way to manage the time but... yes Fun should be the mayor reason. Then hours can feel like minutes.
My favorite timeframe for a single player story adventure game is about 8-12 hours. RPGs I like to play for 25-30, not that I’ve never played longer games but I feel like those hit the sweet spot, like RDR2 could have been a sweet 30-35 hour game but they stretched it further and didn’t really need to.
I like long games mostly. I have alot of time on my hands since my body has been breaking down over the last three years. I like it when a game takes my mind off of my problems for a good long while.
What you said about long games being intimidating as an adult with other priorities pulling at us. Personally I'm a fan of when games allow for new game plus & are shorter, meaning I can get through it & keep going if I want to.
I think it depends on the genre and whether or not you want to get involved in a game's multiplayer (if that's available). Multiplayer can take up a lot of time, especially if you're trying to get really good at it. I suppose most of us with a job, kids, and a house to maintain don't have much of a chance to develop some serious skills online. Heck, there are single player games that require laser-focused attention and zero disturbances, which some of us just can't dedicate enough time to. Time is precious. If your life is very busy and you start to crave gaming, a handheld loaded with emulators and retro games (with save states) sure seems like the way to go. Just whip it out when the time is right.
...yep, that sounded wrong
Time is the worst. There’s never enough.
Got Metroid Dread and figured I’d play through the whole 2D series first, subbing Zero Mission for the original in order. Two weeks later I’m still not done with Zero Mission.
Haha I did the same… got Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion on the Wii U, and have Super Metroid on my SNES Classic. I’m not even bothering buying Dread until I’ve put at least a bit more time in the older classics
Zero mission is too easy
@@richterbelmont5506 I agree it is, but it has some length. Even if you’ve played NES Metroid, the rehash of it is so different in layout with a lot more content that it takes a while to navigate through, especially for the 100%. Beating the game for the first time took 6:50, the 100% was 9 hours lol.
25 to 30 quality hours is a sweet spot …
I really enjoyed Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, a game that took me over 100 hours to beat. I love the atmosphere, visual design, voice acting, and humour of that game. It got me through some really hard times! I also like how it never felt overly difficult. Everything is doable if you just put the time into it.
For me everything between 10-60 hours is the perfect length. Depending on the game. I would rather have a well written and good paced story not overstaying its welcome. I would also rather play a game I like very much twice than having it waste my time with Ubisoft open world tropes. I have spent longer time in games like Skyrim and Witcher 3 but that doesent mean that every game has to last for 130+ hours, or benifits from it. I usually grow tired of everlasting games and never bother completing the story even if I liked it, simply because everything between the story bits are taking too long or are repeated too much.
It's a shame that more games don't have just "a quick little story for ya!"
I typically only want to be ONE game at the time, so it’s quite a commitment to delve into a big game. Recently finished Death Stranding DC, which took me about 55h. Loved it though, so no problems there!
55 hours? Dang. I have the game but haven't started it yet. Not sure I want to get into a game that long. It'll take me months to finish. Was it 55 hours at 100% completion? Or did you just do the main storyline?
As an adult, married, kids, work. Time is non existent for me. And I love RPG'S. So I usually head to How long to beat, to get an idea of how long a game is before I decide to jump in
How am I just finding you?!?! Binge Mode Activated.
As a kid, I beat Mario Land 2 start to finish the day I got it and was horribly disappointed. Final Fantasy 3 went on for 35 hours and I thought gaming couldn't get any better.
It took me 12 hours to beat Metroid Dread now and it was perfect! Meanwhile, at hour 45 on Great Ace Attorney Chronicles I'm like, man, this was fun, but can this just be over?!
Getting old, man...
Hahah :)
retro bird, yeah 🎵
As a completionist gamer I like to 100% my games. My adult lifestyle and longer games of today drastically leave me wondering what games that I am genuinely interested in such as Zelda BOTW and Animal Crossing New Horizons are really like. Instead of being irritated of not finishing a long game that I started, i’d rather stick to my retro games for a quick jolt of fun! A great modern day example of such of a game is Crusi’n Blast!
I want to give a shout out to the game Eastward for Nintendo Switch. It's a charming action RPG like Zelda but with more story and character focus, less on the combat.
The pacing in the game is great! There are chapters and intermissions that regularly break apart the continuity of the game, literally stopping you from playing with a To Be Continued... screen saying, "Save? => Continue playing?" I find this to be such a wonderful way to pick up, play, and have designed places to put it down. It reminds me of old TV shows... "tune in next week!" The story keeps going! Often I'll go days or a week without playing, knowing that when I pick it back up I'll be going on another adventure that's decently bite-sized of 60-90 minutes (usually). I'm 18 hours in and barely noticed!
The shorter games are usually my go-to now. Then again I put 700 and 500 hours into each of The Division games within the last 5 years XD I'm 34 now.
i notice that newer games have so many check points and auto saves but back in the day you could only save in spots
longer games are some what more bareable know a days
Is this week's theme "too much time gaming?" I saw your post earlier about what Friday's video is going to be.
Haha you got it!
I think the thing that turns me off most about modern, AAA games is the extreme lengths, which is mostly mostly occupied by cumbersome filler. If you give me 6-12 hour tight experiences for adventure games, and maybe 20-25 hours tight RPG games, I'm happy. That's why I'm going backwards and exploring games I never got around to playing on SNES and PS1.
