35 replies to this topic

[ataridave]

Games back in the day didn't take me 60 hours to finish. But now I have a 360 and one of the games I own for it is Fallout 3, which is a really fun game, but has HUNDREDS of hours of game play in it. I don't have that much time! And I live with my folks and am a grocery store cashier.
Does anyone else feel my pain? It's not that next-gen games are bad, per say, there are plenty of awesome games out now, and more coming. It's just that games back in the day didn't take hundreds of hours to finish. And when I had my NES, I got about 2 new games per year, and I was content with that.
I love my 360 but I also have a Genesis, and I am seriously thinking about selling the 360 because I have more time for Sega Genesis games. Yes, there are plenty of awesome 360 and PS3 titles, but too many of them involve investing too much of my life in to enjoy. I'll have even less time when I'm out on my own and have more responsibilities.

Edited by ataridave, Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:27 PM.

[Jibbajaba]

If you live with you folks and are a grocery store cashier, then now is when you do have the time for such things. When I was still living at home and just working, before college but after high school, I used to play tons of Playstation (the original one) and watch lots of TV.

Just wait until you get married. Wives don't appreciate husbands who play games all day. And once you have kids? Forget it. At least I haven't done that yet, but I definitely play a lot less games now than I did when I was single.

Chris

[ataridave]

Jibbajaba, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:06 PM, said:

If you live with you folks and are a grocery store cashier, then now is when you do have the time for such things. When I was still living at home and just working, before college but after high school, I used to play tons of Playstation (the original one) and watch lots of TV.

Just wait until you get married. Wives don't appreciate husbands who play games all day. And once you have kids? Forget it. At least I haven't done that yet, but I definitely play a lot less games now than I did when I was single.

Chris

I don't have time to play games all day; I'm too exhausted after work to play any games. I have 2 days off now, but again, it's the length of most next-gen games that's the problem. I finished Halo 3 a few weeks ago, and I was exhausted.

When I was a kid, I had a NES, and then a Genesis, and for the most part, I only played games on the weekends. But never all day because the games didn't suck up your life back then.

Edited by ataridave, Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:40 PM.

[SRGilbert]

I think what he is saying is that lack of free time isn't the problem, it's the overall lenght of time it takes to complete a single game. I agree, I have plenty of free time, I just don't have the patience to play those kinds of games anymore.

[Tempest]

Jibbajaba, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:06 PM, said:

Just wait until you get married. Wives don't appreciate husbands who play games all day. And once you have kids? Forget it. At least I haven't done that yet, but I definitely play a lot less games now than I did when I was single.

This.

I understand where he's coming from, but then again I always played RPGs as a kid and even back then they took 30-40+ hours to beat (sometimes more) so things really haven't changed much.

[HammR25]

Sounds like Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation network games are more up your alley on the current generation since most of them are short time wasters.

[bomberpunk]

i agree with the OP. i lose interest in games that take too damn long. heck, i never even finished final fantasy x. 30 hours in, i was like "F this!"

[20ohm20]

I cannot tell you the number of games I've bought in the last five or six years that I've never finished. The only game I can think of that I've finished that's been released since about 2005 or so is Fallout 3. My weekends are going to be extremely busy until about mid-March, so the amount of time I have to spend on video games will be even less.

Going back and playing games that I finished 22+ years ago (e.g. Ultima III and Pool of Radiance on the C64) isn't helping.

[gdement]

I always seem to lose interest in RPGs before finishing them. Eventually I come back to them and don't know where I am anymore. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I like RPGs to be big and "beating" an RPG isn't very important to my enjoyment of it.

I did okay at finishing the old linear, story based console RPGs on the NES and Genesis, at least when I was a kid. I stopped finishing them in later years though. FF7, FF8, Lunar, and some others were all abandoned.
Open ended PC games though have always been hard for me to finish. In those type of games, I mostly just like to wander and do random quests. The storyline is not my attraction to the game, in fact I get annoyed at games which push their storylines too hard. I just want to hang out in the world of NeverEverWonderWoodLand, not grind through a "story".

It took me years to finish Ultima 7, which is still the only Ultima game I've actually beaten. Part of that was technical problems but part of it was just being too distracted with sidequests and such.
I think the last RPG I "finished" was the Morrowind main quest. It took persistence to do that. Now I have the expansions to do, but I'm bored with that character. I started a new character which can't handle the expansions, and I don't really feel like doing them anyway. There's too many more interesting things to do.

