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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p>URL: <a href="../2.5/ph/index.html">http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.5/ph/</a><br>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 5<br>
                December 9, 1999<br>
                </b>
              <b> 
                </b>
              
                <b><i>Pad 
                  Happy:</i></b></p>
                <b><i> 
                  Size Matters</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Nick Ferguson</p>
              
              

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              <i>Who 
                wants to spend 100 hours on a single game? Not Nick F, anyway...</i>
              <br>
               A&nbsp; 
                month ago I finally bought <b>Final Fantasy VIII</b>. I&#146;ve 
                played it for a good few hours but in the last week or so I really 
                haven&#146;t been able to bring myself to place the disc in my 
                Playstation. The problem is, the game&#146;s just too damn long! 
                Ye gads - I can remember a time when no game was long enough, 
                but now it seems that most new releases stretch for miles and 
                miles. Call me an attention-span-stunted gamer (of the console 
                breed, natch) but I see no joy whatsoever in these 100 hour treks. 
                Its got to the point now where a potential purchase won&#146;t 
                make the cut because it&#146;s going to take too long to beat; 
                for instance, <b>Tomb Raider 4</b> looks like a remarkable return 
                to form for Ms. Croft, but I&#146;m having second thoughts about 
                buying it because I&#146;m still mentally scarred from the ridiculous 
                length of the previous <b>TR</b> game (which was just incredibly 
                boring to play, so I stopped). Roll on <b>Resident 
                Evil Nemesis</b>, I say.</p>
              </p>
              I suspect 
                that a lot of developers feel under pressure to make their games 
                as long as possible, under the (likely publisher-led) delusion 
                that a long, long game represents better value for money. There 
                are certainly people out there who would heavily advocate that 
                one game being longer than another makes it &#147;better&#148;, 
                but the truth is it just makes that game longer. The reason the 
                other game is &#147;better&#148; is more than likely because it 
                has more ideas in it. Ultimately, a game contains only a finite 
                number of ideas and if you try and stretch a game by limiting 
                the frequency with which a player encounters your cool ideas , 
                you&#146;ll find that it&#146;s not interesting enough to play. 
                Think about the best games you&#146;ve played recently and you&#146;ll 
                find that in a lot of cases something pretty interesting happens 
                every five to ten minutes of gameplay. Conversely, think about 
                the number of games you&#146;ve played where all the best stuff 
                happens in the first hour of play and from then on it seem like 
                developers were looking to fill up space because they used all 
                their cool ideas way too early (and then you didn&#146;t bother 
                finishing the game).</p>
              </p>
              The real 
                problem is that it takes a lot of talent to create a game entertaining 
                enough to merit a play length of over ten hours, both in terms 
                of game design and (if appropriate) the plot. I played about halfway 
                through <b>Final 
                Fantasy VII</b> before giving up (partially through boredom, 
                mainly because someone managed to erase my save game) but the 
                plot was already flagging &#150; and don&#146;t even talk to me 
                about the tedious, repetitive battles. <b>Final Fantasy VIII</b> 
                seems more gripping from the start, but word seems to be that 
                the story isn&#146;t quite as good as its prequel and the characters 
                aren&#146;t as engaging (uh oh). And those bloody Guardian Force 
                animations go on for sooooo long &#150; is there honestly no way 
                to skip them? Life really is too short - how much &#147;play time&#148; 
                in total do you think gratuitous battle animations add to the<b> 
                FF </b>series, anyway?</p>
              
