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Max Payne is now shipping. Is this exciting? We have no idea. It seems a lot like any other action game and third-person shooters are sometimes difficult to pull off.

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Allakhazam's Magical Realm does a point-by-point comparison of EverQuest and Anarchy Online. And the winner is? You'll have to read it. Just kidding. The writer prefers EverQuest. You may want to read it anyway, though.

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Is there any game that excites you guys? It seems like most games get this treatment in the Qt3 news. Especially those that generate a lot of raised expectations...

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Actually, we were to be Romero's bitch, not Daikatana's.

Max Payne...personally, I have trouble warming up to third-person action games. They're just harder to control. The only reason I see for them being third person is to present more cinematic graphics. That's nice, but that stuff wears off after an hour or two of play.

Besides Tomb Raider, have any third-person action games done really well on the PC? I can't think of any offhand.

But the main problem with getting worked up over Max Payne is simply that the game was pushed too long ago. It's a problem with high profile games that are delayed. The marketing push comes, gets us intrigued, and then...nothing. So when the game finally ships, we've used up our store of enthusiasm for it. Well, at least some of us.

Does anyone know if Romero is still dating that Playboy model? That seemed an injustice.

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Besides Tomb Raider, have any third-person action games done really well on the PC? I can't think of any offhand.

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Does anyone know if Romero is still dating that Playboy model? That seemed an injustice.

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I saw Romero and Killcreek wandering around at the Fishtank booth at E3.

Romero's one of those boyfriend types who always has his hands on his girl, rubbing her shoulder, stroking her back, letting his hand slide down to her ass, etc. At least that's how he was at E3 when I saw him.

He's got prettier hair than Killcreek too!

"Romero's one of those boyfriend types who always has his hands on his girl, rubbing her shoulder, stroking her back, letting his hand slide down
to her ass, etc."

Um, dare I say, he's made her his ...

"Besides Tomb Raider, have any third-person action games done really well on the PC?"

Didn't Syndicate do pretty well? (I believe that's the game I'm thinking about - the one where people went running around screaming when they were on fire.)

Jeff

I loved that game. I remember running my little guys all over the map capturing all the citizens -- and then they'd capture all the enemy agents. I was unstoppable.

That and the Gauss Gun.

Talk about fun!

Does Jedi Knight count? What about the Crusader series? I think of Syndicate as an isometric squad-tactical game.

- Alan

Unlike Mark, I have no problem with the concept of 3rd Person Over-the-Shoulder Shooters. I've always liked the Tomb Raider series and Raven's Hexen II (is that right? the one with the elf?) was great. Then there are 3rd Person games like Alone in the Dark that remove you another step from the character by showing you the action from a camera. These approaches give games a much more cinematic feel. It seems the developers of Max Payne are keenly aware of how that can play out differently than a 1st Person Shooter.

For instance, there's a Half-Life mod called Opera that relies heavily on doing spin kicks, dives, rolls, etc. It doesn't play out very well from a 1st person view, because this sort of action is a cinematic convention much better suited to being seen from outside.

I'm actually very much looking forward to Max Payne.

-Tom

Heretic II. IMO, that's Raven's finest hour though the prequel, Heretic, is very close behind.

--Dave

I liked Oni.

"Oni is much more than the sum of it's flaws" -Andrew S. Bub

PS: I played Jedi Knight in 3rd person. Of course, I also used the saber to the exclusion of all other weapons.

Heretic II was good. Heck, I kinda liked FAKK2 as well, and even Alice had its moments. So 3rd person per se is not a game killer.

We still haven't received our Payne though, so I don't know for sure. Got my Arcanum at least though.

Hey Bob - be sure and start a thread with thoughts on Arcanum. I was more impressed than I expected to be when I chatted with the designer at E3 and ran through the game with him.

Jeff

Alone in the Dark isn't really an action game, so that doesn't count. Syndicate and Crusader are more point and click games, right?

My problem with over-the-shoulder action games is aiming. It's too hard to do it without help from the game and auto-aiming is kind of boring. I think third-person games that emphasize melee combat are pretty easy to control, such as Rune, but the games that require shooting are tough. Max Payne is mostly a shooter, isn't it?

I'm not writing off Max Payne. I'm just skeptical and resistent to having any enthusiasm for it now. It's been in development too long and there have been too many articles about it.

>Besides Tomb Raider, have any third-person action games done really well on the PC? I can't think of any offhand.

Well there's a difference between "done really well" and "was a good game." Drakan was pretty good. FAKK2, despite a dumb license, was a pretty decent game. Heretic II was really good. Alice was so-so, as was Oni, as was Rune.

So like, the record for 3rd person action games seems about the same as 1st person ones.

And if you ask me, the fact that it's been in development forever is more reason to be excited about its release. My curiosity about titles like that are just much higher than with shorter-cycle games. Like Daikatana - I knew it was gonna be ass because of the late beta I played, but I was excited to see just what the final product was like. Just immensely curious.

Though my feeling is that Max Payne is gonna be really good. It's totally unfounded (except for getting the dog and pony show at E3), but that's what my "haven't played it yet" suspicion is.

"But the main problem with getting worked up over Max Payne is simply that the game was pushed too long ago. "

If memory serves, it hit the cover of CGW the same month as Columbine. People though the subway tunnel Max was posed in looked like the hallway in a public school, and were not amused. After the unfortunate response to their Vampire cover, it was looking like CGW was never going to get a break.

I'm not a big shooter guy, so don't know much about Max. I'm waiting on Civ 3 and MOO 3 right now. I think I might break down and get Kohan soon.

Word on the street is that Max Payne is rather short. We're talking 10 - 20 hours of gameplay.

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Word on the street is that Max Payne is rather short. We're talking 10 - 20 hours of gameplay.

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I seem to remember Heretic 2 was a highly rated game that was extremely short. It failed miserably sales-wise.

It will also be interesting to see how the general public fairs running this game on their computers. Sure the minimum new system these days is an 800MHz based system but there are still a heck of a lot of people out there running sub-500MHz systems.

Maybe the "Matrix"-like gameplay will help carry this title.

Length always matters. It's just one of the factors that go into a buying decision.

I'd forgotten about the somewhat steep requirements, too. I wonder how my 750, TNT2 system will handle the game?

Oh, the length doesn't matter Dave, it's just I'm sure Max Payne won't be "20 incredible hours."

Can you name the last really good short game? I can't. I think it's a design-process side-effect that only longish games can be good.

>>Length always matters. It's just one of the factors that go into a buying decision.

I think quality is more important than length, though this conversation is getting a little, erm.

Different genres are judged differently when it comes to length. A 10 hour RPG would be disastrous, as would a 10 hour strategy game. But 10-20 hours for an action game, particularly one with single-player only, is pretty normal. Hell, Half-Life, at least according to Jason Cross, has about 10-20 hours of gameplay (I seem to have taken longer, but then I got stuck trying to jump on one freakin' box for like a day).

>>I wonder how my 750, TNT2 system will handle the game?

Your videocard is a serious bottleneck... it was probably maxed out mucho time ago. You'd be better off spending $50 on a GeForce 2 MX.

I really liked the way Oni handled third-person weapon combat, with a laser-like pointer and no auto-aiming.

I dunno, I like the third-person perspective quite a bit. I like seeing my character do cool things. I've been playing The Opera a lot, and it's just not the same to do those cool moves in first-person mode. Playing it in third-person is really funny... when you roll the view still rolls, if I recall.

I am totally geeked up about Max Payne. It may suck but I am expecting it to be absolutely great. I think the 3rd person should be fine as long as it controls like a 1rst person game (i.e. mouse and WASD setup) and there is no reason to think it won't.

I am also wondering how my Celeron 850 + TNT2U system will handle Max Payne. I will definitely wait for some usenet feedback.

Mark: "Length always matters. It's just..."

There he goes again.

Back on topic, I think a lot of times, games end up being too long. I think that the last game that I actually finished was Ground Control, no wait, it was Crimson Skies. I used a cheat code to go through the last 3 missions of Starcraft because I just wanted to find out what happened, but didn't feel like playing through to find out. I'm taking a different approach with Brood War though and not reading the strategy guide at all which I think contributed to my impatience. (In case you're wondering, I just bought the Battlechest about a month and a half ago for $10).

It seems that with the majority of the games I've played, I've ended up wanting to know what happens/how it ends, but don't want to sit through playing the game to find out. This was especially true for Diablo 2 for me. Does this mean the story isn't compelling enough, or is the game is too long? Probably a combination of both. Or maybe I just have too short an attention span.

It also seems to me that games tend to get really difficult, if not impossible right at the end: The big rock and Higara missions in Homeworld, The Death Star mission in X-Wing Alliance, The sewer bomb mission in SWAT3, etc.

Do you guys who review games for a living actually record how much time you spend playing them, or do you just try to come up with an estimate?

I didn't mean that a short game was by definition a bad one, just that game length is one of the factors that a lot of people consider when buying a game.

