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[Storm Rider]

Of last generation, yes. But I prefer the 360 controller to the Dual Shock 2, which I assume means I would prefer it to the PS3 controller as well.

[Ozymandias]

The Sixaxis is terrible next to the 360 controller. Too light and the trigger-style shoulder-buttons just feel awkward, nevermind the waggle.

Maybe the Dual Shock 3 is better, but I doubt it.

[Johnny C]

Tycho of Penny Arcade on game length, game quality and Portal.

Game length is always a contentious issue. I remember when Elite Force came out, and people determined that ten hours was too short. As the new round of consoles emerged, eight hours became the norm. For "next generation" titles, starting with Halo 3, we're clocking around six hours for this level of fidelity. I have no beef with short games that are also good. Bad games which are also short lose points, insult in close proximity to injury, but in the case of Heavenly Sword its brevity is also a sweet mercy, like summer rain.

So, people like to talk about game length, but game length is no indicator of quality. Portal knows how long it is, and it doesn't try to make itself some other game in order to succeed at retail. As we know well, not every game has six or eight hours of unique ideas - they must be worked over, extrapolated, drawn out to the length a game must be to slot itself into the retail continuum. They are like museum tyrannosaurs, where two or three bones represent prime T-Rex and the rest is wax and plaster of the appropriate shape. Somewhere between what we demand for our money and what they are willing to sell us, gamers, publishers, and retailers have struck some Faustian bargain to the detriment of the medium.

[Ozymandias]

It takes about 6 hours to beat Pac-Man.

It takes a minimum of 5 minutes to beat Super Mario Bros.

It takes a minimum of 11 minutes to beat Super Mario World.

Odds are you will never meet anyone in your entire life who has ever achieved any of those. The point isn't that they're short, it's all in how you play the game. No one ever beats Pac-Man. It usually takes a couple of hours to beat SMB. It can take weeks to beat SMW your first time.

This sort of gameplay is much less common in modern gaming, though, because of the story driven pacing. The games are paced like a movie. The director doesn't want you to fast forward through the movie, because you're supposed to feel the ART, embrace the story, listen to the music, stand around and teabag your friends.

But the length is artificial. Most of it isn't gameplay, it's etc. Many, many developers have stopped focusing on the game in favor of the etc. I'm not going to condemn them. Mass Effect is a good example of etc. making it worthwhile. It's NOT a bad thing.

But neither is the lack of it. Portal has a great sense of humor and atmosphere. It's also nearly entirely gameplay. Your speed through the game is determined by skill and ingenuity, not etc. In that regard, it's probably too easy. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that maybe the advanced maps should've been the standard maps, because bonus maps and achievements are also a fake idea.

I don't know what point I'm trying to make, honestly, but I'm throwing all of that out there to chew on.

[doki]

the most important thing for me in games is making sure i find everything there is in that game.  easter eggs, hidden content, all that stuff.  so in my opinion the storyline of a game could take me an hour to finish, i dont care as long as there's still more suprises to find after that hour.  i mean lets look at pokemon.  if you knuckled down and played straight, you could probably finish the story of most games in an hour or two (please note, guesstimate only, no varifiable evidence),  of course, if you are playing pokemon simply so you can get to the end of the game, you are TOTALLY playing the wrong game.

what im saying is that a game can be short in terms of ACTUAL stuff you have to do, but with sidequests, unlockable content, more creatures to catch ect, games can be a lot more playable

[Dimmukane]

I think the shortest time you can beat Pokemon is closer to 4 hours.  My brother beat the Blue version in 4h 9m without using any cheats.  Or attempting to catch any of the legendary pokemon.  He basically cut out everything you don't need to do.

[Alex C]

I've beaten pokemon in 2 hours and 48 minutes. And that's not the record, there's guys out there that can routinely beat that by about a half hour or so, last I knew.

[RedLion]

While I'm not in favor of this whole Episodic content thing, it works for these Half Life 2 episodes. Because really, the events going on in these "episodes" are not enough to justify being put together in one game and called "Half Life 3." They're the events that occur between what happened in 2 and what will happen in 3. Their length is sufficient for me, and, in fact, I found Episode 2 to be getting a little long. It was much longer than Episode 1, at any rate, and it made an impact. The ending of Episode 2 is rather powerful emotionally speaking and part of it is because you're being forced through this escape for all of Episode 1 and 2, and when you finally think you have a second to breathe and relax from the endless tension, the events at the end of Episode 2 occur, making for maximum impact.

