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URL: http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.5/ph/
Vol.
2, Issue 5
December 9, 1999
Pad
Happy:
Size Matters
by
Nick Ferguson
Who
wants to spend 100 hours on a single game? Not Nick F, anyway...
A
month ago I finally bought Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve
played it for a good few hours but in the last week or so I really
haven’t been able to bring myself to place the disc in my
Playstation. The problem is, the game’s just too damn long!
Ye gads - I can remember a time when no game was long enough,
but now it seems that most new releases stretch for miles and
miles. Call me an attention-span-stunted gamer (of the console
breed, natch) but I see no joy whatsoever in these 100 hour treks.
Its got to the point now where a potential purchase won’t
make the cut because it’s going to take too long to beat;
for instance, Tomb Raider 4 looks like a remarkable return
to form for Ms. Croft, but I’m having second thoughts about
buying it because I’m still mentally scarred from the ridiculous
length of the previous TR game (which was just incredibly
boring to play, so I stopped). Roll on Resident
Evil Nemesis, I say.
I suspect
that a lot of developers feel under pressure to make their games
as long as possible, under the (likely publisher-led) delusion
that a long, long game represents better value for money. There
are certainly people out there who would heavily advocate that
one game being longer than another makes it “better”,
but the truth is it just makes that game longer. The reason the
other game is “better” is more than likely because it
has more ideas in it. Ultimately, a game contains only a finite
number of ideas and if you try and stretch a game by limiting
the frequency with which a player encounters your cool ideas ,
you’ll find that it’s not interesting enough to play.
Think about the best games you’ve played recently and you’ll
find that in a lot of cases something pretty interesting happens
every five to ten minutes of gameplay. Conversely, think about
the number of games you’ve played where all the best stuff
happens in the first hour of play and from then on it seem like
developers were looking to fill up space because they used all
their cool ideas way too early (and then you didn’t bother
finishing the game).
The real
problem is that it takes a lot of talent to create a game entertaining
enough to merit a play length of over ten hours, both in terms
of game design and (if appropriate) the plot. I played about halfway
through Final
Fantasy VII before giving up (partially through boredom,
mainly because someone managed to erase my save game) but the
plot was already flagging – and don’t even talk to me
about the tedious, repetitive battles. Final Fantasy VIII
seems more gripping from the start, but word seems to be that
the story isn’t quite as good as its prequel and the characters
aren’t as engaging (uh oh). And those bloody Guardian Force
animations go on for sooooo long – is there honestly no way
to skip them? Life really is too short - how much “play time”
in total do you think gratuitous battle animations add to the
FF series, anyway?
So maybe
we don’t want longer games after all. Maybe what we want
is a higher ideas-to-length ratio (now there’s a scientific
measurement). Alas, matters aren’t helped by those whiners
on the newsgroups who start complaining as soon as they finish
a highly anticipated game. Worst of all was the release of N64
Zelda last year, when people came online a few days after
it came out complaining that they had already completely finished
it! What’s wrong with these people? How can you finish Zelda
that quickly without the aid of a FAQ? More importantly, how enjoyable
is it to play through a game that fast? Surely you just spend
your time sitting there, thinking with a steely determination
“Must... finish... the... game...”. Sounds like a punishment
rather than recreation to me. Fact is, if you finished Zelda
in two days, you never took the time to just wander and find things
yourself – you raced through largely (or completely) neglecting
the little touches that made the game so special. To all those
“true gamerz” out there who pride themselves on whipping
through the latest game, trusty FAQ in hand, I can only say: “Loser.
If you don’t give yourself the time to get stuck, to find
new things yourself, to revel in the puzzles, then you might as
well be watching a video or playing a barely-interactive FMV-fest
like Voyeur”. Eugh.
Of course,
as soon as Rare’s Jet Force Gemini came out people
were moaning about it being too long: looks like there’s
no pleasing some people! In something approaching a conclusion,
let me quickly summarise by listing a few games that I think are
either “too long” or, alternately, about right in their
ideas-to-length ratio...
Games
that are too long:
Soul
Reaver
Final
Fantasy VIII
Body
Harvest
Turok 2
Driver
Games
that are “about right”
Metal Gear Solid
Mario
64
Resident
Evil 2
Silent Hill
System
Shock 2
I was
trying to think of “Games that are too short”, but I
couldn’t come up with many. I was tempted to put down Zelda:
A Link to the Past (on SNES) but only because it’s perfection
(and I can always do with more gaming perfection, thanks). Another
candidate would be Terminator 2 on the original Gameboy
(which was ridiculously short - less than 5 minutes if you knew
what you were doing), but seeing as the end came as a welcome
relief rather than a bitter disappointment it probably doesn’t
count either. There’s also a fair few games where the concept
of “length” doesn’t really figure – Tetris
and other puzzlers come to mind, as well as a number of deathmatch
titles.
Maybe
I’m just crap at games. Or maybe I’m coming from the
point of view of someone who has always played a lot of games
and has less time to play them (damn full-time job etc). There
is cetainly a small part of me that always wants to get through
the latest hot title and move onto the next one, but thankfully
I’m able to stop it from taking over me and ruining the game
experience. A certain amount of wanderlust is, after all, perfectly
natural in the gaming world – it fuels our demand for (bigger,
faster, stronger) consoles that run, er, beat-em ups with ever-increasing
polygon counts and racers with increasingly pretty screenshots
(GT 2000 – mmmm). But while I think that we see a
large number of interesting new games arrive every week, I’m
also finding it increasingly difficult to give most titles the
time they deserve – or at least, the time they think they
deserve. Anyone want to buy a (barely) used copy of Final Fantasy
VIII?
-
Nick Ferguson uses “I” more times per column inch than
any other loonygames correspondant
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