A 10 hour game selling for $40 isn't a good thing, IMO. If it's that short, it will hurt sales. I have no idea how long Max Payne is, though. If it is only a 10-15 hour game, that will be quite surprising since it's been in development so long. Does it support multiplayer?

>>A 10 hour game selling for $40 isn't a good thing, IMO. If it's that short, it will hurt sales.

Based on what evidence? Blue Shift is about 5 hours long for $35 and it's sold pretty well thus far. Most strong single-player FPS games are between 10-20 hours long.

>>Does it support multiplayer?

Nope.

When you get beyond 20 hours, you better have a damn good reason to keep the single player gamer playing. In RPGs that's usually not too much trouble since you can ramp up character abilities and throw lots of neat new challenges at the player while slowly unravelling the plot.

But for a 3rd or 1st person action game? Considering most of the people commenting in the movie thread can't stand sitting through a lot of < 2 hour movies, trying to build a game that has enough story to keep your interest beyond even ten hours seems to be pushing it.

Tight, focused, quickly decipherable game designs with smart, quick story exposition will always be more enjoyable than long drawn out games which add length to make them seem worthwhile. (As in... "Hey, Game X is thirty hours, but Game Y is only ten hours, Game X must be better!)

There's actually been some really good strategy games with minimal single player campaigns, most recently Kohan. But strategy games typically provide the player with a lot more reasons to play again (they're also prone to a more "gamey" design where story plays a minimal role and the interaction of the playing pieces is tantamount to the game's longevity for the player).

--Dave

And ten single-player hours don't take into consideration the COUNTLESS hours that can be spent with some of these game in multiplayer. That's got to be a factor, at least some of the time.

Blue Shift is part of the Half-Life sales juggernaut. I'd point to Fakken as anecdotal evidence of short games hurting sales. Heck, that game got great reviews for the most part.

If a game is really short like Fakken and Blue Shift, word gets out. People talk about it in the newsgroups and on the message boards. It becomes part of the word of mouth going around about the game. Why wouldn't you consider it to factor into sales?

I agree with Mark. Especially when they can come out with something like the Throne of Bhaal expansion -- an EXPANSION pack -- with 80 hours of gameplay (sure, it's an RPG, so it's a little different), you'd sure think that a fresh "new" game that they're asking forty or fifty dollars for would have enough content to make it feel worth the money.

The Crusader games were hardly point 'n' click affairs. You used the keyboard, mostly, and they were very much action titles. I loved 'em, too. I curse Origin/EA for dumping the series. Curse you, Origin! Curse you, EA! There, I feel better.

Fallout was a short RPG, but damn good. Unreal had 41 levels, but was boring, and most of the levels were filler. I agree that the combination of price/length is an important thing to consider, but console games (admittedly a different realm entirely in some ways) often offer teensy amounts of gameplay for $50, and no one bitches much.

I finish very few games. I have a lot of fun playing both the long epics and the short but sweet titles, though, and I'm far more likely to finish a short game.

People only complain about a game being too short if it is good--if it's bad, they're thankful.

What the heck is Fakken? Is that the game where you have huge guns and fly on dragons in a Heavy Metal fantasy universe rendered using the Quake 3 RIOT Engine?

--Dave

>>I'd point to Fakken as anecdotal evidence of short games hurting sales. Heck, that game got great reviews for the most part.

Fakken? Is that like Drakan or FAKK2?

Heavy Metal was killed because, well... it's Heavy Metal. No Wal*Mart, no K-Mart, mature rating, embarassment from people over 18... all of those things could have had as much to do with it performing poorly as length. Then there's timing of the release, marketing at stores from GOD, blah blah blah.

Elite Force was roundly criticized for being short but that didn't stop it from at least being popular enough to justify an expansion. (As an aside, Star Trek games never seem to appear in Top 10 lists yet they continue to be produced... hmm.)

>>Why wouldn't you consider it to factor into sales?

It may be a factor, but why a game doesn't sell can't be distilled down into "too short" when "marketing" is usually the main culprit.

If short games cause games not to sell, do longer games sell better? Daikatana was a long game; most people concede that it did have a lot of... stuff in it. If people wouldn't buy a great game that was short, would they buy a mediocre (which may be an overly generous description of Daikatana) game that was long?

And remember, people may say, "Game X R0X0RED, but it was short," and people may only hear the "R0X0RED" bit... I dunno.

Every time I complain about a bad game also being short I'm put in mind of that joke from Annie Hall.

"The food here is terrible!"
"Yes! And such small portions!"

Often complaining about game length is just a "gotta complain about something" reviewer trick. They'll say it's too short, but rarely why that's a bad thing. This is something you can go into specifics about. Rarely do you hear that a game is too long, which is why I'm glad to see Unreal mentioned here. That's a case were knocking out maybe half the levels would have probably left a much, much better impression by the time that anti-climactic text ending scrolled by.

Die By the Sword (a 3rd person game btw) was a case in point for a game being too short. Few games have as much detail packed into so few levels. I mean, there were five of them, and they the only reason why you didn't burn through them was because of the control scheme. Sadly, those who opted out of VSIM did burn through them.

Ah well, "always leave 'em wanting more" I guess.

Oh, Steve, Trek may never break the top 10 but I think it's a case where they're guaranteed to sell a comfortable amount of games for the budget. Someone did some math once somewhere (really) that figured out what the maximum budget a Star Trek movie had to be to be a guaranteed money maker (assuming some non-Trekkers come to watch). It was pretty high. This implies that WAY too many people probably bought Away Team and New Worlds. It also explains why QA isn't a big part of Trek gaming.

-Andrew

"Often complaining about game length is just a "gotta complain about something" reviewer trick. They'll say it's too short, but rarely why that's a bad thing."

I disagree. A 10 hour game with no multiplayer and an MSRP of $40 should be criticized for its length. It's shorter than the norm and readers should be informed of that. Elite Force had multiplayer at least.

And let me add again that I have no idea if Max Payne is short. Maybe it's long? You wouldn't expect a game that's been in development for as long as Max to be short.

"Often complaining about game length is just a "gotta complain about something" reviewer trick. They'll say it's too short, but rarely why that's a bad thing."

I disagree.
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You disagree that often it's a reviewer trick?
I mean, my saying that it's *often* a reviewer trick certainly implies that at least some of the time it isn't a reviewer trick, and a valid complaint. Like my DBTS example later in that post.
;>

One reviewer complained that Serious Sam was too short. Of course he was playing on 'Easy' it turned out.

-Andrew

As for over-the-shoulder, I really like the way it was handled in Fade to Black. Essentially, they used an Alone in the Dark type camera, until you pulled out your gun, at which point it moved the camera over your shoulder and gave you crosshairs.

As for game length, here's a link to my GamerClick write-up on the subject. To summarize, I think it's more a matter of player expectation with regard to the experience/value they get out of a title, regardless of length. 10 hours does seem a bit short though.

- Alan

"Can you name the last really good short game? I can't. I think it's a design-process side-effect that only longish games can be good."

A few of my favorite games of all time:

Amber: Journeys Beyond (about 9 hours)
Full Throttle (about 6 hours)
Wishbringer (about 4 hours)

I'm sure that if I went home and perused my collection, there would be a few other games that I really liked that weigh in at the "under 10 hours" mark (like Heavy Metal FAKK2). Contrast those games with other titles that were really long but not very good (Unreal, any of the recent Might and Magic games).

As far as I'm concerned, length matters, but not very much. A really good game is a really good game, even if it's short. A really bad game, OTOH, is even worse when it's too long.

"A 10 hour game with no multiplayer and an MSRP of $40 should be criticized for its length. It's shorter than the norm and readers should be informed of that."

Informed? Sure. But I'm not going to criticize something unless it honestly bothers me. And with length, you really don't need to anyway--you can pretty much just state how long it is and let the reader decide whether or not that's a problem for them. I'd be really leery of trying to distill it down to some sort of formula (dollars of value per hour, or some such nonesense), because ultimately that's pretty subjective. As I said in my other post, some of my favorite games were very short.

The only time that you should really elaborate is if the length has some sort of notable effect on the experience, and in that case I'm much more likely to criticize a game for being too long (a marginal game is typically hurt more by being too long than by being too short--Unreal, Rune, et al).

Just like in the movies. How many times have you seen a flick that could have been much better had the editor trimmed twenty minutes off of it?

Metal Gear Solid. About 10-12 hours, full price, no multiplayer, and damn near universally rated as one of the best PSX games - even best CONSOLE games - EVER. And sold gangbusters.

Normal people probably don't even finish 20 hour games. I bet not more than 30% of the people who bought Half-Life finished it.

I'd much rather have 10 hours of kick-ass stuff than 20 hours of "good but not great" stuff. Would 20 hours of kick-ass be better? of course! But I sure as hell aren't going to criticize a 10-hour game.