[Johnny C]

I don't know what point I'm trying to make, honestly, but I'm throwing all of that out there to chew on.

I think the point you're trying to make is that length can be an incredible asset when it isn't forced and brevity can be an asset when it maximizes the game experience. I think. It's a good point.

[Ryder]

Length can be important, but some of my favorite games are insanely short. (Dude, I like, totally finished Pac Man in 15 minutes.)

Dark Cloud was great, AND it was something like 6 months of gameplay. But the sequal to Katamari Damacy was uber short. So if a game's short, you may as well rent it, which can be convenient and cheap.

...But if you're dropping 50 bucks you want something that can kill a LOT of time.

[Jackie Blue]

Do you mean Dark Cloud or Dark Cloud 2?  I finished the first one pretty quick and didn't think it was that great; the second one was about a million times more complex and awesome.

[jeph]

Ugh, I HATED the first Dark Cloud. Never played the second.

All the games I've really enjoyed lately have been rather short- Portal, CoD4, Beautiful Katamari, Assassin's Creed, and especially Mass Effect (which I think you can get through in under 8 hours if you skip the side quests).

Long games can be fun, but I prefer quality over length.

[ackblom12]

But the sequal to Katamari Damacy was uber short.

Are you talking about We <3 Katamari? The game had 27 levels if you don't want to count the multiple challenges in levels. It was literally 3 - 5 times longer than the first game.

Now if you're talking about Beautiful Katamari, Namco can go fuck a goat for that travesty. I bought it, me and the woman beat it in short order and was left there wondering where the rest of the game went. It's fun, but it was $10 more for a sequel that had maybe 15% - 20% of the content of the prior game.

[Storm Rider]

Ugh, I HATED the first Dark Cloud. Never played the second.

The sequel is unbelievably better. I never owned my own copy, but I played a friend's and I've been meaning to track down a used copy of it somewhere or something.

[Ryder]

I was talking about the sequel, yeah. Great graphics, a hell of a lot of freedom, but dungeons with sixty whatever levels that are all exactly the same got to me after a bit.

The first was fun, though. The dungeons didn't get boring as fast, it had cool ambiance and music, and had a pretty nice weapon system. Also, it's a lot of nostalgia for me. 

I wanted to try Rogue Galaxy (pretty much Dark Cloud 3), but my ps2 borked itself.

[jeph]

Rogue Galaxy was okay. Nothing special, but no huge glaring flaws either.

[Dimmukane]

I really want them to do a Dark Cloud 3, I'm fairly sure they're planning on it.

[Jackie Blue]

Some games give you a new toy, some games give you a toybox, some games give you an entire fucking Toys-R-Us.  Dark Cloud 2 was a game that, almost from the very beginning, gave you every Toys-R-Us on the planet.

[Jackie Blue]

My girlfriend got carded when she tried to buy GTA: San Andreas for me at a Gamestop - unfortunately, not the one we usually shopped at.

She was 23.

They thought her ID was fake and wouldn't sell it to her.  Based on the fact that she had blue hair in pigtails and had about $50 worth of Hello Kitty paraphenalia on her person and was 5'1 and around 95 pounds.

Fuck Gamestop.  I think they were just being jerks because she was probably the only girl in line.

[Alex C]

 Swap 5'1" for 5'3" and the Hello Kitty gear for Nightmare before Christmas paraphenalia, and you basically have my sister, and I totally see how someone would card her. But the fake id accusation? That's just silly.

[pannic]

On Dungeons and huge amounts of hours V. incredibly short games.

Let's go to extremes here.  FF7 vs Portal.

FF7 took what?  50+hours?  and was hugely popular and a great game.  However, a HUGE part of that was filler- kind of boring turn based battle system.

Portal is HUGELY fun, hilarious, and emotionally grabbing, and is done in 4 hours Tops.  100%ing it can't take more than ten. 

Personally, I prefer portal.  I don't mind paying $5/hour (about the same as a movie) for an experience that I come away from feeling like a better person.  With that, I say that Episode 2 is one of the best games I've played in the last two years.
However, $60 for Heavenly Sword?  What?  For that matter, three years to make a game world, and then telling a very short story within it?  Why didn't they just tell it from a different perspective as well?  that would have been an easy and non-quality degrading way to add content.

