My kid is a huge Halo fan. Ever since he and I first joined forces to battle the Covenenant when he was 6 he has been a huge fan of the series. As I once was. After the original Xbox offerings, something changed. Halo 3 still had a lengthy story, but the story kinda sucked and the game had a large feeling of "been there, done that". ODST and Reach had the same problem, along with one new one. They were really short. ODST I get. It was originally supposed to be an expansion DLC. Reach however, should have taken more than one night to beat. Now Halo 4 is finally out and my kid could not wait to play it! So much so that we let him open it on Christmas Eve about two hours before I left for work (I work third shift and am VERY well compensated for working the holidays). I know via text message that he went to bed at the usual time that night. So I was extremely pissed off to find out that he had just finished the last level and beat Halo 4 by the time I got home in the morning. It took him three and a half hours to beat this thing. I paid $60 plus tax and he beat it in less than 4 hours. I was actually looking forward to playing it with him, but what's the point? With two people, we'll probably have it beat in just under three hours. What a freakin rip off! This piece of crap game was over in less time than I had to work to pay for it! How in the hell can developers get away with making these short ass games and still get high ratings on them? This crap-tastic shooter was a little more than an hour longer than the fantastic Journey. Which was a quarter of the cost. It's another case of a once great franchise, reknowned for it's immersive story, decides to focus on the online multi-player and scraps the story to cut corners. On the reverse side, great shooters like Borderlands and Deus Ex are offering huge campaigns that offer great experiences. Unfortunately games like Deus Ex are fewer and futher between than they once were. Borderlands is an exception to the shooter rule though. It offers a huge story mode that taylors both to single player and multi-player. With how expensive games are now, I think developers should really focus more on making games with a fair amount of content for the money they charge. tacking on multi-player to increase the longevity of the game is a very lousy way to treat the fans who enjoyed the single player experience you once offered. They do this to try to dissuade people from selling their games. In my case and the case of many of my friends, this hurts their sales causes me not to buy games new. I now only buy rpgs new, or games that I know specifically last longer than one night. I definitely won't buy a game that lasts under 10 hours new. I wouldn't pay $20 for a dvd with only one half hour episode on it, I won't pay triple that for a game the length of a Lord of the Rings movie. Once upon a time, games the length of Fable were considered short (10-12 hours). Now that seems like an epic-length game and that is just sad. Developers want to whine and moan about how used game sales are hurting their profits, but they don't want to make games long enough to justify paying so much money for them. Digital distribution should be the answer to that. Since you don't have to manufacture discs, you can sell the game for less and make a profit. Plus, there's no selling the copy you have since you only really own the rights to download it. Again, this sadly isn't the case. They try to charge the same $60 price. This offers no incentive to buy this way. If I'm going to spend that much on a brand new game, I want to hold the physical game in my hands. Plus, if it does suck and end in less than a day, I can sell it and get some of my money back to make up for the fact that the developer ripped me off with an expansion pack they tried to call a full length game.