If the games good and keeps my attention I'll gladly sink time into it but the truth is I'm more of a juggler. I want to try them all so I do and I usually end up juggling a few at a time that grab me then I just alternate them till either they or I am done. I don't HAVE to complete them. I just have to enjoy them.
thank you for the amazing Discussions ,
can you please make a video about " music in old " retro " games a lot better than most modern games
I did a video about music, but it's one of my older videos at this point. I'll have to revisit it at some point!
Yeah, as a kid, a lot of old 8 and 16 bit games were really tough and required you to complete them in one sitting. The games usually seemed longer as with some games, you usually had to start all over if you died.
However, as an adult with more gaming options and less time, I tend to prefer bite-size gaming experiences now. I don't usually play games that drag on too long or require a lot of grinding. I like games that I can just jump in, play for a bit, and enjoy the experience.
I typically like short games. 6 hours is about right.
What you said about series rings true. I wanted to try the Phantasy star games before playing 4. Walked out of town in first one, died in second fight. Then it sinks in just how grindy this is going to be. Nah, i'll pass, just don't have that kind of time. Have been starting down Shining force 2 for months now. Always find the one other game I still want to do before being locked for... 3 months on the same game. I indeed used to think the opposite when younger. But sometimes you just have to think things on a larger time scale. I've been playing the same game of Morrowind for...6 years now. A few days a year advancing.
10-16 hrs. I enjoy Shorter horror games resident evils,silent hills,dead space,D2,until dawn,Fatal frame because their replay value.🧟♀️Same length for a platformer.
But I still enjoy dedicating 5-6 months on a ff,dragon quest,persona,tales of no no Kuni once a yr.
My favorite are real old RPGs. Like, Apple 2 and Amiga old. I like cryptic time wasters. I like doing them blind so I can get my ass kicked plenty to figure out the controls. I like shop menus and magic casting to be overly convoluted. I like discovering useful game mechanics at the end of the game. I like taking an hour to put on my pants then walk outside and be told to put my pants on.
In my late 30s now and 15-20 hour games are perfect, if it's really good I'll put another 10 in it for the plat. A game needs to be something special for me to put aside 100+ hours for it and it'll generally take me 6 months to a year or beat it.
Almost 40 myself, I do play HOMM2 on a retro computer quite a bit - I'd be sitting there at like 2AM and I'm like... shit I gotta work tomorrow. Thankfully there's a save option, otherwise I'd leave the computer on like I did as a kid with an NES. Most times I was lucky enough to come back to it and it was on ;). I just asked my parents to not turn it off after the third time they did it, and they complied ;)
Im cool with high score games that can be over cuz im outta lives in 10 mins like a space invaders or cosmic avenger, but the sweet spot is those 45 min-90 minute games. Like a double dragon, a contra, so i can pause and eat a slice. The longest games i can tolerate are gonna still be something like rygar, simons quest, original zelda or a sports game where you can save after each match up. RPGs especially epic ones never got my interest. It just always seemed like people were saying 'this game will suck less, if you play it more' and my counter point would be 'whats the point of struggling to get more powerful if the enemies are also at an equal rate?'
Modern action games, around 15/20 hours of singleplayer campaign is sweet spot for me. Like Guardians of the Galaxy.
RPGs, Somewhere around 40 hours, like Tales of Arise and FF7 Remake.
Side note; Secret of Mana, as well.
I'm mid 30th and father and have not much time to play. So the playtime is a big factor if I play a game.
I mostly play games that take somewhere between 6 - 12 hours and throw in one long game per year. In 2020 I played Xenoblade chronicles (on the wii), 70 hours of playtime but is was worth it. This year played Xenoblade chronicles X same playtime but nearly as much fun. In 2022 maybe the new Zelda of XC2.
When I was in my early 20's I liked a lot of longer games but now that I'm in my mid 30's, I prefer a game that is less than 20 hrs (for the most part, Zelda and Mass Effect are my two exceptions). I've also noticed that open world games tend to have the least amount of replay value with me and I have lost my interest in the majority of them. I haven't played an Assassins Creed game since the Ezio trilogy and I haven't ever wanted to replay one of them. I find that time spent traveling from one destination to the next and fighting repeated mini bosses greatly detracts from the replay value and I will lose interest very quickly. I didn't even finish Infamous 2 because I just got sick of having to continuously fight those "sand worm" mini bosses over and over again.
Arcade games is where it's at for me
While the entire game Street Fighter 2 may last half an hour there's always strategies to learn and other fighters to play with.
Any games that rely on skill for progression are good.
Ghouls n Ghosts for example action all the way through and if you not good enough you won't beat it but slowly slowly bit by bit you beat each level and once you are good at it you could probably beat the game in half an hour.
Although I do play some RPG's I can't play them all at once.
I have started several RPG's like
Grandia - Sega Saturn
Final Fantasy 8 - PS1
Dragon Quest 8 - PS2
Trials Of Mana - PC / Snes
Secret of Mana - snes
Trails of Cold Steel
Kingdom hearts PS2
Persona 3 Fes PS2
I started but I come back to play them sometimes only as I don't have the time and by the time I get back to them I forget what i was supposed to do.
For the battle Toad game all they had to do was give you passcodes for each level. As for Red Dead Redemption 2. I stayed away from that game because I heard it was even longer than the 1st game. Yeah I agree with you the horse riding gets boring real quick when it takes a long time to get from point A to B.
There are tens of thousands of video games in the world, most of the games people play are longer, there's not that much time to play, and still for some reason people just keep asking about replayability