[Dissy]

necro post?


I think the only videogames Ive purchased that were worth the money were Super Smash Bros. Melee and the Halos.

Why?  Cause the only time I play console video games now-a-days is with friends to do multiplayer

[clockworkjames]

One game that pissed me off was portal. Loads of people saying how awesome it is, yes it is an amazing game but I wanted more.

The can of mountain dew I drank lasted longer than the game because I only drank it when in the lift or waiting for something. I loved the feeling of not knowing if that was the preferred solution to the specific situation, but I decided to play it and time myself, yes it was a speed run but on my second attempt of the game ever, 43 minutes of mindfuck INCLUFING loading times and lift times, from release from confinement to the start of the credits.

43 minutes, it pissed me off. Yeah I had fun, but I paid a bit of cash for this, I could have gone to LAN and played this game for this amount of time for less than a quid. I have spent longer on a single level of CoD4, a game which cost me only a little more cash. It was the wait for portal, from that first aperture science vid with the chasm and crushing cieling spikes months before hand, for 43 minutes of awesome and then nothing?

Counterstrike mix demo's have taken up more space on my HDD than the entire portal game demo did and not just fromt he framerate being slightly less

I only say portal because it is the only game out of the hundreds of games I have, that I have actually been pissed off at for being so short and I have a fucking Wii :/

[muteKi]

I find the analog stick on the GC and Wii to be a bit unwieldy. I think it might be due to the fact that I've gotten very used to using a dual-shock layout, as it is what I have for controlling games on my PC and such.

Also, why the hell are there so few racing games for the Wii? I mean, honestly!

[Ozymandias]

One game that pissed me off was portal. Loads of people saying how awesome it is, yes it is an amazing game but I wanted more.

The can of mountain dew I drank lasted longer than the game because I only drank it when in the lift or waiting for something. I loved the feeling of not knowing if that was the preferred solution to the specific situation, but I decided to play it and time myself, yes it was a speed run but on my second attempt of the game ever, 43 minutes of mindfuck INCLUFING loading times and lift times, from release from confinement to the start of the credits.

43 minutes, it pissed me off. Yeah I had fun, but I paid a bit of cash for this, I could have gone to LAN and played this game for this amount of time for less than a quid. I have spent longer on a single level of CoD4, a game which cost me only a little more cash. It was the wait for portal, from that first aperture science vid with the chasm and crushing cieling spikes months before hand, for 43 minutes of awesome and then nothing?

Counterstrike mix demo's have taken up more space on my HDD than the entire portal game demo did and not just fromt he framerate being slightly less

I only say portal because it is the only game out of the hundreds of games I have, that I have actually been pissed off at for being so short and I have a fucking Wii :/

Wait, how much did you pay for Portal?

Because it should've come with 4 other fucking games if you paid an amount comparable to CoD4, the total value of which is greater than CoD4.

[Narr]

I am still surprised more people have not caught the Namco Tales bug me and my meatlife friends have.

They are all generally pretty long RPG games, but the thing they do right is an INCREDIBLY FUN BATTLE SYSTEM!  It doesn't feel like you're grinding out levels when you go hunting monsters because you genuinely have fun doing so.  There's plenty of extra stuff to do, always.  The stories are usually pretty decent, as well, although they have a strong JRPG flair.

[Bearer]

Guys, I think you're forgetting just how awesome the N64 controller was!

But seriously, games are damned expensive.  How to avoid?  Get a DM, and start a DnD campaign (then again, the initial books are expensive as hell...>_>).  You want hours of entertainment?  Be in a small room full of crazed DnD players past midnight all hyped up on caffeine pills and Redbull.

But as far as games go, I've become pretty enraptured in the Elderscrolls series as of late, Oblivion currently is holding my attention.  When I first started playing it, I truly felt drawn into the world around me, great imersive experience that is

[ackblom12]

To be fair, you can get the 3 starting campaign books for $60. It's pretty cheap for the number of hours of gaming you can get out of it.

People who think D&D is expensive have the idea that you have to have all of the extra books, which is ridiculously expensive. People who actually  do this are fucking idiots.

[Bearer]

That is a pretty accurate and valid point.  Regardless, it is one most excellent time, especially if you have a good group of people.

[Dimmukane]

Which brings up a question...does anyone know the release date of v4?  And how much the manual's gonna cost?

