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"Short Games - Are They THAT Bad?"

They’re the epitome of disappointment for money-tight gamers and their length doesn’t impress many people anyway, but are short games really that bad?!

The only short game I’ve ever played to death was Conker’s Bad Fur Day, a good game, overall… the storyline, although a bit awry, was quite absorbing - the graphics good and the sound excellent, but the reason for the lower than expected sales figures could have been the games length. For advanced gamers the game only took 8-10 hours, on par with recent games such as Max Payne and THPS3 (Easy if you’ve played the predecessors!). To be honest, the only thing that disappointed me was the ending… it was Rare’s last title on the N64, and they could have gone out in style… rather than the mystifying, low-key, thought provoking exit they chose. But still… I enjoyed the game thoroughly.

Another game that must have been smoking throughout development was Max Payne… an amazing game, according to YH and Goatboy; yet both, I think, talked about the length. But still, for a game like that to get a port on to the PS2, it can’t have been that bad!

But what’s the deal with long games? They take ages, get boring quickly, drag on, and most of them call you to go back to the ‘same old place’ to do the ‘same old thing’… pointless! Half the owners don’t complete them anyway! Ever completed Jet Force Gemini for the N64? What a lame ending, and to think I collected all those stupid Tribals! Where’s the merit in uncovering a stupid family feud, where you could have destroyed a massive boss and made way for a superb 128-Bit sequel?!

So, anyway, it seems we need a decent medium. Somewhere in between… I’m sure you’ve all played a game with perfect length. I’d have said GTA3 was one. You can, in fact, complete the game over a weekend’s gaming, yet the length of the game is entirely up to you. You can play it straight and make it a worthwhile rent, or you can mess about for 70+ hours and pay just 57p per hour of gameplay! (Game Price £40) So maybe criminal games are the key! Maybe not… but certainly those game with quite a lot of backing, and side tasks and the option to roam freely.

But going back to short games, they seem a lot more acceptable than long games. You’re absorbed in the game for the duration, and the developers obviously haven’t prolonged any bits without reason just to lengthen the game. The chances are also, that the gameplay won’t be too samey. In Luigi’s Mansion, you don’t just ‘suck up ghosts’… but you collect money, solve puzzles, and unlock routes too; Yet this game, according to Shane Shattersfield (Gamespot, USA), will last you no more than a weekend… although that opinion might be flawed seeing as he isn’t in Nintendo’s target market for the game.

But what is a short game? People might rush a game, or try and make it last and ruin the gameplay. It’s quite a hard thing to pin-point, and saying a 12-hour game is short, but a 14-hour one not can’t really be done, because of peoples different abilities. Conker was short… I mean, if a well below average gamer like Grix can complete it in 8-9 hours, it has to be, but I’m sure he’ll be the first to recommend the game (to a person of suitable age :D).

I feel there’s a real future for shorter games… despite the length, they’re normally great fun, and leave the gamer satisfied with a purchase, especially if there’s a decent multi-player mode! Games like Devil May Cry, Luigi’s Mansion, PIKMIN and Max Payne have made great impressions on almost everyone, regardless of their length! I hope State of Emergency is like GTA3, in that it can be as long or as short as you want. Short for when you lend it to people, and long for when you want to play it! :D

Thanks for reading, anyway!


Game

Bonus wrote:
> Strafex wrote:
Bonus, the fun, big brilliant adventure you
>
> suggested?
It's that Zelda 64 you seem to hate so much.
I don't know why
> you
> dislike it but it's the masterpiece you described in your last
> paragraph!

OOT sucked, real bad too........

Only you seem to say so.
Even if it wasn't what you wanted from a fully 3D Zelda game, it's still the closest you're going to find to the adventure you described.

Zelda is an amazing franchise,
> and the Gameboy games are simply sublime, but the transition to 3D was more than
> disappointing......

Your own fault for getting overhyped about it.
What were you expecting?