I'm almost done with Fallout 3, but I stopped playing it again right before what I think was the last mission. I just wasn't in the mood for it anymore.

[AtariLeaf]

This is a big reason I like the old stuff. I can play for 10 or 15 minutes, get my gaming fix, and move on to other things. I too have no time for epic length games, although I will say a game like Uncharted 3 looks very appealing.

[ataridave]

Well, I'll keep the 360 and games. I would only get $75 cash for the console itself at GameStop, and there are plenty of XBLA arcade games that are fun and short, and longer games when I feel like playing through one of those. And I still have my CRT TV, and older consoles. I just need to get some kind of TV cart to organize them all.

[Video]

Part of it may be mindset too. As an adult, you count time more than you did as a kid, so when you played Mario as a kid, and it took you 30 minutes to beat it, it felt like it took all day (and with less to satisfy you as a kid, it felt like a real accomplishment then too) Now, you keep track of time, and when you have X hours of free time, you feel bad if you use to much of that on one thing, especially when it's something unimportant like games or movies.

So anyhow, you're older now and you count time, and a to long of game can actually be a turnoff.

One way to fix this is to just do a certain thing, or length (especially if the game is in levels) I'd play Oblivion, and just play through a dungeon/cave/quest a night, and I felt like it was more fulfilling than trying to play as much as possible. A different game, LocoRoco for the PSP is a side scrolling platform type of game, a very long one at that, but you can spend 10-20 minutes beating a single level and still get your gaming fix, even though you didn't finish the game.

Works for me.

[ataridave]

Video, on Mon Nov 14, 2011 4:28 PM, said:

Part of it may be mindset too. As an adult, you count time more than you did as a kid, so when you played Mario as a kid, and it took you 30 minutes to beat it, it felt like it took all day (and with less to satisfy you as a kid, it felt like a real accomplishment then too) Now, you keep track of time, and when you have X hours of free time, you feel bad if you use to much of that on one thing, especially when it's something unimportant like games or movies.

So anyhow, you're older now and you count time, and a to long of game can actually be a turnoff.

One way to fix this is to just do a certain thing, or length (especially if the game is in levels) I'd play Oblivion, and just play through a dungeon/cave/quest a night, and I felt like it was more fulfilling than trying to play as much as possible. A different game, LocoRoco for the PSP is a side scrolling platform type of game, a very long one at that, but you can spend 10-20 minutes beating a single level and still get your gaming fix, even though you didn't finish the game.

Works for me.

Yeah, the factors of age and time that you mentioned are part of it. But I played a lot of Fallout 3 this weekend, and didn't feel like I accomplished anything, other then gaining experience. I mean the quests take SO long it's ridiculous! And isn't there something wrong with feeling good that you blew someone's head off in that game, using the VATS targeting system-even if it is a video game??

Speaking of Mario games, I beat Super Mario Bros. 2 over twenty years ago, and it's still the best ending I've ever seen in a video game.

One other issue is money-I don't make that much where I work, and I really don't want to spend money on my old consoles and my 360. So I'm still back to whether or not I should sell the 360.

[Tempest]

I always finish games that I start unless I simply can't beat it (some of those old NES games like Battletoads fall into this category). I figure once I've invested 20 or so hours into a game I might as well see it through to the end. Then again I've never walked out on a movie either.

[Seob]

I try to only buy new games that i want to play through, and try to only buy a new game if i have finished the on i currently play.
Exceptions are the times i come across a deal to great to let it pass, a game i know i want to play, and is on clearance.
Just finished Uncharted 3. I needed 10.5 hours to play trough on easy. I try to avoid online play, since that's simply to time consuming.

Edited by Seob, Tue Nov 15, 2011 4:23 PM.

[Hatta]

ataridave, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:26 PM, said:

Games back in the day didn't take me 60 hours to finish.

Sure they did. RPGs have always run in the dozens of hours. You just didn't notice because you had more time to spend on them. I remember The Summoning from SSI advertized 100+ hours of gameplay on the box.

[Cynicaster]

I’m the exact same way with modern games. Since I’m single with no kids, I could find the time to play long games if I really really wanted to but I just don’t want to. My PS3 has basically functioned solely as a movie player since I completed my MAME cabinet 7-8 months ago because since then just about all of my gaming time has been devoted to the pick-up-and play games where it doesn’t matter whether you play for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or 3 hours—you can just walk away at any time without that nagging feeling of leaving something “unfinished” (well, that sort of happens when you fail at trying to beat a certain score, but you get the idea).

