Can a game be too long?

I've attempted to finish The Witcher 3 three times now, only for my interest to begin to wane upon reaching the isles. It's just too much.

WTF? 80 hours of that boring sh!t?

10-20 is perfect for me. Multiplayer is different but.

Better be action packed and have loads of replay value at that length.

Giggity

Only when the game is boring.

I don't think so, on the 1 condition that its interesting enough to last long. A game stretching out and is no longer fun is a pain. but Zelda BOTW as a recent example. Played that for way more hours than I usually put in a game but didn't mind since I never felt bored or it was stretching out

Absolutely, especially if it overstays its welcome. Or just plain old padding.

@Juub1990: Havent read the rest of the thread, just had to fully agree on darksiders 2. I was genuinely bored by the end of it. Good game, just tedious as all hell after hour 20

I think this is one of the reason why I hate to start a game these days as there too long. I think it started with open world games like Skyrim and later Far Cry 3. It sounded fun at first been a open world game doing anything you want but then every company started releasing them and got too much.

They're not that long. the SP campaign of FC3 took 26 days for me to finish. FC4 took two weeks. STALKER: Call of Pripyat took two weeks. GTA V took two weeks. The main difference is once I was done with each one, only the two FC games had post-SP campaign playability that I liked.

Fallout 4 and Fallout 3 were both substantially longer at around three months apiece for the main campaign.

I still have most of the above installed, minus FO3, on my gaming PC. I like to drop in on the world and wander around. FO3 I reinstalled on the laptop.

I don't mind playing long games. All that means is by the time I got done with one, other games have gone down in price. It's not like I'm under an obligation to play every game out there.

When it first launch, it took me 4 months to beat the damn game but it sure was hell worth my money and my time with it.

For the record, I loooove it when a game is really longer and take Horizon: Zero Dawn for example, got the game in late February and beat it in late April.

Many games are to long to day, filled with boring collectibles and sidequests just to drag out on the thing.

@MirkoS77:

I keep forgetting to play Witcher 3. It's been months though, so I'd probably just start all over again. Not looking forward to that. Great game but the combat system is hard to handle!

A bad or mediocre game made long is bad.

An excellent game made long on the other hand is a positive thing.

I have well over 100 hours in a single playthrough of yakuza 0 and it feels too short cuz although it's filled with content, a lot of a good thing is good and you always crave more.

I like long games but it really depends on the content. Witcher 3 was fine because there's a lot of variety to the world and it's fun just riding around, discovering things. I'm really struggling with MGS V though - 56 hours in and I'm only on chapter 22. The gameplay is great but the story is all over the place and the setting is a pretty dull and barren. Not sure I'll ever finish it.

I don't know where to post this I don't like making threads so consider it an off-topic scribble on the side.

Did you guys see the Denuvo Rime stuff that went down? :P

If you want a good laugh XD

@whalefish82:

I swear, I got close to finishing Metal Gear Solid 5 but I kept getting stuck on a stalking mission in Africa. It feels like that game is too open world for its own good. Alot of ground to cover but alot of nothing in between.

@KungfuKitten:

LOL I should remember that next time I think about messing with hackers.

Yeah, the open world aspect is unnecessary for me. I'd have preferred the same great gameplay but with big, sandbox levels in different global settings, kinda like a Splinter Cell format.

When speaking under negative connotation, a games length will be measured in Korok Seeds.

@killered3: that's my problem too. I start, put in like 80 hours, then lose interest as it begins to feel like a chore. So I stop and tell myself I'll come back to it, six months later I do and have forgotten everything so have to start over. Ugh. It's a good game, but I think there's a strong argument to be made that too much content can end up being detrimental.

As for the combat, I find it passable but in tight areas it struggles. Combat's never really been one of the franchise's strong points to begin with, TW is about the narrative.

Remember when you said the combat was good, because those were good times.

Yup, them games is too damn long! I had 83-84 hours in The Witcher 3 before starting Hearts of Stone. Finished that in like 6 hours. Looked at Blood and Wine and promptly said NOPE! Not another 20-30 hours.

Another example was MGSV. I never finished it. Nor will I ever. I have to give it to the controls. They are the best the series has ever seen. But the open world is a desert in the 1st half and a jungle in the latter part with long distances between locations and the same invade bases, Fulton solders to build your base, get the prisoner(s), and rinse and repeat. MGS does better with a focused narrative to move it along. It would have helped if the story was coherent as well.

Batman Arkham Knight was the last too long for its own good case. After the toxin was released that should have been end game. That was like 10-15 hours there. That and the Batmobile sections were to numerous. I was bored of them rather quickly. $20 not well spent.

