Bitter McRant-Pants #8

Guns are blazing this time: no niceties, no eloquence, and no excuses.

You know what pisses me off? Every time I hear someone moaning about how a game is too short. It’s as if they expect every game to be 50 hours long so they can somehow justify the money they spent on the game. However, more often than not, 50 hour games are artificially stretched and aren’t worth finishing.

I’ll be honest, I don’t finish many games. It’s not because I don’t like games, or that I can’t finish them. It’s because around about the 30-hour mark, I realise a game has been stuffed with foul-tasting filler in an attempt to stretch value scores into the high tens. Let me tell you something: just because your game is long doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable.

Take a look at Gears of War. It’s a masterpiece of a shooter, a highly cinematic experience that is about the most fun you can have with virtual guns. But already people are criticising it for only being about 12 hours long. What the hell is going through the minds of those people?

Take movies, for example: you go to see a movie that has a real sense of pacing and excitement, and before you know it the movie is over. But if you go to see a movie that has a poor sense of pacing and seems filled will crap because two-and-a-half hours is now standard for a movie, you find yourself constantly looking at your watch wondering just how long it’s been.

A similar thing can happen with video games. Once Gears of War picks up, you don’t realise how long you’ve been playing it. When I was reviewing it, my parents came into my room – I’m currently visiting for the holidays; I don’t still live with my parents – and called me for dinner. I couldn’t believe it was dinnertime, because the last time I checked the clock it was 11 in the morning. I was having so much fun with Gears of War that I literally lost all sense of time and space.

And Gears of War is so much fun that I’ll play it again, and again. Just like I’ve already finished Fable a few times. Whereas KOTOR 2 was 50 hours long but hardly worth finishing once – it took me over a year to get there because, unlike the original, it’s that dull – Fable, a game criticised for its length, was so much fun I’ve easily played it for over 50 hours.

When short games are fun, they’re worth playing again. Even more so than longer games, because they don’t feel like such a Gargantuan chore. Streets of Rage 2 takes me all of an hour to finish – yeah, I kick ass at it – but I’ve probably played it for over 1000 hours since I originally got it in 1993. Sometimes it’s better to make a fun, shorter experience than a longer, tedious experience.

Additionally, in an age of achievement points, there’s even more reason to replay good, short experiences. I find myself frantically trying to finish Contra in 12 minutes, just so I can get that achievement. Chromehounds, on the other hand, had such a tedious single-player campaign that I couldn’t even be bothered to earn the “finished campaign” achievement.

So in short, gamers need to get over themselves. It’s not the end of the world when a game is only 8 hours long. In fact, if it’s a good game that’s worth replaying, you’ll probably find yourself playing it over and over until you’ve gotten your precious 50 hours. And if it’s bad, you’ll be glad you didn’t waste 50 hours of your time on it. And if you’re just one of these people who finishes a good game once and then moves on to the next thing – well, I have no sympathy for you if you want to waste your cash like that.