I had a friend lend me God of War 3 about a year ago, and I finally tried it out for the first time late in the summer. I played for about 30 minutes and haven’t had any interest whatsoever in going back to it. I guess I’ve just totally lost the spark for games where the goal is to simply “finish” them, no matter how pretty they look.

[NE146]

I have the same problem with time, but heck, Modern Warfare 3 (or any call of duty game) IS a "modern" game and a single multiplayer game averages only 5-10 minutes. It's perfect for the time strained folk like me.

And by the way I'm also currently trudging through Dragon Warrior III (don't ask) on the NES. So I get a lot of old school playtime as well

[PsychoKittyNet]

So I am in the minority here who had no problem sinking hundreds of hours into Oblivion eh? .

[Pixelboy]

I haven't invested large amounts of time into a "modern game" since the days of the PlayStation 1, with the notable exceptions of Castlevania SOTN on PlayStation, Buffy The Vampire Slayer on Xbox, and Metroid Prime on Game Cube. And for me, portable gaming stopped with the Game Boy Advance (I dropped out when the DS and PSP first came out).

These days, the only "video game playing" I do is beta-testing ColecoVision games. I don't have time for anything else.

Edited by Pixelboy, Wed Nov 16, 2011 2:21 PM.

[SoulBlazer]

PsychoKittyNet, on Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:43 PM, said:

So I am in the minority here who had no problem sinking hundreds of hours into Oblivion eh? .

Well, I'm in the same minority then, cause I recall easily spending 125 hours on both Morrowinf and Oblivion.

I also recall that Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1 took me about 100 gaming hours.

It's harder NOW to find gaming time when I was younger and didn't have to work and do adult things -- I got Skyrim on Sat and have only been able to put in about four hours into it. That doesn't mean I'm going to give it up, though, or stop playing other games like that. It may take a long time, but I'll sink in gaming time on it when I can and enjoy doing it.

[PsychoKittyNet]

SoulBlazer, on Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:07 PM, said:

PsychoKittyNet, on Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:43 PM, said:

So I am in the minority here who had no problem sinking hundreds of hours into Oblivion eh? .

Well, I'm in the same minority then, cause I recall easily spending 125 hours on both Morrowinf and Oblivion.

I also recall that Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1 took me about 100 gaming hours.

It's harder NOW to find gaming time when I was younger and didn't have to work and do adult things -- I got Skyrim on Sat and have only been able to put in about four hours into it. That doesn't mean I'm going to give it up, though, or stop playing other games like that. It may take a long time, but I'll sink in gaming time on it when I can and enjoy doing it.

I think I maxed the timer bar out on Tactics lol. This weekend I did the weekend beta test of The Old Republic, and I think I will be sinking a lot of time into that.

[Video]

PsychoKittyNet, on Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:25 PM, said:

SoulBlazer, on Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:07 PM, said:

PsychoKittyNet, on Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:43 PM, said:

So I am in the minority here who had no problem sinking hundreds of hours into Oblivion eh? .

Well, I'm in the same minority then, cause I recall easily spending 125 hours on both Morrowinf and Oblivion.

I also recall that Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1 took me about 100 gaming hours.

It's harder NOW to find gaming time when I was younger and didn't have to work and do adult things -- I got Skyrim on Sat and have only been able to put in about four hours into it. That doesn't mean I'm going to give it up, though, or stop playing other games like that. It may take a long time, but I'll sink in gaming time on it when I can and enjoy doing it.

I think I maxed the timer bar out on Tactics lol. This weekend I did the weekend beta test of The Old Republic, and I think I will be sinking a lot of time into that.

I've dumped hundreds of hours into each of the consolized Elders Scrolls games....but rather than do a hundred hours in a week or two, (like I would have if I was still a kid with "unlimited" time) it's spread out over months or even years.

[PsychoKittyNet]

That was over the course of a year I think. Mans gonna works.

[TwinChargers]

I fear somewhat that I might not be able to get into this generation as much because I'm going to be a latecomer. With all the patches and online content that is needed for this generation, I'm not sure that a few years after the PS3 and 360 have ridden off into the sunset that they will hold up as well as most if not all previous generations. As unfortunate as it may be, when I'm more able to afford and have time for these consoles, they will be paralyzed by time.

Bummer.