A game's length can't affect short-term sales much. The bulk of the buyers for a successful game don't read reviews first (or at all) - they don't know the game is short until AFTER they've bought and played it. A game that is "too short" can only affect long-term sales.

Again, didn't hurt MGS much.

I think a short length can actually benefit a quality game. I've had my share of finishing 40 hour games and feeling nothing except perhaps exhaustion and thinking, "Thank god, I'm done and never have to boot that up again. (Unreal does come to mind)" It refreshing to have a good solid 10 hour experience, finishing the game, and getting that nice feeling of accomplishment. It's a great reward. Longer games tend to beat you into submission.

"Just like in the movies. How many times have you seen a flick that could have been much better had the editor trimmed twenty minutes off of it?"

And how many 45 minute movies have you paid $6 to see and been happy with the length?

I think length plays into value and a 10 hour game for $40 is not a good value and I'll lower my score as a result. I'm not going to drop it from a 4-star rating down to 2 stars, but I will take at least a half star off, maybe a full star depending on how I feel about it.

'A few of my favorite games of all time:

Amber: Journeys Beyond (about 9 hours)
Full Throttle (about 6 hours)
Wishbringer (about 4 hours)'

Ok, I'll admit Full Throttle was one of the better games I've ever played. Never mind. ;0

>>And how many 45 minute movies have you paid $6 to see and been happy with the length?

Bah, straw man. 45 minute movies don't exist. Movies are rarely under 80 minutes, just as games are rarely under 8-10 hours.

So the better question is how many 80-90 minute movies have you been upset over their length, or lack thereof?

"Bah, straw man. 45 minute movies don't exist."

Well, you've never been to Tower Books on 12th street. Take a roll of quarters and a piece of plastic to sit on.

(Before anyone asks... "no.")

I think to tackle the quesion of how much game length matters, you have to consider how long the average single-play gamer is going to devote his attention to the title. How many people actually finish a game anyway?

I'm not talking about hardcore nuts like you and me... I'm talking about your average joe. I think for them, it's a blessing to have something they can see to a conclusion without their interest failing half-way through the experience.

For reviewers... it sure makes life easier! 10 hours, whipped, written, submitted. Next!

As for value=length... RUNE.

"I say we nuke the dead horse from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

"So the better question is how many 80-90 minute movies have you been upset over their length, or lack thereof?"

Some. I do recall thinking after a number of movies, "Man, that sure was short. Kind of a ripoff."

It's really all about expectations. I think gamers expect games to be longer than 10 hours, and that's not an unreasonable expectation since the vast majority of games are longer than 10 hours. A 10 hour game is just too short to be priced at $40.

>>It's really all about expectations. I think gamers expect

Braaap! You don't know what gamers expect, you only know what Mark Asher expects.

>>the vast majority of games are longer than 10 hours.

Um, based on what data? Aren't most single-player FPS games are in the 10-15 hour range for expect players like, well, journalists and the hardcore gamers? We TOTALLY don't represent the masses on this one, so our whining is sorta irrelevant.

But anyway, I recently played throught Solider of Fortune (hey, I'm behind) and it said I played for about 6 hours. But it didn't necessarily feel overly short, mainly because it's sorta mediocre.

What would you prefer, boring FedEx quests? Running back and forth across maps to flip switches, with respawning bad guys to artificially pad a game? Do you want mazes? How about... NO SAVES ANYWHERE. That'll make a game take longer.

Rather than say, "10 hours is too short for a $40 game," let's think about some recent 3D action games (since this is about Max Payne) that do take longer than 10 hours to complete because you can't say Game X is too short unless there are plenty of longer games to compare it to.

Jason claims to have completed both Half-Life and NOLF in 10 hours or so, so they're both off the list (sorry, if one person took less than 10 hours, they're short). Jedi Knight didn't take much more than 10 hours, if I recall (15 levels in all, I believe). Well, that's old. What about Elite Force? Short. Heavy Metal? Short. Alice? Short. I'd say Daikatana had more than 10 hours of gameplay... I suffered through that. Rune probably had more than 10 hours. KISS was short. Undying, short.

So, so maybe Daikatana and Rune, unless people can invalidate them with the "it took me 8 hours to finsh that!" message. C'mon, let's get going here.

Short games could be a great boon for a company. If you make your game somewhat shorter (such as Jason's MGS example), you get the benefit of having more players get all the way through it. It helps drive good word of mouth because the players have a lot of experiences to talk about from the game having seen everything. Adding to this is the fact that a shorter game is easier to debug which can make for a more "solid" experience if you'll pardon the MGS pun. Not only do you possibly get fewer bugs, but you've got more time to make all the parts of the game you have REALLY GOOD. You can spend more time working on making each area more important, more exciting and more unique. Finally, it will likely cost the same or less to get a product with a more focused design.

By comparison, many games often only offer a lot of redundant, boring challenges that are simply an earlier challenge in another graphical form. I think this is a fundamental reason that console games have wider appeal. Most console games aren't long enough to bore you to death by the end. You never get the feeling you're slogging through more game just because the developers felt like they had to meet some arbitrary length meter that PC gamers have ingrained in their brains. Just because the PC can handle some types of games better than consoles doesn't mean that urgency and smart, quick storytelling should be avoided. It's this old "well, we have the space, let's just use it" mentality that seems to drive it.

Developers should play their games before release with an eye toward trimming the fat. Look at the game and ask where it gets bogged down in repetition. If the repetition is there just for repetition's sake (to lengthen the game, IOW), then either cut it or find a way to improve it so that the narrative or action can flow.

This is one reason I've often complained that PC games need to get back to the roots of gaming ala Pac-Man. Make a simple to understand game first and then start telling stories around that. If you've got a good underlying foundation of compelling interaction that's easy to learn but difficult to master, and that supports the ability to learn new skills and ideas to improve your play constantly adding to your ability to break out of the doldrums of repetition, then the rest comes easy.

--Dave

Is the point really how short a game is? Or how well it is designed? Technically, a game of Civ 2 only takes about 5-10 hours to get through on a good-sized map. The trick is that it can be replayed over and over, with different levels, different races, different governments, etc. It's not an issue of how long a Civ2 game is, but the fact that you can always go again, and that all the parts work so well together, that makes it special.
If Daikatana was long (I, unlike you poor dopes, didn't have to play it for material), that didn't make it good. Maybe if it'd been shorter, they could have used the extra design time freed up to improve the gameplay. If Civ2 were longer, it might have been too tedious. How long was an X-Com game? The pacing on that was excellent, but it never seemed all that long. Ultimas were always long, but (with the exception of the last two)never troubled me with the length. Doom was hosrt, but it made you want to play it over and over again.

Sorry, long-winded. I think maybe the argument isn't length, but how that length works into the overall design quality.

A game is only too short if it's good.

A game is only too long if it's bad.

Or to belabor the point, 40 hours of gameplay wouldn't have made Half-Life any better, and 6 hours of gameplay wouldn't have made Daikatana any worse.

As for "value for your gaming dollar," that's the kind of subjective phrase that makes reviewing games actually useful. When you start quantifying things like "Game X is $40 and ten hours so it's worth $4/hour", you might as well be benchmarking hardware--with the emphasis on bloodless analysis that that fully implies.

For myself? It's all about quality of time. If I finish the game and I don't regret spending the money or time on it, it was worth it. If I do, then it wasn't.

Pretty simple. :)

"Braaap! You don't know what gamers expect, you only know what Mark Asher expects."

What? You mean I don't know that a lot of gamers expect configurable keys? You mean I don't know that a lot of gamers expect 3D engines that don't have clipping problems? You mean that I don't know that a lot of gamers like games with alternative paths to accomplishing goals?

As to game length, I could do a dejanews search and pull up plenty of complaints about short games like Fakk and Elite Forces. I know they're there because I read them when they were posted. How can you sit there with a straight face and tell me I don't have any insight into what gamers like? That's simply not true. If you thought about it for more than, or, say 5 seconds, you'd realize that.

And please, of course I'm generalizing. I don't pretend to know what each and every gamer likes. I do have a good sense for many of the things that gamers like and dislike in general, though. You do too. I hope.

As far as Jason goes, if he's finishing all those games in 10 hours his first time through, he's a FPS stud. For my experience, a game like Half-Life takes a lot longer than 10 hours.

Maybe game companies should adopt this idea that shorter games are fine, though. Maybe they should just come out with shooters that only have two really great levels and take no more than 4 hours to play through. After all, how can they possibly know what gamers might like? What are they? Mindreaders? :)

"Sorry, long-winded. I think maybe the argument isn't length, but how that length works into the overall design quality."

No one really complains about a short game if it has replay value. The problem with shooters is that they don't have much replay value, especially if they don't have multiplayer or bot matches built in.

"Short games could be a great boon for a company. If you make your game somewhat shorter (such as Jason's MGS example), you get the benefit of having more players get all the way through it. It helps drive good word of mouth because the players have a lot of experiences to talk about from the game having seen everything."

