Now this complaint I never got

[Wyrmlord]

You'll be amazed by all the people who tell me they didn't like or didn't finish Deus Ex, because it is too long.

Too long? That game? My saves always showed 16 hours.

That's not a long game. How can anyone get that idea.

It's a phenomenon unique to Deus Ex. Normally, anyone would think a 16 hour game is short, and the same folks tell me they find the Jedi Knight games to be short. So how is Deus Ex long?

Is it that Deus Ex FEELS long, without being long? Most queer.

 

[baronjohn]

Welcome to the brave new world. If it's longer than COD it's too long.

 

[Destroid]

I wonder how those people feel about Bethesda's and Bioware's long ass games.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Exactly. Those developers still make very long games, but nobody minds their lengths.

Even online, I remember some Gamespy Forum guys who had otherwise still played the BG games and yet used to say, "I was playing Deus Ex, and after reaching Vandenberg Base, I thought, does this game ever end? Then I quit."

Maybe it's because Deus Ex has huge levels, while the long lengths of these mainstream roleplaying games come from exploring flat areas that don't have a dozen ways to get from one point to another.

PS: On that note, I laugh at the people who think it's FPSes that are often acknowledged and RPGs ignored. These days we see bestselling RPGs and underappreciated FPSes, because it is RPGs that are the light and easy to pick up and play genre. Decent shooters like STALKER are not as talked about as games like Mass Effect, for example. The public LOVES games where people keep talking and talking, as opposed to games where they are always under virtual danger.

 

[Metro]

You'll be amazed by all the people who tell me they didn't like or didn't finish Deus Ex, because it is too long.

99% of the time I see people complain a game is too long I want to fucking strangle them. There are some exceptions where a game is just padded with a lot of filler for the sake of drawing it out but I just don't understand why people would want less content. I gave some feedback on Hydrophobia on another forum saying it was only about three or so hours long as a con and most of the derp heads thought that was a pro: 'Good, easy to finish!'

 

[Konjad]

Same with Alice Madness Returns on another forum. Someone said the game is too fucking long which made me pretty surprised since it's just about 20 hours long. People want game that they can finish in one day, it seems.

 

[Gord]

Interesting. Neither did the game bore me, nor did I think it's too long, but I certainly would have put it at substantially more than 20 hours.

 

[poocolator]

You'll be amazed by all the people who tell me they didn't like or didn't finish Deus Ex, because it is too long.

Too long? That game? My saves always showed 16 hours.

That's not a long game. How can anyone get that idea.

It's a phenomenon unique to Deus Ex. Normally, anyone would think a 16 hour game is short, and the same folks tell me they find the Jedi Knight games to be short. So how is Deus Ex long?

Is it that Deus Ex FEELS long, without being long? Most queer.

Well, when did they first play it?
If you're talking to people who tried playing it since, say 2005, then you'll probably hit a snag no matter what. In that case, your arguments would be folding back upon themselves like the rigor mortis of a Romanian gymnast bitch dead at 30.

 

[anus_pounder]

The first few times I could make the full 16 hours, nowadays I usually lose interest post france. The last time I played, I stopped after Hong Kong.

 

[Excommunicator]

A game can never be too long. Only too boring to keep playing.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

People who claim they "don't have time anymore" to finish 20-hour games but will merrily devour four shitty 5-hour shooters/spend days playing Farmville/sit about watching TV endlessly complaining they have nothing to do are high on my list of those who will be first against the wall when the time management classes come.

 

[Roguey]

My first Deus Ex save is nearly 35 hours long, however I exhausted every NPC's conversation options, read every piece of text I could find, explored every nook and cranny, and so on. My quickest is around 14.

I think their issue is pacing. The earlier parts are good about mixing up the socializing areas with the shooting/sneaking areas, but once you leave Paris you're pretty much non-stop shooting/sneaking through first Vandenberg then a quick trip to the gas station then the ocean labs then the missile silo then all those levels of Area 51 punctuated with minutes long conversations at best (with no UNATCO, Hell's Kitchen, Hong Kong, or Paris to run around in) and that could be perceived as draining. But anyone who says Area 51 is linear and boring is wrong.

 

[Wyrmlord]

People who claim they "don't have time anymore" to finish 20-hour games but will merrily devour four shitty 5-hour shooters/spend days playing Farmville/sit about watching TV endlessly complaining they have nothing to do are high on my list of those who will be first against the wall when the time management classes come.

Well yeah.

Although we mustn't think or care too much about what other people's opinions are or how they manage their time, I have found this to be a confounding issue.

Example: an indepedendent game reviews site, Adrenaline Vault, had a staff with people mostly above the age of 40. Now, these people rarely completed a game that was above 5 hours long. Okay. I sympathise. They are adults, so they are probably quite busy.

Except they are not busy. Going by what they kept posting, they had a lot of free time considering the half a dozen TV shows they regularly watched, the new games they kept buying and playing, and the game-related podcasts, reviews, and management they kept handling. Not to mention their visiting and moderating the forums.

In short, they had a lot of free time. It's just that they preferred to spend it on superficially playing every newly purchased game they had. Well, whatever floats their boat. Except they ranted and bitched about games and decline as much as people on Codex do. That's when I say, "Why don't you actually finish some of the good games you have in your backlog". Again, the not enough free time card. BIZZARE.