But, I've said that many times before, it's in the past,
> so leave me be.

Damn Dirty Stuck in the Past Ninties.

You're the one who suggested that Nintendo should make a grand, free, adventure full of mini games and subquests.
I only pointed to the one they'd made already...

What do you mean stuck in the past?... I could read off a whole list of SNES games that are longer than PS2 games.

Anyway...


Game

Strafex wrote:
Bonus, the fun, big brilliant adventure you
> suggested?
It's that Zelda 64 you seem to hate so much.
I don't know why you
> dislike it but it's the masterpiece you described in your last paragraph!

OOT sucked, real bad too........

Zelda is an amazing franchise, and the Gameboy games are simply sublime, but the transition to 3D was more than disappointing......

But, I've said that many times before, it's in the past, so leave me be.

Damn Dirty Stuck in the Past Ninties.

I like my money's worth from a game.

If you get bored then you've had your moneys worth.
You don't HAVE to complete it if you can't be bothered.

In my opinion, Jet Force Gemini was pretty average. 24 hours of Gameplay wasn't THAT much (Getting all Tribals and beating Mizar).

I don't want to spend £40-50 on 10 hour games, just because a few novices wouldn't be able to complete them otherwise.

Bonus, the fun, big brilliant adventure you suggested?
It's that Zelda 64 you seem to hate so much.
I don't know why you dislike it but it's the masterpiece you described in your last paragraph!

I think nowadays judging by these posts you have to redefine short and long in terms of replay value.

Tetris was a VERY short game, very basic, but very replayable. Most of us who had it just kept going back for more.

Metal Gear Solid in terms of 'story length' is a very short game by today's standards, it can be completed in around 2 hours, but again its replay value was immesurable.

A 'bad' short game would be one in which, once it was completed, you felt that there was no more to do, no more fun to be had out of it. I could class Barbie Race and Ride under this category, a one hour completion time, all the minigames and puzzles solved, but my niece would disagree, as she continually goes back to it to beat the records I keep posting.

Gran Turismo comes into the twilight zone here, as in short bursts it's OK, but to sit through it and try to complete it all over a weekend would be VERY monotonous, it would be more of a relief than a joy to finally complete it. It's one of those games that you continually go back to so that you can beat your lap times and configure your cars to squeeze more out of them, so in short doses it's fun.

So it's down to personal preferences by the looks of it, and I agree not all short games are bad and not all long games are good.

Ah game length.
That hot potato…and all I will say is Lylat Wars.
No, hear me out a moment before you groan and wander off to read another “Why didn’t I win?” post from some schmuck.

Lylat Wars. I completed it within 42 minutes, with no continues and no restarts needed. Rubbish. “Yeah but there’s different ways of doing it, you didn’t go all the routes etc”, doesn’t matter. I don’t want to complete ANY route that fast, I want to feel like my money was well spent.

Someone here mentioned Max Payne.
It’s not a massive game at all, but it’s what you do and how you do it on the way that makes it one of the best PC games ever. It’s the pure “This rocks” whilst you play, and when it’s over? A different style of play is unlocked and it was so much durn fun you go right back and do it again.
GTA3, yes you can burn through the game in 2 days, but that’s missing the point. It’s not exploring everywhere, experimenting and just walking about because the gaming world is so meticulously created that you can just wander about committing random acts of aggression.

I’m playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein right now. Got it Friday night and played it all Saturday from 7pm to 5am, and all yesterday from 2pm to midnight. It’s a massive game, and I don’t want it to end. I could quite happily play this for another 2 months without it ending.
There is a level set in a village ruins. An amazing and stunningly fun level with bombed out houses, snipers in windows and tanks rumbling away. From the moment that level started I thought “The entire game should just be this level, this rocks!”.
And when the game is finished, there is multi-player to get into.
Excellent.