Except that for games like Elite Forces and Heavy Metal the word of mouth was tainted by complaints about the game length. Some gamers didn't mind, but plenty felt a bit ripped off by them and were vocal about it. Just look at the treatment Blue Shift's getting. The length has been criticized over and over again.

I doubt any game producer of PC games would go into a project and recommend that the game length be kept to 10 hours. I just don't think that's a wise design goal, especially for games that won't feature multiplayer or any kind of real replay value.

>>What? You mean I don't know that a lot of gamers expect configurable keys?

But you're trying to quantify an opinion when making a fairly specific "gamers expect more than 10 hours of gameplay" statement. A more accurate comparison would be, "Gamers expect at least 18 configurable keys."

(Though again, if you say 10 hours is less than the norm, I expect you to produce a significant list of games with more than 10 hours of gameplay... I suspect the norm IS 10 hours of gameplay.)

>>As to game length, I could do a dejanews search and pull up plenty of complaints about short games like Fakk and Elite Forces.

Sure, which is from the hardest of the hardcore who are, duh, better than average players. And you don't know if they're playing games on easy or hard in order to "be first" and run out and post about how much they hate the game.

And if length is the only complaint, a game is doing awfully good.

>>How can you sit there with a straight face and tell me I don't have any insight into what gamers like? That's simply not true. If you thought about it for more than, or, say 5 seconds, you'd realize that.

Oh right, I forget. Usenet and message boards are 100% representative of gamers. This message board in particular is truly an accurate sampling of people that buy games.

I suspect you have as much, or as little, insight as anyone. You just think you have more because you read message boards.

Well I do too, and all I see are people constantly contradicting each other. Sure, there are some consistent trends (configurable keys, for example), but on the more opinion-based things (game length, importance of graphics/sound, overall difficulty), it's all over the map.

If I read Voodoo Extreme, "gamers" prefer graphics over gameplay. Should I change my reviews to focus on eye candy?

>>I do have a good sense for many of the things that gamers like and dislike in general, though. You do too. I hope.

As I've looked over reader feedback I realize how little insight I have, or I should say how much it varies from gamer to gamer; I only truly know what I like, and what's important to me, and write my reviews accordingly. Sometimes my opinions match those of gamers, and other times they don't. And unless they're extraordinarily good or bad, I've almost completely stopped discussing graphic quality in my reviews and no one's made an issue of it; hell, there are screenshots on a page, you can see for yourself.

>>For my experience, a game like Half-Life takes a lot longer than 10 hours.

Well, therein lies the "how long is a game?" problem. Different skill levels of players make 10 hour games 30 hour games for some (or they give up in disgust), or 5 hour games for others.

>>Except that for games like Elite Forces and Heavy Metal the word of mouth was tainted by complaints about the game length.

Well, you could argue that bad reviews "tainted" the Tomb Raider movie, but it really wasn't hurt at the box office. Word of mouth is a fickle thing, and who can really judge the influence of people on message boards and Usenet?

To say it's tainted implies it had some effect on sales, and do you have anything to actually back that up? Elite Force apparently did well enough to get an expansion, and Heavy Metal... well, it didn't, which may have had more to do with it's M rating and lack of distribution due to its content, box art, and association with the magazine. And again, if all people complained about with those two games is their length, they must have been awfully good games.

>>Just look at the treatment Blue Shift's getting. The length has been criticized over and over again.

Sure, but are they saying that because they have nothing else to bitch about, i.e. it's a pretty good game that's short? And they apparently still bought it despite its length, or lack thereof (or at least warezed it).

In the absense of anything else to complain about, pepople will fixate on any issue. Half-Life is apparently an awful game because of Xen, that it "ruined" the game, which sorta ignores the other 90% of the game. Is word of mouth on it now "tainted?"

And word of mouth on System Shock 2 is that the graphics pretty much suck. Does that mean it's "tainted" as well, and we shouldn't have given it our "Game of the Year," and should we be making sure that we judge graphics more strongly when making those kinds of decisions?

Look, if you feel 10 hours is a rip-off, fine. Make that a point in your reviews, and if it really is important enough an issue to drop a rating, back it up. But don't turn it into a question of "gamer expectations" because you don't speak for gamers any more than a 13-year old on VE saying a game look like crap because they don't have full-screen anti-aliasing turned on, or Evil Avatar saying NOLF sucks because the wheels on the cars aren't round enough for him.

Has anyone actually PLAYED Max Payne yet?

See "Max Payne - good?" thread elsewhere on these boards.

-DavidCPA

"In the absense of anything else to complain about, pepople will fixate on any issue. Half-Life is apparently an awful game because of Xen, that it "ruined" the game, which sorta ignores the other 90% of the game. Is word of mouth on it now "tainted?""

People usually complained about the end while praising the rest. I dunno -- what did most reviews say? The Xen stuff isn't very good, is it? It does have an impact on the game experience. How can you not use the Xen stuff to justify lowering the score a bit? How do you ignore it and give the game 5 stars?

For me, a 10 hour game is faulty due to its short length, and I'd lower the score due to that. I guess others wouldn't, just like some reviewers might not care that the graphics in Jeff Vogel's games are extremely dated.

If you start to ignore these kinds of things in games (unusually short game length, problematic endings like the Xen stuff, graphics, etc.) you might as well just base your entire review score on "fun factor".

---

Quote:

If you start to ignore these kinds of things in games (unusually short game length, problematic endings like the Xen stuff, graphics, etc.) you might as well just base your entire review score on "fun factor".

---

>>The Xen stuff isn't very good, is it?

Most reviews didn't say that as they were too busy talking about how god-like the game was. The Xen backlash occurred much later.

>>How can you not use the Xen stuff to justify lowering the score a bit? How do you ignore it and give the game 5 stars?

Because I liked Xen maybe? It didn't bug me, gameplay-wise, though I wasn't very happy with it blowing the game's superlative sense of continuity. (I sorta decided on this last part about a year after I'd written the review.)

>>For me, a 10 hour game is faulty due to its short length, and I'd lower the score due to that.

Okay, but since you keep ducking this very simple question, which 3D action games are the "greater then 10 hour" games that you're basing your entire "10 hours is too short" argument on?

>>If you start to ignore these kinds of things in games (unusually short game length, problematic endings like the Xen stuff, graphics, etc.) you might as well just base your entire review score on "fun factor".

No one said to ignore anything IF IT'S YOUR OPINION AND NOT YOUR ATTEMPT AT GUESSING WHAT "GAMER'S" EXPECT.

"How can you not use the Xen stuff to justify lowering the score a bit? How do you ignore it and give the game 5 stars?"

Because, at least with CGM, the star system is not supposed to be a scientific quantification of the game's pros and cons. Instead, it's simply a way for the reviewer to say "I recommend Game X this much." A five star recommendation is obviously the best recommendation you can give, but it hardly requires that the game be perfect. Which is good, because no game is perfect.

I really prefer that reviewers avoid trying to "break down" the rating. "Well, I took off half a star for this, and added a star for this..." That's just asking for trouble, and trying to make the rating do more than it's suited for.

For the same reason, I hate systems that break down ratings into categories, and fought tooth and nail to dump the breakdown ratings on CGO. If you give 4 stars to graphics and 3 to gameplay, how do those factor into the final rating? Is there a formula? That would be kind of pointless, because graphics are more important to some games than they are to others. But if there's no formula, then isn't it just kind of arbitrary to say "these are the things that are most important in every game that we review?"

Back on topic, if a game's length bothered me for some reason, that would probably affect the rating that I gave it. But I hate the idea of adopting a formalized "more is better" mindset, because usually more is just more. Would Shrek have been a better movie if it had been an hour longer? Probably not. Would Full Throttle have been a better game if it had been twice as long? How should I know? It's irrelevant, because it was a pretty damn fun game anyway, and it's not like I'd tell people to avoid it on some sort of technical principle.

My "imaginary gamer expectations"? Is that like an imaginary buddy I talk to or something?

I dunno -- I'm sure there are some people who liked Daikatana. Do I need to qualify my comments with that consideration every time I mention the game and refer to it as a poor game? How tiresome. Perhaps I should end every comment with an "in my opinion" disclaimer just so every literalist like yourself isn't haunted by the possiblility that I'm either omniscient, and therefore God-like, or convinced I'm omniscient, and therefore nutty?

"If something doesn't bug you, why write about it?"

It's foolish, in my opinion, to review in a vacuum and not be aware of some of the issues that concern the gaming community. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination on my part to look at a Jeff Vogel game and know that the graphics will lessen the enjoyment of his games for some. I'm sure even Jeff would agree with this. Why shouldn't I factor that into my review?

"In the end, that means it's not a review by Mark Asher, but more one by committee submitted to Mark for write up. I don't think that's what Steve or other editors are looking for in their game reviews, are they?"

I dunno -- how can I know what editors want anymore than I can know what gamers want? What am I, a mindreader?

