PaigeFTW: Can a game be too long?
If you asked me what I’ve been playing lately, the answer would pretty much just be The Witcher 3. Though I’ve managed to briefly pull myself away from this behemoth of a game for snippets of time with Muramasa: The Demon Blade (while on a trip, forced away from my PS4), otherwise it’s been all Geralt all the time.
Now, it’s a fantastic game. The story is deep, the world is massive, and there are probably about 100 things to do at any given moment. I can’t stop playing. And I’m not even done, is the scary part.
Unfortunately, my PS4 refuses to tell me how long I’ve been playing, and the in-game clock is confused and thinks I’ve only played about 10 hours, which I guess would be accurate if it were just counting this past weekend. My educated estimate would probably be more in the neighborhood of 80-90 hours thus far.
While I can’t deny that paying $60 for that many hours of entertainment is a great deal, a part of me is going a little insane because it seems like the game will never end. In the classic gamer’s curse, I can’t consider the game truly over until I’ve completed just about everything feasible to complete. All the side quests. All the contracts. There’s almost too much content to consume.
I realize that this would be the epitome of the first-world problem (“There’s too much to play”), but I still wonder: what’s the happy balance of just enough content?
I personally like a game that clocks in at a good, healthy 40-60 hours. It’s meaty for the dollar, but not so much so that you feel that replaying it would be a Sisyphean task. Anything shorter feels too short; anything longer feels like signing a part-time job contract.
Now, you could argue that I should have self-control and not feel compelled to do every single little thing in a game, but where would the fun in that be…?