Black and White. Now THAT is a short game level wise, but a massive game if you take your time. Sure, you do all the islands as quickly as possible and you’ll do the game in one sitting. But if you take the time to train your creature, it can last months.
I’ve still got my original creature from way back at the beginning of the year, I still haven’t completed the game.
However, my ape “Bruce Willis” is now a gargantuan simian with aggressions levels you wouldn’t believe and he just sits on Island 4 smashing things with trees and hurling his poo into the sea. I can watch him go berserk for 20mins, just smoking and laughing as Willis literally “goes ape”.

I’ve forgotten the point of this topic now, I keep remembering Bruce Willis and his formative years.
As a young ape, eating Sable the creature trainer and getting rewarded for it.
His spell as a teenager where he had an obsession with crapping in miracle dispensers and coming back home with trees.
The 1st time he whupped Lethys and did his funky 70s disco dance over the vanquished wolf.
Or that time where he ate unripe wheat, vomited and went completely insane for 5 minutes, setting fire to houses and lobbing cows into the sea before going to sleep in his own poo.

Excellent.

Emm, one of the best games on the PS2 is also one of the shortest. There isn't really much to do in the game, and there is definately no lateral movement through the game, it is very much a linear experience. I think that's a bigger issue than the lenth of a game, not it's length but it's linearity. If you truely look at the best games of all time as considered by many, they do not follow a set path throughout the game, that is why you tend to find that sports games and games with little sub-games are the best and most playable multi-player experiences. No two matches will ever be the same.

A fine example would be football games, racing games, anything of the like. Sure there are good and bad games in ach of these genres, but the best normally have excellent multiplayer opportunities. Anyone able to give better examples of multiplayer superiority than Mario Kart or Pro Evo??

Multi-player aside, single player games are unltimately better if you can do something other than just struggle away going from A-B with little variation and little in the way of inginuity. Big games, and short games need more sub-games/missions which give you the option to do something other than the main objectives. There is no better example of this than GTA3. Whilst the purist gamers with nothing better to do will have finished all the missions within a couple of days, then found all the hidden packages, then done all the rampages etc., I still haven't finished them. The main reason for that is I was amazed and drawn by the game's lack of linearity. Games can be lengthened to the extreme by being able to stop what you are doing, and just do something else, entirely.

Final Fantasy games are another excellent example, plenty of mini-games, card games and chochobo(??) type things to do at any time you feel like it, the story just seems to go into pause mode, and you can go away and keep yourself occupied and come back later refreshed. This also adds endless hours of gameplay to an already lengthy game. Onimusha: Warlords was admitedly short, and only had one single diversion from the gameplay, the dark realm. But this little beat-em-um section could add hours of life to the game for anyone looking for a medi-evil Japan fighting game, and it was endlesly better than the Bouncer, which would cost you £40 on it's own.

So in terms of length, story modes don't really matter unless the game wants to be an epic adventure, what really counts is having little games which aren't repetative and have lasting appeal, whilst being fun at the same time..........

Now theres a thought, maybe Nintendo should just incorporate their little "fun" games into big good adventure games, maybe they'd get more support...........

My ideal game would be one that I could complete in one sitting.
A game which could be described as an intense ride, wherein the plot would change in various and subtle ways depending on in-game decisions.
The game would also have many different endings.
There's nothing wrong with short games - but they have to be thrilling, action-packed and have many off-shoots of gameplay and storyline variety.

The first games that I thought about here was the Resi Evil Series. As great games as they were, they were quite short, and despite having an extra bonus by playing through it aggain to open up a secret by completing it quicker, I didn't play them again.
Yet, they still rank as some of my greatest games. Funny that!

To me, Commandos 2 was going to be hard - i am on the last level, after only a week of playing, but it has loads of extras. If Max Payne had been any longer it would have got very boring, and Jet Force looks amazing, so, even though I only have three tribals left to find, I enjoy searching for them - it depends on th game -I'd rather have a short Zelda (although hopefuly not) than a long Ridge Racer.