 

[Carrion]

I think their issue is pacing. The earlier parts are good about mixing up the socializing areas with the shooting/sneaking areas, but once you leave Paris you're pretty much non-stop shooting/sneaking through first Vandenberg then a quick trip to the gas station then the ocean labs then the missile silo then all those levels of Area 51 punctuated with minutes long conversations at best (with no UNATCO, Hell's Kitchen, Hong Kong, or Paris to run around in) and that could be perceived as draining. But anyone who says Area 51 is linear and boring is wrong.

I'd say the pacing of the story is somewhat different compared to most other games as well. You might think that Paris or even Hong Kong would be a prelude to the endgame, but actually that's where the story really gets going. I do agree that the huge compounds in the later parts of the game might be the biggest factor, though.

 

[Renegen]

Maybe on a level those who complain about games that are too long have just never gotten past the Super Mario phase of gaming. To them gaming is a way to eat a few minutes, get a few laughs. It's not something to invest in or dig deeper.

 

[Oriebam]

The first few times I could make the full 16 hours, nowadays I usually lose interest post france. The last time I played, I stopped after Hong Kong.

Same here, I think most people end up forcing themselves to (re)finish the game because of the last few hours.

 

[Lightknight]

Deus Ex was pretty long. The first time i played, after i got to the gas station i kept expecting the end. But it just kept going on.

Another long game is NOLF1, i could see the end on the horizon, especially the space mission, but it was not getting any closer, the game just went on.

 

[Spyronoid]

Longest game I ever played was Fallout 3, took me 42 hrs to explore the world and do all the quests

 

[Konjad]

Longest game I ever played was Fallout 3, took me 42 hrs to explore the world and do all the quests

Joined: 06 Jul 2011
Posts: 4
Location: YO MAMA'S ASS

'sup, Drog.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Because sometimes people say "too long" because saying "it's taking too long until something awesome happens" takes too long.

...hey, just figured out the name for my character when I eventually play Jade Empire. Too Long, Master of the Ancient Art of Speechcraft.

 

[DriacKin]

There's plenty of games that I would consider 'too long'. Dragon Age, for example. Were there some solid combat encounters in that game? Yes, there were. The problem happened when Bioware decided to throw in five fuckons of filler combat. They only had about 7 - 10 hours of quality material, but then decided to make a 50 hour game with it. The game was definetely far too long and very poorly paced.
Torment and Bloodlines are two additional good examples of games that clearly would've been better had they trimmed the game by atleast 20 hours.

Remember guys, quality is what counts; not quantity.

 

[Excommunicator]

You completely miss the point of most other responses here, DriacKin.

Saying a game is too long, to me, is a cop out that skirts around the much more serious fact that the game was badly made. I don't want to hear someone say "The game should have been shorter" when they could be saying "Large portions of that game were boring and horribly made". Sure, in many instances, a longer, crappier game can be said to need to be shorter if you look at it in a vacuum, and treat it like the things put into it just appeared out of thin air randomly, or at the roll of some dice, rather than at the lengthy planning and deliberation of [overpaid hacks]. If you aim for that much higher bar, then you certainly need to commit to the project and put the work in to reach it and not knowingly perform half-arsed and then expect to be congratulated for "being more ambitious" at the end of it.

Had Dragon Age been crafted properly in the first place, then it most certainly would have been a more thorough and satisfying experience at 40-60 hours than it would at 10-20. RPGs by nature have the expectation to be longer - and rightfully so -, so if you actually head into the fray with the claim "to return to the RPGs of old" and then stuff it to the brim with filler, then you certainly deserve to be called out for that.

We know they make these content-dilution decisions for economic reasons, so no one can claim that they don't have the means to make games of higher standards, merely that they believe they would make significantly less money doing so. As long as these companies are making these games with the pretensions that they are going to be "epic", "RPG" and "awesome", then I want to keep calling out their failures to reach it. That is part of the critique.

 

[Hobo Elf]

There's a good difference between a long game and a game that drags on. Deus Ex certainly dragged on at the end. The problem with Deus Ex was that the final hubs and areas were mostly just running around shooting shit, which was one of the weakest points of Deus Ex anyway. Had the game continuously been as good and fun as the first few hubs then there would've not been a problem.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

That's like saying that a novel or music cd is too long. Contextual complaint that means padded out product in need of editing and/or disinterested consumer.

 

[Renegen]

Another long game is NOLF1, i could see the end on the horizon, especially the space mission, but it was not getting any closer, the game just went on.

That's what I loved about NOLF actually. Just around the time of the Space Station, it dawned on me that the game had to end. I had enjoyed it so much up to that point, that it actually made be enjoy the game even more knowing it just kept going and going. The humor, the many plot twists in the story and the fact that the game wasn't rushed by the last stages meant that you simply didn't know where it finished, it was amazing. It meant total immersion. The final mission is sort of unexpected and I wasn't sad to see the game end.

By comparison, NOLF2's ending was incredibly obvious and the game was rushed in the last stages and I lost interest the closer I got to the end.