[ackblom12]

Early early June for the Player's Handbook with the DM and Monster's Manual around the same time. The updated Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting will be released in August.

I'm pretty excited about some of the changes they're making, and I'm amazed at how much bitching people are doing about Wizards daring to release a new edition after they spent thousands* of dollars on 3.5 books.


*being fucking idiots

The manuals are gonna cost around $30, same as usual. Amazon has them on pre-order for $24 however, which is the route I'm going.

[Narr]

I heard they are removing gnomes in favor of some short dragon-headed like creature.

Confirm?

[ackblom12]

Tieflings are in the Player's Handbook now while gnomes are in the monster manual. No clue about the dragon headed creature, unless it's referring to the Tiefling in the 2nd video following the link.

http://www.dnd4.com/


EDIT - Also, double checked and June 6th is the official release.

[KvP]

Gnomes are being kicked and for all intents and purposes, Tieflings are taking their place as a core race, which a lot of people have pointed to as indicative of Wizards' pandering to the whims of their munchkin player base. At least they didn't make the drow a core race. To my knowledge.

The dragonborn are an addition to the Forgotten Realms. They're from some other, now defunct campaign setting I've never played in. The FR's oft-neglected areas (Mulhorand, Unther, Halruaa, the Shaar) are being thrown out in favor of wild magic-ravaged badlands. The popular areas (Sword Coast, primarily) are more or less exactly the same as they were before. Looks like the Red Wizards are being replaced by the Shade People as the magic using ubervillains of the setting.

So overall, not much has changed at all.

[Johnny C]

I bet Bethseda is hard at work ruining some table-top games too, guys.

Sorry, I'm mostly misdirecting my sarcasm and anger because of this post.

One game that pissed me off was portal. Loads of people saying how awesome it is, yes it is an amazing game but I wanted more.

The can of mountain dew I drank lasted longer than the game because I only drank it when in the lift or waiting for something. I loved the feeling of not knowing if that was the preferred solution to the specific situation, but I decided to play it and time myself, yes it was a speed run but on my second attempt of the game ever, 43 minutes of mindfuck INCLUFING loading times and lift times, from release from confinement to the start of the credits.

I think watching you attempt to read a book or watch a movie would be almost too entertaining. Do you do speedruns to find out how fast you can finish Solaris on DVD by hitting the fast-forward button and trying to stop at bits of relevant dialogue?

The entire idea behind this thread, and the prasie of Portal, is that games can aspire to be more than just two hours of button-pounding. In the case of Portal, it's the idea that a game can be played through in one sitting and still have enough excellent characterization and thematic elements and fucking incredible writing that in the end it doesn't matter how fast you can go through it on a clock, and in fact if you play it as a speedrun before you play it as a character you're pretty much missing the point. I mean, bully to you that it only took you forty-three minutes, that's impressive, but sheesh. You're aware there's also a commentary mode that's practically worth the price of admission by itself, right?

I'm afraid to ask what your opinions were on CoD4's actual plot, in case I get "Eh, I wasn't really paying attention," but now in order for you to make it up to this thread I have to.

[ackblom12]

I bet Bethseda is hard at work ruining some table-top games too, guys.

Sorry, I'm mostly misdirecting my sarcasm and anger because of this post.

I do apologize for getting off topic in the thread (I've made a new thread to get that discussion out), but that's all you had to say.

One game that pissed me off was portal. Loads of people saying how awesome it is, yes it is an amazing game but I wanted more.

The can of mountain dew I drank lasted longer than the game because I only drank it when in the lift or waiting for something. I loved the feeling of not knowing if that was the preferred solution to the specific situation, but I decided to play it and time myself, yes it was a speed run but on my second attempt of the game ever, 43 minutes of mindfuck INCLUFING loading times and lift times, from release from confinement to the start of the credits.

There's a reason I didn't respond to this. It just hurt my brain.

[clockworkjames]

Man, I misspelled "including" 

[Johnny C]

I cannot believe that is the only thing you think is wrong with that post.

I bet Bethseda is hard at work ruining some table-top games too, guys.

Sorry, I'm mostly misdirecting my sarcasm and anger because of this post.

I do apologize for getting off topic in the thread (I've made a new thread to get that discussion out), but that's all you had to say.

To be fair, Bethseda probably are hard at work ruining some table-top games too.

[OnewingedAngel]

For me, the point of Portal was to find the less direct route to beating the game. I've beaten Super Mario bros in 5 minutes. It's BORING. I don't like speed runs.