Yes, I'm sure if you read my reviews you get the real sense that they're written by commitee. Sheesh.

"No one really complains about a short game if it has replay value."

People talk up a storm about replay value, but I wonder how many people really replay their games, and how much? Personally speaking, it's rare for a game to live more than a month on my hard drive. Replay value aside, I eventually get tired of it and want to try something else. I think Myth (the first one) was the last long-timer I've played. That game stayed on my computer for over a year.

I'll avoid speaking for "all gamers," but how many people here really stick with most games for longer than that? Even when the games are meant to be replayable?

"Back on topic, if a game's length bothered me for some reason, that would probably affect the rating that I gave it. But I hate the idea of adopting a formalized "more is better" mindset, because usually more is just more."

It's more of a "this isn't long enough to justify the cost" attitude rather than a more is better evaluation. Blue Shift wasn't worth the money -- in my opinion, I'll add, for anyone who thinks I'm speaking for Everygamer. As such, had I reviewed it, I would have lowered the score.

The score is the recommendation, as you note. My feeling is that I should recommend a game less if it's too short. How short is too short? Good question. It's like pornography -- we know it when we see it.

"Okay, but since you keep ducking this very simple question, which 3D action games are the "greater then 10 hour" games that you're basing your entire "10 hours is too short" argument on?"

Half-Life, Quake, etc. Did Jason take 10 hours to play through Half-Life the first time he played it, or can he do so now that he's familar with the game? If you're asking for hard facts, like some kind of diary I've kept where I recorded my time to completion, I don't have one. Consider the 10 hour limit to be symbolic and trotted out for the purposes of this discussion rather than a hard and fast rule, why don't you. It's not that a game clocking in at 9:59 is bad and one at 10:01 is good.

I'd even cut Elite Forces a little slack in this regard because it had multiplayer and bot matches, so it had more than just the single-player levels.

"how many people here really stick with most games for longer than that?"

I keep good games around for years. HOMM2 and HOMM3, Warlords 3, even Master of Orion 2 are all games I've played in the last six months.

"how many people here really stick with most games for longer than that?"

I have kept Battleground: Ardennes on my hard drive since I bought the game in 1995 or 1996. I know that givng the Germans that many rockets and King Tiger tanks is historically inaccurate, but it sure is fun.

-DavidCPA

I'm going to link to this again, since it's easier than making another half-page post.

- Alan

"It's more of a "this isn't long enough to justify the cost" attitude rather than a more is better evaluation."

But by lowering the rating, you ARE saying that more is better, unless somehow a higher rating does not signify a better game.

And if you really liked a game that was short, does it make more sense to say that you really liked it and mention that it was short (so the reader can decide for themselves whether or not that's a worthwhile purchase for them), or to withdraw your recommendation, even though you really liked the game? The first option is more informative, I think.

"I keep good games around for years. HOMM2 and HOMM3, Warlords 3, even Master of Orion 2 are all games I've played in the last six months."

But the most recent of those games came out, what? Two years ago? Which leads me to believe that this is the exception rather than the norm. I mean, I can name games that I've played for that long, too, but not many. Civ (the first one). Fantasy General. Myth. HoMM2.

But I also play a lot of games that I really like and that are highly replayable--such as Age of Kings or Age of Wonders--that I end up playing for only a month or so. So I feel kind of hypocritical saying that "all games should strive to be replayable" when I don't often replay them much anyway.

You'd be replaying a lot more of those games, er... more, Ben, if you weren't constantly getting new games. God, I love SFCommand, but I haven't touched it for the sake of fun in months (Orion Pirates review notwithstanding). Before I became a reviewer I generally played the same game for months. Poverty increases demand for length and replayability significantly.

-Andrew

>>Half-Life, Quake, etc.

Is that it? What's the etc.? Or are you... not a first-person shooter fan, so you really don't know the answer? In which case this discussion is sorta moot, like me trying to argue about flight sims and wargames.

Most first-person shooters have about 10 hours of solo gameplay. They are much like adventure games "back in the old days." Some people play them faster, some shorter. There's no blanket "length" that's appropriate for a game, and you can't judge any narrative game the same way you can for an open-ended game a la Civilization or SimCity. When you have a story, getting from Point A to B means you're done. When are you "done" with Civilization?

>>I'd even cut Elite Forces a little slack in this regard because it had multiplayer and bot matches, so it had more than just the single-player levels.

But what about the gamer who doesn't like multiplayer? What about the gamer who doesn't have an Internet connection? Why are you not taking their feelings into account?

>>You'd be replaying a lot more of those games, er... more, Ben, if you weren't constantly getting new games.

I never replay narrative-based games because, well... I know what happens in the end. I didn't when I was buying them either.

Now games like Civilization or SimCity... they're eternals for me... I've been playing Civ II a lot lately. Way too much. It's scary.

(I've actually been playing tons of old games I never got around to playing. I like lulls in releases like this...)

I replayed Wolfenstein and Doom many times back when I was poor, but it's arguable if you can truly consider those "narrative" games.

I'm with you on Civ2 Steve. I never really stopped playing that one.

-Andrew

"But by lowering the rating, you ARE saying that more is better, unless somehow a higher rating does not signify a better game.

And if you really liked a game that was short, does it make more sense to say that you really liked it and mention that it was short (so the reader can decide for themselves whether or not that's a worthwhile purchase for them), or to withdraw your recommendation, even though you really liked the game? The first option is more informative, I think."

If the review score is considered to be a recommendation, I'd lower it. Let's make it clear, though, that I'm not talking about lowering an otherwise 5-star review down to a 2. I'm talking about a half-star or full star, something like that.

If I had my way, I'd remove the ratings from reviews anyway. The text is the real rating. All the score does is potentially create confusion.

"Is that it? What's the etc.? Or are you... not a first-person shooter fan, so you really don't know the answer? In which case this discussion is sorta moot, like me trying to argue about flight sims and wargames."

What's the definition of a fan? How do you know what a fan of FPS is? All you know is what Steve Bauman likes and doesn't like.

If I had to characterize myself, I'd say I'm a mild fan of shooters, the type of gamer who will play many of them but who doesn't play them avidly. I'll play online every now and then, but not like the hardcore fans seem to do, many of whom seem to really do nothing but play a handful of shooters and little else.

"You'd be replaying a lot more of those games, er... more, Ben, if you weren't constantly getting new games." I was doing that long before I reviewed games for a living, though. I've always typically purchased about one game a month.

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Quote:

But by lowering the rating, you ARE saying that more is better, unless somehow a higher rating does not signify a better game.

---

"how many people here really stick with most games for longer than that?"

Different genres have different expectations for replay value. I don't forsee taking EAW, Falcon 4, Red Baron II 3D, or Comanche-Hokum off the HD anytime in the forseeable future. I play XCom a few times a year. There's always an active Champ Manager career going on on my notebook. I think Combat Mission will be around for a long time. Civ 2, as others mentioned. I've been playing Nethack for years and years and years...

But, as Steve said, Shooter/Adventure and RPG games seem to have a finite lifetime, since most are story based. Multiplayer being the wildcard, of course.

FWIW

You guys amaze me sometimes. Consider this: You argue over game length, and suspect most games don't "live" long on hard drives.

Everyone considers hardcore games as not representative of the casual market, and agree that the casual, or mainstream, market, is the big pot of gold.

I spend my days surrounded by casual gamers. They only buy a few games a year, so don't worry about storage space. They can keep a game on their drive for years, and play it a couple times a week by games to update their machines. Most of the ones I know have machines ranging from 700mhz down to a 233 mhz P2. If a game is too advanced for their machine, they just don't buy it.

These folks, by and large, are not really very interested in games that are too short, or that lack replay value. A 10-hour game for $50? They can see 5 movies and get more entertainment for the same price. Replay and length go hand in hand. Adventure games, I expect, slumped because they lacked replay value (and are not easily played casually in many cases) for mainstreamers. FPS games survive because they can be played with others, adding life to them.

The current obsession around here is Tropico. You know why? It looks like the SIMS with a purpose to these guys. Most of the features of the game are lost on them, but that doesn't matter. They'll futz around with it for the rest of the year, and have great fun. That's the point, right?

I can tell you, casual gamers very much care about time, since they don't have the budget, time, and/or inclination to research, purchase and play lots of games. So they want longer games that can be easily saved, and easily gotten back to.

Anyway, that's what the poeple I see do.

My wife is (or was, until recently) a very "casual" gamer, and her chief considerations were almost contradictory. She wanted the game to be long enough to justify her spending money on it (yes, she did consider that, and, quite frankly, so do I, even though I'm buying fewer and fewer games here lately thanks to review opportunities), and she wanted it to be the kind of game that she could play in quick spurts, for an hour or so at a time. (Rollercoaster Tycoon is, in her opinion, the perfect game.)

