I must admit, I have the opposite feeling. I don't know if it's just my age but I feel games are now considerably shorter than they used to be some 12/15 years ago.
I agree, but thinking back to the Master System, is it just because back then we didn't have the ability to save our progress?
Many of Saturday/Sunday afternoons were spent playing Alex the Kidd, getting frustrated because I lost the last of my lives colliding with a fish, and having to start all over again.
I never actually did complete that game
As there is now a clear focus on online multiplayers for certain genres, I feel the standard, single player games are now much more condensed than they once were. As someone who doesn't 'do' online gaming (a lack of understanding, desire and bandwidth to accommodate it), I must admit I feel short-changed with just about any game I purchase now. There was a time I could spend months on completing a game. These days even the largest of them, at a leisurely pace, I can usually get done in a matter of weeks.
Yes x1000. Online gaming is the main way of retaining your audience. Most developers now will sloppily put together a 6-8 hour campaign and invest heavily in Multiplayer. And 9/10 it works. I'm looking at you Activision
Another problem with today's games is that there are so many prompts on the screen advising you where you need to be next. Some you may be able to turn off, granted, but this just takes the fun and adventure out of them. Games used to be so much more open ended and less linear than they are now. You had to use your brain to progress. One example that comes to mind is Resident Evil 2. The hours I spent roaming corridors looking for things or trying to solve puzzles doesn't bear thinking about. Today you're generally given a lightly disguised linear map which cuts hours out of gameplay of old and cutscenes that involve you having to press buttons rather than taking a minute to sit back and watch…
Disagree slightly with this – Say for example Skyrim, if I didn’t have the map marker then I would have been stuck too many times. Bigger games need this. Now with fast travel that takes away the fun of the game, I loved walking/taking a horse to my chosen destination and getting into fights/discovering caves/ picking up side missions from NPC’s along the way. But that’s a different matter at hand
You mentioned RE2.. I didn’t play this as much as RE1. But say you’re in one of those corridors you mentioned. You had to do a specific thing to progress. You couldn’t get stuck, turn around and do something new. You were there, and you just had to do it.
On the mention of cutscenes, if you’re a big fan of them, I recommend Max Payne 3 if you’ve not already played it. Gosh, I spent more time watching cutscenes than playing the game!
Once you've completed a game, we then now find out about follow-on DLC packs which again come at an additional cost – and only available online rather than a proper disc, limiting it's audience immediately… (it's a bit of a personal gripe of mine at the moment with The Last Of Us). There wouldn't be a need for them if more effort was put into the development in the first place…! Either that or make a proper second game like the way it used to be when new ideas some along! ARGH! Things were so much simpler and easier to understand (and to access) in the 90's…
I understand your gripe with DLC's.
It is just a further way of developers makingextra money. But on the other side of the coin can you blame them as they’relosing money from rental/second hand copies.
Good grief, I've turned this into a bit of a rant, haven't I…?!
Nope, you've turned it into a great discussion and raised plenty of valid points
Brilliant to keep the topic of conversation carrying on via a gaming forum.
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