Generally, I’m not into the “price per hour” reductionism… I’d rather a game was a short, remarkable (bonus: replayable) experience – 10-20 unless a longer game truly is that long without filler. Can’t put a price on having fun 100% of the time!
Sonic 3 and Knuckles takes like 3 hours for an average person to beat.
Mmm i dont think its at all a static number. What matters is trimming it down to whats important. If you can keep bringing in new game mechanics, or exploring existing ones in new and interesting contexts, or keeping me engrossed in the story, it can go as long as it wants. Like, Chrono Trigger is considered a pretty short jrpg, because its very condensed for how broad of a scope it has, but boy is it a great game. Mario Odyssey got some criticism for how many moons are in the game, but i loved getting each and every one.
Opus Magnum. It’s an optimization puzzle game. You have to assemble mechanical arms and other bits (that grab, swing, rotate, push, and pull) into contraptions that assemble resources that look like molecular diagrams. Optimization puzzles aren’t unique but I felt like the pieces you build the contraptions out of in this game are pretty unique, the game is on a hex grid so rotation can play a big roll. Another interesting thing the game does is that to beat a level you simply have to accomplish a proper assembly, which in itself isn’t that hard, but the game grades you on three different metrics (speed, size, cost) and gives you no overall score to tell you how much you should value each metric. In this way it is up to your preferences what you want to optimize for if anything. I had fun trying to minmax every stat separately on every level before building my “compromise” machine was not supposed to make big sacrifices in any field.
A lot of people have mentioned it but I definitely recommend Obra Dinn, haven’t played a mystery game as unique and enthralling.
I don’t think I could pin down a universal number. I really enjoy when a game understands the staying power of its gameplay loop and finishes up before it gets stale.
I’ve got 180 hours into TotK and I’m not sick of it yet because I discover something new every time I play.
Conversely I 100%-ed Dredge in 20 hours and that felt like the exact right amount of time. Any longer and I’d have been sick of it.
Or we can go even lower with something like Untitled Goose Game, which was under 10 hours and also finished up just as it got old.
So yeah. I’m all about the self awareness of a game with regards to the experience. Whatever amount of time that takes is cool with me.
Yes that’s also what I’m talking about
Your previous characters aren’t important anymore, it’s a fresh start all the time. On each new season there has been 0 previous time and effort investment
You have on the game as a whole, though. Mechanics, strategies, locations, weapons, lore, maybe friendships with other players. Hard to leave all that behind.
Diablo seasons are just a character reset for those who enjoy them. It’s a huge part of a lot of ARPGs like Path of Exile or Diablo. As you can reach endgame in about 5 hours on diablo and have your complete build in 20, it makes sense.
Enforces everyone to reset at the same time and not use gear and stuff from previous characters. Some people care about leaderboards and those usually reset at the same time. For other ARPGs with a trade economy that being reset is often the biggest draw, but that doesn’t apply to D3.
I couldn’t give less of a fuck about leaderboards, but I enjoy seasons in D3, but not D4. In D3 you get to max level and get a set of pretty good gear in a few hours. I’m a casual player, I don’t play the entirety of the season because I kinda hit my limit and stop getting new shiny things and don’t feel like pushing it so I stop playing. Then a new season comes out, I’m like “I haven’t played Diablo in a bit, that sounds fun” and I do the same thing, smash monsters and get shiny things.
In D4 the new season landed and I just couldn’t be bothered to level again and it really killed the game for me, I’m kinda maxed out on non-seasonal, it gets to the point where you’re doing the same thing over and over for hours, or you push harder content where it takes forever to kill something and everything kills you in one hit. I just want to smash shit and get loot, I don’t want to level again if it takes more than a couple hours.
Basically seasons can be fun (also they test new content, that keeps things fresh) as long as you can jump right back into the game. Without it you have a ton of legendary items for every class so you just never really need new gear, you just grind for that single piece you need for a 2% upgrade.
Tldr I don’t want to grind, I just want to smash baddies, and I’m basically a bird collecting shiny shit. D3 enables that, D4 doesn’t. It’s all about implementation.
A session should be doable in 2 hrs or less (a single RTS game). Vampire Survivors nails it for short and sweet but I love open ended creation like Factorio.
Some games like Ultrakill are short and sweet, but others like Factorio can keep you busy for weeks. Both of them felt right for me, but then again I have quite a bit of free time.
If you like shooters, check out anything from New Blood, Turbo Overkill and Postal brain danaged. Those games are segmented into individual levels, which is great for when you just have half an hour.
I think it’s highly dependent on the player. I’m not a completionist in any sense, I mainly play games to have fun. I stop playing them when I stop having fun. I’ve put down games after a few hours and I’ve played some for hundreds of hours.
The gameplay loop in that sense is important whether it remains fun and keeps me coming back. Time is short as you get older and I guess I don’t really care about beating games.
Basically Activation and Blizzard with their sexual misconduct, harassment, and otherwise. Their CEO defending it. The allegations of toxic work environments, etc. It’s just not a company I support, despite the fact that I was a huge fan of their games. There’s a lot more information out there, but I don’t feel like going through it all. I’ll remove my post if you want.
Maybe I’m just being salty? I don’t think so though.
Edit: Sorry Chris, if I am out of line or didn’t provide enough info in my original post.
I hear you and understand where you are coming from. If I were to dig down into every single product, that I use in my day-to-day existence, then I’d probably find dirt everywhere. I’m not sure what I’d do at that point. Throw the baby out with the bathwater? It’s a tough position to be in.
No doubt. I agree. I try to stay out of things for that reason, but this was big news for a couple years and is still going on. As a gamer, it was unavoidable. The number of reports coming out of that company is concerning. But I do try to separate art from the artist when I can.
Number of hours doesn’t really come into it these days compared with how fun the game is for me. I’m nearly 40, and whether or not a game is engaging is most important. I’ve got about 50hrs into Avernum: Escape from the Pit (a retro style isometric RPG), but I’ve got nearly 80hrs into Teslapunk, my favourite Shmup(completing the game takes about an hour).I Iove Dark Souls 1 and 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, but eventually got bored of Elden Ring and its open world.
Ultimately how fun a game is combined with how painless it is to get started is what I’m most interested in these days. I don’t have enough free time to be worrying if there are enough hours of gameplay.
I get what you are saying. I think it also depends on how the game is divided up. If it’s just one continuous romp with autosave points it can feel like it’s dragging on but if there’s clearcut levels and checkpoints I feel like it helps divide up a game into digestible chunks.
I feel like that’s not really present with a lot of open world or sandbox games
sort of? are you saying you just really like both, or no man’s sky makes you want to play starfield? either way it’s all good, it was just a head scratcher for me.
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