I don't pretend to try and speak for every gamer, but a lot of casual gamers I have spoken with have expressed similar opinions. Heck, even now, as a "hardcore" gamer, I would feel cheated if a game were exceedingly short and they were charging $50 for it, but I guess "how short is too short" is highly subjective. Really, I think that Alan hit it square on in his Gamersclick article.

As for the length of time on hard drives -- again, I can't try and speak for everyone, but as for me: Games typically live on my hard drive until a.) I finish it, if it has no "replay" value (which I do consider to be pretty important) and no multiplayer, or b.) Something better comes along.

When I'm in the mood for a strategy game, I still get out Warcraft II, because it's still my favorite strategy game. When I'm not playing a game for review, I'm playing Baldur's Gate II. When I finish it, I may go back and start over with Baldur's Gate and play through I and II again, unless there's a newer game out. But, that's just me.

Anyway ... back to Max Payne.

It's a blast! I agree with Erik: Now that we HAVE this bullet time, we'll be reflexively wanting it from this point on. I can envision a future review of Doom 6 ...

-> PROS: Great graphics; compelling story line; virtually crash-free.

-> CONS: Too many crates; only 49 hours long; no bullet-time.

Seriously, though, I must have missed the explanation of why Max can do this -- is he The One? Perhaps you need this power to defeat 6 baddies at once.

I don't see how "everything is destructible" though. Do you think Max Payne was delayed for 4 years to allow enough time to fill the box with PC Gamer quotes?

Well, for what it's worth, there are DOZENS of complaints on VoodooExtreme/Gamespot/Usenet about Max Payne being too short. I guess Mark wasn't entirely wrong about thinking the length would be a problem. People seem to be completing it in 10 hours or less -- and, yes, complaining about it.

"Okay, so what does the typical rating mean? (fun_factor*length)/(price)?"

I have a sneaking suspicion that some readers really do think that they mean something that specific, but the reality is they just mean "how strongly does the writer recommend the game?" There aren't any rules or formulae, per se--as Emeril would say, it ain't rocket science.

>>What's the definition of a fan? How do you know what a fan of FPS is? All you know is what Steve Bauman likes and doesn't like.

Ah, this is the point where you resort to being a troll. Good job.

Punt!

MARK SAID: "What's the definition of a fan? How do you know what a fan of FPS is? All you know is what Steve Bauman likes and doesn't like."

STEVE SAID: "Ah, this is the point where you resort to being a troll. Good job."

Uh, Steve? You have a short memory. You said basically the same thing to Mark higher up in the thread:

"Braaap! You don't know what gamers expect, you only know what Mark Asher expects."

Be consistent or be gone!

"Adventure games, I expect, slumped because they lacked replay value (and are not easily played casually in many cases) for mainstreamers."

I have to wonder, because adventure games always seemed to appeal to a broader market than did most other types of games.

I'd also argue that the casual gamer that you describe doesn't play games enough to worry too much about length. If they only play an hour or two each week, then a ten hour game keeps them occupied for quite some time. I think the real culprit is the developers themselves--they made too many games that featured crappy stories and crappy puzzles, and people got sick of it. Same thing happened to RPGs a few years back.

That's kinda irrelevant, though, because I would guess that most non-hardcore gamers don't even give much thought to how long the game might be when they buy it (and no, I don't *know* that--it's just a guess). And really, how would they even know? It's not like my mom is hanging out on the .action newsgroup.

>>Uh, Steve? You have a short memory. You said basically the same thing to Mark higher up in the thread:

Um, not quite. I was specifically asking if he, Mark Asher, actually liked and played a lot of 3D action games.

My original comment was relating to saying things like, "It's really all about expectations. I think gamers expect games to be longer than 10 hours." Which may be true, but I don't know that. But I do suspect that Mark Asher is aware of whether he actually plays and likes 3D action games, which is sorta relevant if he's going to criticize them for their length. It's still a legitimate criticism, but it's not necessarily an informed one.

And I said I like and play 3D games. It's somewhere in the thread, and it was in direct response to your question. But that didn't seem to be enough. You wanted names, dates, times of completion, what was I doing on the morning of June the 7th, etc. I'd be happy to come up with a list of the last 20 action games released so you can fill in the relevant details about time of completion, if you like. Let me know.

It's mostly irrelevant, though. The issue being discussed is, boiled down, should games that are "too short" have their review scores lowered?

You and others seem to be saying no, though I'm not sure if you ever said why other than what matters is whether the game's a fun experience or not. In other words, you seem to be arguing that the "fun factor" is the ultimate determiner of the review score.

It's probably an issue where there's no right or wrong answer. Should a reviewer who thoroughly enjoys a game with 1997 graphics lower the score because the graphics suck? That's a tough one. My answer would be that what's really important is consistency. If you take off for poor graphics in mediocre and poor game, do so also for games you love. Same with game length. Same with backstory. Etc.

I'm sensitive to price vs. value issues, maybe because I get the games for free so I make it a point to think about this issue. That's why Blue Shift is a pretty wretched value in my book for Half-Life fans who already have Opposing Force. Since I consider my review score to be tantamount to a buying recommendation in a lot of ways, I'll adjust it accordingly if I think the game is a poor value. For the same reason I might give a game like Dungeon Seige a slightly higher score if the editor proves to be easy to use and I can whip up dungeons rather quickly. It adds to the value, even if the majority of players will never use it, sort of like how multiplayer is used to factor into a review score.

"It's mostly irrelevant, though. The issue being discussed is, boiled down, should games that are "too short" have their review scores lowered?"

So what's "too short?" And, with narrative games in particular, by whose standards? I know that Jason claims to have finished Half-Life in 10 hours, but it took me a hell of a lot longer than that. So how long is that game? Do you go by the shortest amount of time possible? Because it's theoretically possible to finish Myst in under sixty seconds, and I know someone that got through Fallout in about an hour and a half (not the first time, though).

My problem with using time as a value judgement is that there are just too many subjective issues at work--how long it takes to finish the game varies from player to player, what you consider "too short" varies from player to player. So unless you have some sort of obviously extreme case, I'd mention length but avoid criticising it. And I really don't think 10 hours qualifies as an extreme case, because there are a lot of games (and a lot of really good games) that are about that long.

That's subjective too, of course. I know people who are really into RPGs and think that any game that offers less than 100 hours of gameplay is a ripoff. Are they right? Sure they are... for them. So if I mention in my review that Max Payne is 10 (or however many) hours long, they can consider themselves warned off, even if I went on to give the game a 5 star score. But I'm not going to change my rating for something that doesn't bother me, personally, because once you start doing that it's a slippery slope to writing your reviews by committee.

"In other words, you seem to be arguing that the "fun factor" is the ultimate determiner of the review score."

It is.

"My problem with using time as a value judgement is that there are just too many subjective issues at work--how long it takes to finish the game varies from player to player"

Of course it's subjective. All reviews are subjective. That doesn't mean that we all don't have certain standards fixed in our minds when we approach a game. Some gamers probably don't care if a shooter lets you configure the keys, while others seem to scream if you can't. Some gamers don't mind dated graphics. Others can't stand 'em. And so on. I try to be aware of as many of these issues as possible when I approach a game. They all factor in to my evaluation. If I think a game's too short, I'll lower my score somewhat. That's part of my overall evaluation.

"But I'm not going to change my rating for something that doesn't bother me, personally, because once you start doing that it's a slippery slope to writing your reviews by committee."

So if you really like a game that has mediocre graphics you won't lower the score? Will you lower the score for mediocre graphics in other games that you don't like as much? What is your final score based on? Just how much you enjoyed the game?

"So if I mention in my review that Max Payne is 10 (or however many) hours long, they can consider themselves warned off, even if I went on to give the game a 5 star score."

I think your overestimating the number of people who will faithfully read your text and not just look at the review score. The score you give the game in my opinion is the single most important part of your review. Giving a 10-hour game a 5/5 is essentially saying that there's nothing wrong with the length. That's fine if you feel that way, but I disagree. And again, I wouldn't drastically lower the score, but I would lower it.

When I look at a game I try to factor in more than my personal enjoyment of the game because that seems to be a more objective way of providing a review of the game. I just don't like to go so far as the Gamespot method of letting individual categories determine the final rating. I still want to be able to override any kind of number that a formulaic approach will deliver. Ultimately, the "fun factor" is probably what I weight the heaviest. I just temper that with other considerations. I'm gonna take off for subpar graphics. I'll take off for games that I feel are too short. I'll take off for stilted writing. If a game's guilty of all those but is otherwise the greatest gaming experience of the year, I'll probably nudge it back up a notch or two again. I don't pretend it's a science, but there's a lot more that should go into a rating than just how much fun I had with the game.

Disclaimer: In my opinion. I don't speak for Everygamer or Everycritic. And I was drinking Thunderbird out of a discarded Starkist Tuna can we wuz passing around, this wino and me, down on 6th Street on the morning of June the 7th, just in case anyone was wondering.

"What is your final score based on? Just how much you enjoyed the game?"

