Are Games With Long Gameplay Time Bad?
It has become the norm in modern gaming to ensure your game has to have 30-60 hours of gameplay. Because of this, some games come up with lazy solutions to stretch your time within their game to make it seem like it has more meat to it – a grander adventure! There is a problem presented when the hours playing the game are achieved by sloppy implementations from developers to increase your time investment. They are creating distractions in-game to play into your completionism addiction or as roadblocks to gate the story. And this is a problem.
Destiny 2 – Before you say “Progression in Online games are an exception, Cha Cha!” I am not talking about getting better gear for raiding or doing higher difficulty dungeons (though that is another problem in itself). I am focusing more so on the Red War Campaign. Why is the progression of this single player capable adventure gated by your Power Level? Have you ever tried rushing the game on a new Guardian only to be stopped from doing the next mission because your gear score average doesn’t meet some arbitrary pre-requisite? Its done so you go and do all the other side activities and spend more time in the game. I understand this for raiding and dungeon difficulties – but quests scale! Even PVP in the game has a scaling system! Stop trying to make someone who wants to play through the story suffer through some random Patrol killing some Fallen scum just for some irrelevant gear.
Spider-Man – This game’s story was excellent. The combat was overly enjoyable. Swinging around this recreation of New York City was a blast. But boy-oh-boy were there a lot of side activities. A lot of unfun side activities. They were an unwanted task. If you play the PS4 Spider-Man title you could probably demolish right through the story in a few hours. It’s not long. There isn’t a ton of meat to the actual story itself. There is, however, a lot of repetitive and obnoxious side activities to do. I’m not going to lie, outside of Taskmaster’s challenges and the main story all the hours put into this game are a faded memory. Just make side quests that have a progressed story and fleshed out adventure. Not carnival tricks and 2 seconds of why Black Cat is friend zoning you.
Final Fantasy XV – I love Final Fantasy. People have told me to play FF15 so much. It cannot be recommended enough. So I’ve given it a whirl. I’m sure the game has a great story and you know what? I’ll watch that story on YouTube. That game is so overwhelming with side activities you spend 95% of your game time around that versus the actual story. It was such a huge detractor for me that I could not complete the game even though it looks to be one of the better Final Fantasies in recent memory.
It’s gotten to the point where I’m afraid to play some games that look great because I don’t want these meaningless roadblocks and side activities to dominant the actual experience of the game. They are disrespectful to the player’s personal time investment just to hit some industry average of game time.
What are your thoughts on how other games or developers have made time spent in a game worthwhile? Let us know in the comment section below.
