I present the following quote, courtesy of Martin at Megaderived, as my quick summary of everything that's wrong in computer gaming today.
Apologies to Martin for the quote; I suspect he's being more than a little tongue-in-cheek when he says that, but it stands out because it's so true. Who cares if we're having fun - did we get a lot of play hours for our money? (Note: I personally enjoyed FFX a whole heap, but that's beside the point.)"I’m still playing [Final Fantasy X], and am now at the one hundred and seven hour mark. That’s working out at 0.0467 pence per hour of play seeing as I bought it for a meagre five pounds. I’m not really having any fun with it anymore, but it’s got a price-per-hour value that can’t be beat." (link)
And, because I've said all this before, I'll direct you all back to my very first substantive post on this blog. Will I keep regularly dredging this up until something changes? You betcha!
11 comments:
I really think a Final Fantasy game wouldn't be worth the name if I could finsh it in less than 70 hours. It's all good as long as the level of the monsters is not set too high or too low.
And go read my blog, you lazy so and so! :-)(And leave comments. I love comments)
Well, I think a Final Fantasy game wouldn't be worth the name if it had a SEQUEL, but I think we're well past that point at this stage.
I have nothing specifically against quantity... but I do object to it being chosen in PREFERENCE to quality, rather than in addition to it.
FF-X got a bit tedious in places, but I found the plot flowed pretty well.
I got shitted off at the mini-games, specifically the chocobo one. The stupid bird wouldn't do anything I told it to..
YOur all fools. A truely good Final Fantasy game, you should able able to finish in about 18-20 hours. Then comes all the optional crap that to get everything you need to play the game for another 150+ hours. That way you have the choice.
I like my weekend games. They are short and sweet, and you don't lose too much sleep.
I like my adventure games to not take me longer than a week. I prefer games with definate success points though. Otherwise I play them for hours and hours after I should have stopped. I don't really play sim games anymore for that reason. heaven and hell will never balance... there will never be an empty subsidy list... there will always be more mines...
Having said that, I couldn't play farenheit... I don't have the co-ordination to get past the second day. Hell, it took me 30 hours of game play to GET to the second day.
You can have my copy if you want it.
You are right. Of course. I start to get a bit itchy whenever a game goes over fifteen hours. That's about the right length as far as i'm concerned.
But, with stuff like the Final Fantasies, well, the repetition becomes comforting. Compelling, even. I think it's that exact same feeling that MMO's base their entire gameplay on. I don't think it's right, either. It's dodgy.
That's why you should definitely sink your teeth into this and keep preaching it until the world takes note.
Sim - I've got my own copy of Fahrenheit, but I'm sure I could find yours a good home if you genuinely don't want it. You're here for Pheno or something in a couple of weeks, aren't you?
Martin - thanks for stopping by! I saw an interview with one of the Blizzard guys the other day where he was saying WoW was a success in appealing to casual gamers because the first five minutes was fun. I felt like saying, "Sure, but what about the rest of it?" (I'm not sure that WoW -is- a success in appealing to casual gamers, it's just been MORE successful than most other MMOGs. Try a MMOG with everything that makes WoW good, but without the necessity of instances that take between 1 and 7 hours, and I think you'll do a lot better by casuals.)
I'm down for Pheno. I'll be pretty much tied up with con stuff though...
Pheno is right between Conflux and my house, physically. It'll be hard to avoid it, so it's really only an issue of whether you want to avoid me. 8-)
I put 50+ hours into FFVIII and enjoyed every one of them.
What, even the card game? Even grinding battles just to draw your spells? You, sir, have a stronger stomach for grind than I do. But that's okay, the game was on target for you. For what it's worth, Final Fantasy does a fairly good job of entertaining grind. I probably should have chosen something like some of the Heroes of Might and Magic games, or Halo, to show a game that makes use of padding to artificially extend game length at the cost of quality. (Both still great games, but occasionally a little lazy content-wise.)
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