Originally posted by: Fox5
8 hours is actually a pretty good length for a game, especially if it's good all the way through. Especially for a $20 game.
Heck, even 4 hours is acceptable if it's really really good or priced low enough.
Most old games weren't very long either, but their difficulty made them take forever to beat. There wouldn't be 15 minute speed runs for games if they actually had so much content that you couldn't blaze through them.
True there but you have games like Warcraft 3, Homeworld, Freespace 2, Baldurs Gate 2.... Final Fantasy VII.... all absolutely monumental games in which lasted ages. They may have been "hard" but not that hard to say that the difficulty extended the game all that much.
Of course, these are the exception and could easily rank in anyones top 10 games of all time.
Graphically, these games were a mixture with Homeworld and Freespace2 being magical and WC3 being ok, in the vain of Diablo2/Starcraft, great Blizzard games with average graphics.
Storylines were all rather strong with sufficient twists in the tale to make it believable. Story telling, FMV, the immersion in all of the games above were great, pulled you in and kept you there until you passed out/had to call a sickie from work/completed the game. Homeworld, when you hyperspaced back to Kharak, Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei playing in the background.... "Kharak has been destroyed, our Homeworld is in flames.". The game hooked me from that moment and I even got the shiver just thinking about it to type this up.
In my opinion, there are some essentials to a good (single player) game:
1) Storyline. Decent story, well told. Make me feel like I give a crap about saving the princess or my planet from certain destruction. Surprise me, make me think about whats going to come next. Please do not do the movie thing and shorten the story just to make it fit. Rushing certain areas or parts of the plot just helps detract from the immersion.
2) Make sure the game mechanics are good, consistant and balanced. Despite my love of RPG's, try not to make certain combinations uber or others near useless. Combat must be enjoyable, challenging but not frustrating. In my opinion, avoid one-shot kill type skills and force me to think of tactics, how to beat an enemy. Don't make an awful inventory system or complicated to use skills system.
3) A good length. Fully develop the story, give background on the characters and tie them into both the story and the player. No rushed parts, let the game flow and marry the story progression with it.
4) Bugs. I am no programmer and as I understand it, coding a game for the multitude of PC configurations available is a proverbial nightmare. Game breaking, glitching, annoying or downright sloppy bugs reduce immersion and can turn what is a great game into a pile of trash or just tarnish that nice vaneer. First impressions are often key in most walks of life and if you fail (T4:Salvation's install bug) then thats not good!
Overall, as the technology market in the form of CPU's and GPU's has skyrocketed since some more golden years for games in the mid-nineties to early naughties and it has probably contributed to the complexity of producing a bug free game allowing less time for certain aspects to be developed. If this theory holds true, one can understand that combined with the economics around games development and the gaming industry that the pressure to achieve sales results could compromise on game quality.
So in my opinion, games quality has certainly dropped in recent times. You occasionally find a gem but not many games are "worth it" at full price. I have not yet had an issue with DRM but from the overall feel of forums including this one, it feels like it is more of a hinderance than a help.
Pirating is something I cannot agree with. The only grey area for me is DRM issues. From what I have read, pirated games are usually the same as the retail version but with any intrusive DRM removed. I cannot agree with someone pirating a game to avoid potential DRM issues but I can feel some sort of... sympathy? probably the wrong word... with someone trying not to install what can be perceived as a piece of intrusive software onto their PC....
If someone legally purchased a game but downloaded a version from the internet which had the DRM/DVD check removed, I'd find that a tough one to call.
I have only posted personal opinion, always open to criticism but dislike flaming.
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