   How many hours of gameplay is too many?
  Gamers do tend to get very picky these days, from minor things related to gfx, to the length of the game itself.  What do you think is a reasonable amount of gameplay hours?  Some say that 80 hours of game play altogether is too long, while other's say it's too short.  For me, the ideal number is 200 hours, but that's just me.  I personally don't like the idea of finishing a game in a day or two (except Turtles in Time for SNES, that was worth beating in a day a few times over).  What do you think?   
  It completely depends on the game.I like pure FPS games to be have single-player campaigns that are around 15 hours long on the ordinary difficulty setting. I like adventure games like Zelda or Okami to take about 40 hours. I like RPGs to take however long it takes them to fully flesh out almost all characters, relationships, and plot elements--that usually means something very long. I also love games like Geometry Wars, where I can play for just a few minutes and be satisfied.   ;  A game can only be too long if it stops being fun.  The only games I ever wished ended early were the bad ones.   ;  Star Ocean the Last Hope, with its 500+ hours of mindless grinding in order to get all the random battle trophies, is definitely too long. For your average RPG or Action/Adventure, I always feel cheated if the first playthrough's shorter than 20 hours (Ratchet and Clank's Quest for Booty is only two hours long!). If it's bad, I stop playing, but if it's good but short, it's unfortunate.   ;  A game can never be to long but it can be to repetitive...   ;Quote:Original post by SteveDeFactoA game can never be to long but it can be to repetitive...I disagree. I have found myself at points thinking "Ok, this is good, but they've gotta start wrapping this storyline up." For example, I thought this in Mass Effect 2. I suppose there's always the possibility of opening a new storyline within the same game. Such as if, after facing the Collectors in ME2, you moved on to do something else, but I think there's a definite upper limit on how long any one storyline will remain interesting.   ;  For me, if a game doesn't have any replay value, it can't be long enough.Unless of course it's just bad. But then it doesn't really matter how long it is.   ;  Depends on the genre, depends on the game, depends on the player.Personally, I felt Portal's (puzzle/FPS) 10 hours were too short.I also feel the 17 hours I plopped into Star Wars: Dark Forces and about the same for Deus Ex were too long.Final Fantasy 7's, Chrono Trigger's, and Chrono Cross' ~70 hours were about right.I feel the 350 hours (on my main charactor alone) that I spent in Elderscrolls 3: Morrowind was about right.Perhaps this is telling me something about myself - I only like to spend so many hours forced to follow the paths a developer decides for me to follow, but I don't mind spending hours following the paths that I myself choose. This may explain why people play MMORPGs for days on end, and why RPGs (which tend to be more open-ish then, say, the typical FPSes) have longer play-times (in general) than FPSes.   ;  Well, I guess I'm different then the average player :)I do agree it depends on the genre of the game, usually.  This is ideal to me:- Puzzle/Arcade: 20- FPS: 40- Adventure: 80 - 200- RPG: 200 - 500I personally like games that take forever to beat, especially if I enjoy it because I won't want the game to end.  But in the end, it also does boil down to your resources I guess (i.e. budget, schedule, man power, management, etc.)   ;  I do not get this too long business. To me it's a high achievement if a game stays on your hard drive for ages. What happened to replayability?Is it simply the case that the people who want a story vastly outweigh the people who want a game? AAA games seem hellbent on competing with movies, but maybe they're right to do so because that's what the majority of gamers want.   