Ultimately, it's the only thing I weigh. I'm not evaluating games for consumer safety--it's an entertainment review. Why would I base my rating on anything else?

"I think your overestimating the number of people who will faithfully read your text and not just look at the review score."

I have very little sympathy for any person willing to take my word that a game (or anything else) is good without bothering to ask me why.

"If a game's guilty of all those but is otherwise the greatest gaming experience of the year, I'll probably nudge it back up a notch or two again."

If a game is the greatest gaming experience of the year, then those other problems you mention are obviously not very important to that game.

I think reviewers sometimes feel obligated to point out every flaw they can find as a "cover your ass" sort of proceedure, so you don't have to fend off a hundred fanboys complaining that you OBVIOUSLY didn't play the game because you failed to mention Problem X. But I think it's just as important to be able to disregard flaws that really don't affect the experience, in the same way that it's important to focus on the ones that do.

That's your job as a reviewer--to determine whether or not the game is fun, and then convey why. I start out knowing whether or not that game is fun (I mean, when you play a game, you know whether you're enjoying it or not, right?), and then I figure out how to support my opinion. I generally don't try to invalidate my own opinion, which is kind of what you are doing when you say "well, I *really* like this game, but it's only ten hours long, so I guess I should lower the score." Because if I really liked the game, then obviously the fact that it was ten hours long isn't that big a deal.

Of course if something like length does bother you, then you should mention it, certainly. But I wouldn't feel obligated to alter my opinion out of rote, which is what it seemed like you were saying in your earlier posts.

Well game length doesn't have any bearing on how much fun a game is, just how long you get to have fun with it. It could be the most entertaining game of the year, but if it's just 6 hours long I'll lower my review score due to the brevity.

Fun, value, presentation, etc. -- those kinds of things all factor in to my final score.

"I'm not evaluating games for consumer safety--it's an entertainment review. Why would I base my rating on anything else?"

It's a commercial product that your audience will have to pay money for. It's like evaluating an auto in part on value instead of just focusing on how much fun it is to drive.

"I have very little sympathy for any person willing to take my word that a game (or anything else) is good without bothering to ask me why."

Then you should lobby for the removal of the ratings, because all those do is encourage people to skip the review and focus on the rating.

If I may:

I'm certainly not one to contradict the experts, but it really sounds like you're both arguing the same thing, at the heart of the matter. Sure, Mark will lower a game's score if it's too short, and Ben won't. But, both agree that you should lower the score for anything that affects your enjoyment of the game. For Mark, the game being too short does hamper his enjoyment. For Ben, it doesn't. Thus, Mark gives it a four-star review, and Ben gives it four-and-a-half. But, you're both making the same points, essentially: It's all up to the reviewer of the individual game. If the game feels to short to you, and you feel cheated, you should lower the score. If the fact that it's ten hours doesn't bother you, then don't.

Personally, as someone who has to buy a lot of his own games, I do expect to get a good amount of gameplay out of a $50 game. I agree with Mark -- if I can pay that much, and only get six to ten hours of fun, I probably paid too much.

My only point was that single-player first-person shooters are judged different when it comes to length then, say, a strategy game. It's not something that spans all genres identically, which was the whole point of asking Mark if he actually played 3D shooters, and if he did if he could name some that had more than 10 hours of gameplay.

For example, if Civilization III has only 10 hours of gameplay, I'll be pissed. If Max Payne does, it'll be about the norm. One I might take into account when evaluating a game, the other might garner a mention.

And I paid $47 for Max Payne, so we shall see if, when I'm done, I'm upset over its length. I'm more likely to be upset over the fact is has the Worst. Dialgoue. Ever.

"I'm more likely to be upset over the fact is has the Worst. Dialgoue. Ever."

No kidding. You'd be hard put to write dialog this corny if you tried. For some reason it's not funny, either, like bad dialog often is.

I'm also getting tired of the third-person view. Maybe it's just me, but I'm constantly adjusting the view, much more so than I do in a FPS. It's a bit annoying.

Maybe it's just that the camera pans more slowly in an FPS. You can flick the mouse a bit in Max Payne and do a 180, almost.

The dialog is fine to me. I like the story, the action is outstanding and I didn't even know you could adjust the camera. I have played through the first 10 chapters with it in default position.

BTW, Anyone else find themselves replaying fights just for the fun of it? Some of them are so cool I just have to play them 3 or 4 times.

Overall I have played maybe 6 hours and I am into act 2 chapter 2. Seems like it will probably end up being decent length for a shooter at least in my book. Besides this title oozes quality and I never mind paying for that. I love the level design, textures, effects, bullet-time, etc. It shows how much time they put into it. The game just feels right. And of course it is fun. :)

-- Xaroc

I play a lot of third-person games and tend to really enjoy them, so I'm not having any issues with the perspective.

But the dialogue, oh my god. It's not funny because it's not trying to be funny. I think. It's hard to tell.

"Fear was rusty needles poking at my brain. Cold and scaly, it slithered down my chest."

Good god.

>I know that Jason claims to have finished Half-Life in 10 hours

I claim no such thing. I've always said I beat it in "one weekend." I started playing Friday, played really late, woke up, played a whole lot Saturday, and finished it up Sunday morning. It was only a couple days, but maybe 15-20 hours.

Max Payne took me around a dozen hours. I'm not complaining. I feel like I've gotten my money's worth. (monies worth?)

But then, I'm also not nearly as bothered by the writing as Steve and Mark here are. I don't think it's going to win any prizes, I think it's got problems, but at no time did a cut-scene pop up and I want to skip it. I was genuinely interested in the progression of the plot, particularly in acts 2 and 3 where the larger picture starts to unfold and there are far fewer comically overacted italian mob guys.

The overused cheesy metaphors fits right in with the "detective novel" theme they seem to go for. It's like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid - except that it's WAY overdone and it's not attempting to be a parody. And without the brilliantly spliced-in old movie clips. Okay, so it's not like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid at all. But you get the idea.

Maybe it would be more forgiveable if it was set in the 40s and Max was a P.I., and it all started when some beautiful girl hired him for an absurd amount of money to find her missing brother or something.

It could be better - MUCH better - and it's bad enough to keep an otherwise excellent game from getting like five stars or something. I think it has a much bigger impact on the game than its length or the lack of multiplayer or anything. It's the most serious flaw the game has. BUT...it's not enough of a flaw to keep me from seriously recommending this game to anyone who likes action games. In my review, I plan to rib them on the writing (but not the overall plot progression) and applaud them for nearly everything else but the music, which is forgettable. It'll get high marks.

And with that, I should shut up about it and stay off the Max Payne threads until I write the review.

>>I don't think it's going to win any prizes, I think it's got problems, but at no time did a cut-scene pop up and I want to skip it.

Me neither. I was waiting for another wonderfullly awful bit of dialogue.

>>I was genuinely interested in the progression of the plot, particularly in acts 2 and 3 where the larger picture starts to unfold and there are far fewer comically overacted italian mob guys.

The plot wasn't really the problem. But the Max Payne character was all over the map... why was he flirting with another woman? His wife and baby were just killed. And his constant smirks and smiles in the comic book were totally inappropriate considering what was going on and what had happened... in one scene he looks like he's buddy-buddy with the Russian and their sharing a laugh.

>>The overused cheesy metaphors fits right in with the "detective novel" theme they seem to go for.

I kept waiting for the game to tell me it was all a parody or something. If it was parody, it wasn't funny. If it was drama, it was just... bad, bad, bad.

Cheesy metaphors are only part of bad detective novels. Now I'm no expect, but for one thing they would never be used with such frequency... much of the fiction is dialogue and characterization, not description. But in this game they lay everything out for you, as if you're kinda dim.

>>Maybe it would be more forgiveable if it was set in the 40s and Max was a P.I., and it all started when some beautiful girl hired him for an absurd amount of money to find her missing brother or something.

That's something I'd agree with. Pulp Fiction is "modern noir" but doesn't resort to that kind of dialogue. The Matrix has noir elements (though the Wachowski's "Bound" is more obvious)... but they don't say, "Fear was rusty needles poking at my brain. Cold and scaly, it slithered down my chest." Ugh.

>>I think it has a much bigger impact on the game than its length or the lack of multiplayer or anything. It's the most serious flaw the game has.

In a way it's too bad it was so prominent in the game. If there was just an occasional bad cut scene between levels it would be more forgivable. But it's as if they really tried hard, and failed miserably, to make it a real story.

Great action, horrible dialogue and characters means it's pretty much the equivalent of a blah summer movie. It's an above average game because, well... we play games, so the playing is weighed, at least for me, more than the story/characters. And it's a hoot to play.

I'm nearly down with act 2 or whatever they're called in Max Payne. I'm enjoying the story more now, though probably because I'm significantly entangled in the game to want to see how complicated it gets and then how it's resolved. The dialog and narrative, though, are just really bad.

I'm over the hump with the perspective now too. It doesn't really bother me, although I find my head aching a bit from the camera motion -- it has to swing much more quickly because of the perspective, and I'm apparently suffering a mild reaction to it.