I think it depends on Pacing and Repetition.

A game can be too long, if the pacing is off, if there is too much action it will just tire, if too much down time the game might get boring and feel directionless, or worse dragged out.

Then comes repetition. A game can be 50+ hours long, which is fine and all, but if the things you see and do at hour 30 are the exact same as you saw and did at hour 2, then the length of the game is rather pointless, and honestly it can often feel like a waste of time.

@jg4xchamp:

Til this day, I still have no idea what people are talking about when they say that Witcher's combat is great. It good enough but there's alot of stick and dodging you have to do to win fights and that gets really annoying.

Y'know, I was going to mention you as I usually do when the topic of W3's combat comes up, then thought better of it.

Did I say it was good? I thought I mostly argued on the basis it wasn't bad.

@MirkoS77:

C'mon, there's no need to be modest here. It was kinda shit.

The biggest problem I had with the combat in Witcher 3 is that it doesn't encourage variety. If you're an older, slightly lazy and more casual gamer like me, it's tough to avoid just using Quen for every fight, making you more or less invincible, particularly late in the game. I had more trouble with some of the fist fight quests than anything else.

I think it could be a much improved combat system simply by forcing the player to utilise the various abilities, depending on the enemy.

I'm playing The Witcher 3 couple days ago, peope are not lying, the combat is clunky, but it's ok as I play it mostly for story and exploration of vast, beautiful environments.

Said it was good, full stop, that those of us who actually like good action games, are just being crazy for expecting good game feel, n actual meaningful options in combat, and enemy designs that actively engage beyond "oh this looks cool", and all that stuff.

I never said it was bad, I always have come to the conclusion that The Witcher 3 has good gameplay. But it's combat mechanics, as in just the core mechanics are not good. They are at best okay, really I'd say average, but I wouldn't exactly tell someone they are crazy for thinking the mechanics are outright bad.

But this is the same forum that tried to pitch Black Desert Online as having a combat scheme as good as any single player action game, and that's like LOLNO. Alas we can't all be Champ and be right all the time. Tis a disease I'm afraid, no cure.

Batman Arkham Knight felt to long. Bored the crap out of me and I just wanted to finish it.

The game may only feel too long if its shitty. Other than that, to me, it is never too long. Andromeda's story is like 10h long. But since its really poor, it will feel like fifty boring hours.

Yup. Okami came to mind. Half way through I was already tired of its repetitive combat. The artsyle is beautiful but wears off after 20+ hours... I couldnt wait for it to be finally over

Good game but waaaay too long for its own sake

Be honest though, are you often willing to pay full price for a 5-8h game?

Thats a problem with gamers mentality nowadays (not speaking specifically about you) but if they read somwhere a game is 5-8h then is an imediate no-buy despite its quality.

No I'm ok with it. The only games I felt were too long are games that in the end didn't like that much.

Like for me it was Fallout 3 ... never played another WRPG after that ... or open world game either until Horizon Zero Dawn ... my this game is good.

Definitely RPG's and JRPG"s. Those are the worst offenders at adding fluff (i.e. repetitive fetch quests or randomized dungeons or whatever depending on the game). I'm not sure any of them are legit 100 hour games, it feels like even the longest of them could be 30 hour games at most with 70+ hours of fluff. Now in some instances I've been willing to "power through" to completion if I enjoy the game, but it still feels like fluff and generally after I'm done with a game like that I'm burned out for awhile (would never go from one RPG into another RPG anyway).

I think it just depends on genre. It's been discussed a few hundred times. I see it like this:

RPG- Ideally 30-60 without a crap ton of filler.

Shooters - 8-12 depending on the story and character development. Online hundreds of hours if great.

Racers - Story should be like 10 hours max. Multiplayer will be hundreds if good enough.

MMOs - Hundreds if not thousands of hours.

Strategy games - 20-40 hours. As usual hundreds on line.

Horror games - 10-15 if done right. Less if not like 8 hours.

That's my take on it in any case.

I've always sided with shorter campaigns ... first question people would ask about a game last gen was "how long is the campaign?" as if that was the determining factor of quality ... now we're stuck with a saturated market of 30+ hour long campaigns which in my opinion is ridiculous.

Working full time, raising a family doesn't give me much gaming time so some of these games can take me months to accomplish.

I've done it....after 80+ hours, it's finally over! Persona 5, goddamn.... Awesome game, 10/10 even but honestly, I'm just glad that it's finally over. I...I-I-I think I can die happy now. ?