Taking your time with Portal and listening to everything GLADOS has to say absolutely makes the game for me.

[ackblom12]

To be fair, Bethseda probably are hard at work ruining some table-top games too.

I needs more vacuum tubes plz.

[tomart]

Some games give you a new toy, some games give you a toybox, some games give you an entire fucking Toys-R-Us. 

Some games give me so much value (which i define as enjoyable playing time) they spoil me for everything else. Like GTA:Vice City and the megaGTA, San Andreas.  Besides 3 major cities and a whole state between, 100 storyline missions (some of which took a lot of play to win) there's a massive slate of side missions, car, plane, boat and motorcycle schools, unique jumps, races, vehicles to collect, property to buy, three main gangs to defeat, 100 hidden objects in each city, 6 girlfriends, a food/working out thing affecting your weight, lots of clothing, tatt and hair (and vehicle) customizations, and a dozen radio stations, all wrapped in a big story.  Just driving around collecting weapons and messin with peds, gangs and cops is more hours of fun.

And then there's Civilization3 and 4. Choosing a civ (each w special units, bonuses & leaders) then building an empire, founding cities, building roads to resources, choosing buildings, religions, government types, building domestic and military units, developing technologies, interacting with the random AI civs, trading, researching/buying/selling tech, starting wars, deciding which of several ways to win, and then making sure the others don't get there first.
Sorry to go on like that - I assume many of you don't play these TBS games, but damn they're addictive.  And fully customizable: 7 difficulty levels, 5 sizes of random maps, climate, numbers and attitudes of AI, plus variable barbarians, mean massive replay combinations, but you can also design your own units, maps, civs, and change all unit stats, and there's a thriving mod community, and multiplayer.

I'd say I spent a year of my life with each of these.  And yes, for some of them I had to upgrade my pc, but totally worth it.

[ackblom12]

You should seriously try Sins of a Solar Empire.

So goddamn good.

[Narr]

The GTA games are TOO large, if you ask me.  Oblivion was around the right length for me because I felt like I was genuinely exploring.  The GTA games were so goddamn large, but there's no variety in it.  Drive, shoot things, drive, shoot things for a different reason, steal a new car, shoot things because you feel like it, rob a bank, shoot things, steal a car.  I really tried to like them, but I just couldn't find a reason to keep playing after 15 minutes.

[Johnny C]

For me it's the writing. Once again, GTA as a series (especially since GTAIII) has some class-A characterization and largely excellent voice acting to back it up. Though a little cliche at times, the stories of the games - and by this I mean plots, characters, settings, themes and most importantly dialogue - are all consistently great.

[Ozymandias]

^ Agreed.

Vice City is my favorite GTA, even though it's the smallest, because of Tommy Vercetti. One of my favorite main characters in all of video games, because he's such a hilarious smart-ass.

[MusicScribbles]

I could never enjoy any of the GTA's stories too much because doing the missions always grew too tiresome for me. The GTA games were fun to mess around in for me, and that was basically it. I would have to say the only one I ever felt was worth my time playing missions was Vice City. I have to agree with the Vice City lot, because Tommy Vercetti kicked my ass.

[Alex C]

That's the way I feel about it too. The core gameplay mechanics behind the GTA games unfortunately are my least favorite part of the series, and I'm not fond of the missions. My typical experience with a GTA game is enjoying myself immensely for about 40 minutes as I tool around town in a colorfully realized alternate reality listening to crazy radio stations and then getting bored of the missions within the next half hour and never touching the game again.

[Narr]

For me it's the writing. Once again, GTA as a series (especially since GTAIII) has some class-A characterization and largely excellent voice acting to back it up. Though a little cliche at times, the stories of the games - and by this I mean plots, characters, settings, themes and most importantly dialogue - are all consistently great.

I can't say I agree.  I've tried playing the games and I suppose never got far enough in to them to give a damn about any of the characters.  They were all incredibly static because when you're dealing with such a large world and a large cast, it's hard to write characters that are anything other than what they are first presented to be.

Rockstar is capable of great character writing, however.  I'm a fan of the Max Payne games for their characterization in those.

[Storm Rider]

Um, Rockstar didn't make Max Payne. Remedy did.

[Narr]

Fuck publishers that shrink the names of their developers so small, you don't know who actually made the game.

Fuck 'em.