The combat reminds me more of a video game than of a computer game, and I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that. I think it's because in a FPS I feeling like I'm aiming a weapon, while in Max I feel like I'm trying to click on a spot on the screen. I know, I do the same thing essentially in a FPS, but it feels different. There's this constant triangulation in effect all the time between my eyeballs, Max's position on screen, and the enemy I want to shoot. In a FPS it's just my eyeballs and the target.

I also liked the rooftop and dock stuff better than all the corridor stuff. The third-person view is more interesting when the areas are more open.

It's too bad that the writing is so awful and the story so cliched. Otherwise it's a pretty good game.

>>The combat reminds me more of a video game than of a computer game, and I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that.

That's an interesting reaction. I suppose the answer is to stop paying attention to Max and just focus on aiming.

Since I think I've played all Tomb Raider games to completion (have I really reviewed all five of them?), and just about every other third-person game, I'm fairly used to the perspective.


>>I also liked the rooftop and dock stuff better than all the corridor stuff. The third-person view is more interesting when the areas are more open.

Yeah, I agree. I wish more stuff took place outdoors as the endless corridors and warehouses got a bit dull. But there's some spectacular stuff at the end with an elevator... well, don't want to spoil it.

>why was he flirting with another woman? His wife and baby were just killed.

Uh, three years prior. He joins the DEA after his wife/baby are killed and the part where he's supposed to meet his DEA buddy in the subway station is three years later.

>in one scene he looks like he's buddy-buddy with the Russian and their sharing a laugh

He is. They get along. They work together. The Russian gives him a hand. "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that. It's the retelling of the story that's deadpan, not the event when it happened. The whole "picture doesn't match the voiceover" thing doesn't bother me at all.

>but they don't say, "Fear was rusty needles poking at my brain. Cold and scaly, it slithered down my chest."

Or "The cops arrived, the sirens singing the off-key harmony of a manic-depressive choir." Yow. They're just sirens, dude. Weren't you a cop three years ago?

>But there's some spectacular stuff at the end with an elevator...

I thought the parking garage was killer, too.

>I'm enjoying the story more now, though probably...

I started to like it a lot more around act 2 myself. Far fewer bad accents (the russian guy ain't bad, no more bad Joe Pesci Italians), and the story gets more interesting than "who killed my partner?"

Didn't I just say I was gonna shut up about Max Payne?

>>Uh, three years prior. He joins the DEA after his wife/baby are killed and the part where he's supposed to meet his DEA buddy in the subway station is three years later.

Really? Well color me lame-ass. I missed that three year bit. Duh.

Still, the dialogue... yeesh.

Don't get me wrong.

I find the script hilarious. It's awful. I find myself hoping the writer did it on purpose (I'm inclined to think so). I find the plot, every "twist and turn", very predictable. But, I really dig the Norse references. I'm not pleased with the voice acting, in fact, I prefer to shut it off and just read the cutscenes (which are painted well, even if Payne sometimes looks like a fifteen year old Bruce Willis). I LOVE the fact that the "bullet time" isn't merely a special effect (which is what I thought it was) it's a great strategic option.

I too loved the Parking Garage. That's where I'm at now, well, the level just past it.

I sort of see this game as a disturbing window into what Finland thinks of the US.

But...

Potential Spoiler:

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....but I'm getting increasingly offended by the crying baby sound clip and the bloody crib visual.

Show it once, maybe. Show it (thus far) four times and I'm a little sickened. I mean, the dead wife stuff is bad/tragic enough. Overkill is the word I'm looking for.

Now...this may be a personal reaction. I do have a 15 month old sleeping upstairs. But, this is truly a Mature Audiences game, much moreso than the juvenile Soldier of Fortune and potty-mouthed Kingpin.

-Andrew

I've played a couple hours of this game, yes it has the eye candy the great cinematic feel and all the mind boggling gun fights... but it still feels the same to me compared to alot of other 3rd person games. Drakken, FAkk, Heretic 2...etcetcetc The John Woo/matrix gunfights ARE cool. but still, im playing the same damn fps game ive played with Kingpin Sin and a host of others.

I shouldnt be complaining, i bought the game knowing full well it was going to be just another action game... but im surprised since Half Life, there hasn't been much in terms of fps/3rd person fps games going any further (except with Deus Ex, Thief, SS2, Giants....) There has to be more in these games... and the length of this game (though im just at the beginning of act 2) looks to be short. relatively speaking. these action games remind me of all those b rated console titles i see but never will buy... except that i pretty much buy half the pc games released! not that Max Payne is a bargain bin title... but really i wouldnt be surprised to see it on sale for 19.99 at best buy three months from now.

anyway, Asher is right about length in an fps. it has to offer more than just 10+ hours of solo play. at least for me... though the added modes might actually give Max Payne an xtra few days of play. but really... this is a game ill put away by the middle of August. I hate to say it, but most action games these days dont last more than two weeks for me. Except OFP! now THATS a game. oh yeah, and Diablo 2... what a mindless timewasting great game. its almost like a mantra to play diablo2. kill loot town kill loot town... it keeps going and going. why dont they make a fps in the vein of Diablo 2? im sure it can be done. might have to wait til diablo 3....

oh well still Max Payne seems pretty good so far to me. though i wish they added a bot mode or multi mode. for me, of the recent action titles only NOLF seemed to have a decent gameplay length to it.

etc

Also, this is my judge of a games lenght based on its Engine.

basically i've noticed most quake 3 engine games are WAY too short. imo, no quake 3 engine game has been long enough solo player wise. the longest for me being Alice... and it was pretty short. Alot of the Unreal Engine games tend to be much longer... Rune (unbearable at times), Wheel of Time, Undying. I think JHalf Life and Nolf hit the right spot for length in action games (Half Life being a bit longer).

it seems these complex engines make the games shorter imo. I'd prefer "less" graphics quality if the gameplay can be made longer and better. I'm still of the opinion that Quake 2 graphics are very good. Why push the envelope when it will lessen the gameplay?

yeesh, talking length and quality... big hands big feet, its like talking dick size.... uhm i guess size does matter sometimes!

etc

"It could be the most entertaining game of the year, but if it's just 6 hours long I'll lower my review score due to the brevity."

I guess we just differ in how much we value quantity relative to quality. I'd rather have less of a good thing than more of an okay thing, personally. I'll take one Godiva truffle over a whole box of supermarket chocolates any day of the week.

>I'll take one Godiva truffle over a whole box of supermarket chocolates any day of the week.

Heh, how about a chipped off piece of a truffle over that box -- obviously at some point, regardless of quality, you would feel disappointed with the quantity. Maybe you wouldn't be disappointed if the game was only 6 hours long, but presumably you would be if it was 45 minutes long. I'm all for quality over quantity, but a 10 hour full priced game, with no replay value whatsoever, is disappointing and would negatively affect my rating - especially when there's been games of its type at least as good that offered significantly more gameplay and shelf life.

Stefan

I think it's obvious that we all value different things in games. Some seem to want a quality experience of any length and while they might mention how long they played if it seems short, it often won't affect the scoring if the game is simply brilliant.

On the other hand, it seems like some have a hard and fast length meter that is ascribed to and if that meter isn't full, then the review's score must reflect it.

I personally fall into the first group. I want quality gaming of any length. I'd rather play a six hour game of 5-star quality than a twenty hour game of 4-star quality. Length really isn't a concern unless it's an extreme case. Forty-five minutes, as Desslock mentions, is extreme. I also don't sit there with a stopwatch while I play.

Besides, we all have the option of buying the game later at a reduced price if length is a concern based on reviews. Or is it that no one waits for reviews anymore before buying the game therefore invalidating the entire conversation?

--Dave

"Heh, how about a chipped off piece of a truffle over that box -- obviously at some point, regardless of quality, you would feel disappointed with the quantity."

Absolutely. I'm just not sure that the cutoff comes at ten hours, or even necessarily at half that. Full Throttle was about that long, and I didn't feel like I had been ripped off with that game.

Unless we're talking absurdely short (a two hour game would probably bother me), length is usually not my primary consideration when I evaluate a game. They're releasing a new version of Apocalypse now that's 54 minutes longer--does that make it a better value?

>Unless we're talking absurdely short (a two hour game would probably bother me), length is usually not my primary consideration when I evaluate a game

I completely agree. We just have different opinions of what absurdly short is -- I think 10 hours qualifies. Granted, I'm primarily used to RPGs, simulations and strategy games (and people criticized Fallout quite severely for "only" beintg 30-40 hours, if you took a direct route). But even among FPS, that's short. Similarly brief games, like Elite Force, at least have additional gameplay options.

Don't get me wrong -- Max Payne is probably one of the best games currently avaiable, but its brevity should affect the rating it would otherwise get. I don't think the duration is irrelevant - if the game was as good for an additional 10 hours, it should get a better rating, for instance.