              <br>
              &nbsp;
              So maybe 
                we don&#146;t want longer games after all. Maybe what we want 
                is a higher ideas-to-length ratio (now there&#146;s a scientific 
                measurement). Alas, matters aren&#146;t helped by those whiners 
                on the newsgroups who start complaining as soon as they finish 
                a highly anticipated game. Worst of all was the release of <b>N64 
                Zelda</b> last year, when people came online a few days after 
                it came out complaining that they had already completely finished 
                it! What&#146;s wrong with these people? How can you finish <b>Zelda</b> 
                that quickly without the aid of a FAQ? More importantly, how enjoyable 
                is it to play through a game that fast? Surely you just spend 
                your time sitting there, thinking with a steely determination 
                &#147;Must... finish... the... game...&#148;. Sounds like a punishment 
                rather than recreation to me. Fact is, if you finished <b>Zelda</b> 
                in two days, you never took the time to just wander and find things 
                yourself &#150; you raced through largely (or completely) neglecting 
                the little touches that made the game so special. To all those 
                &#147;true gamerz&#148; out there who pride themselves on whipping 
                through the latest game, trusty FAQ in hand, I can only say: &#147;Loser. 
                If you don&#146;t give yourself the time to get stuck, to find 
                new things yourself, to revel in the puzzles, then you might as 
                well be watching a video or playing a barely-interactive FMV-fest 
                like Voyeur&#148;. Eugh.</p>
              </p>
              Of course, 
                as soon as Rare&#146;s <b>Jet Force Gemini</b> came out people 
                were moaning about it being too long: looks like there&#146;s 
                no pleasing some people! In something approaching a conclusion, 
                let me quickly summarise by listing a few games that I think are 
                either &#147;too long&#148; or, alternately, about right in their 
                ideas-to-length ratio...</p>
               Games 
                that are too long:</p>
            
            
               
                 <b>Soul 
                  Reaver</b>
              
               
                <b>Final 
                  Fantasy VIII</b>
              
               
                <b>Body 
                  Harvest</b>
              
               
                <b> 
                  Turok 2</b>
              
               
                <b> 
                  Driver</b>
              
            
             
              </p>
              Games 
                that are &#147;about right&#148;</p>
            
            
               
                <b> 
                  Metal Gear Solid</b>
              
              <b>Mario 
                64</b>
              <b>Resident 
                Evil 2</b>
              <b>Silent Hill</b>
              <b>System 
                Shock 2</b>
            
            
</p>
              I was 
                trying to think of &#147;Games that are too short&#148;, but I 
                couldn&#146;t come up with many. I was tempted to put down <b>Zelda: 
                A Link to the Past</b> (on SNES) but only because it&#146;s perfection 
                (and I can always do with more gaming perfection, thanks). Another 
                candidate would be <b>Terminator 2</b> on the original Gameboy 
                (which was ridiculously short - less than 5 minutes if you knew 
                what you were doing), but seeing as the end came as a welcome 
                relief rather than a bitter disappointment it probably doesn&#146;t 
                count either. There&#146;s also a fair few games where the concept 
                of &#147;length&#148; doesn&#146;t really figure &#150; <b>Tetris</b> 
                and other puzzlers come to mind, as well as a number of deathmatch 
                titles.</p>
              </p>
              Maybe 
                I&#146;m just crap at games. Or maybe I&#146;m coming from the 

                point of view of someone who has always played a lot of games 
                and has less time to play them (damn full-time job etc). There 
                is cetainly a small part of me that always wants to get through 
                the latest hot title and move onto the next one, but thankfully 
                I&#146;m able to stop it from taking over me and ruining the game 
                experience. A certain amount of wanderlust is, after all, perfectly 
                natural in the gaming world &#150; it fuels our demand for (bigger, 
                faster, stronger) consoles that run, er, beat-em ups with ever-increasing 
                polygon counts and racers with increasingly pretty screenshots 
                (<b>GT 2000</b> &#150; mmmm). But while I think that we see a 
                large number of interesting new games arrive every week, I&#146;m 
                also finding it increasingly difficult to give most titles the 
                time they deserve &#150; or at least, the time they think they 
                deserve. Anyone want to buy a (barely) used copy of <b>Final Fantasy 
                VIII</b>?</p>
              </p>
              <i>- 
                Nick Ferguson uses &#147;I&#148; more times per column inch than 
                any other loonygames correspondant</i></p>
              </p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
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