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Friday Fun Thread for July 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm not a person that considers video games his primary hobby but I like them. I mostly like shorter games, so I can actually finish them over huge open worlds with 100 hour playtime but only 15 good hours contained within. I wish there was a director's mode where you only get the best missions within a game and just get your "RPG powers" over the course of the missions, like in ye olde linear days.

I bought Cocoon and I can highly recommend it. I didn't have high expectations, despite the good scores it got based on a game with analog stick and only one button controls. Boy have I been proved wrong. This is really good and I don't even love puzzlers.

I also bought Assassin's Creed Mirage because I read it's "only 15 hours" long which is a positive to me. I'm not far and had to play around with all the obnoxious interface stuff. One has to strike a balance between visual clutter with some information content and immersion while losing out on necessary information. I like it OK so far (2 hours in) but as someone that only play 2 AAA games a year, the quality drop-off from the last few games I played (ex. God of War: Ragnarok) in production is very noticeable.

Anyone with similar preferences for length?

I would argue that this isn't about long or short games per se, but pacing. A lot of modern games are full of fluff that just pads out the length, but you could have a 100h game that doesn't feel like a slog because something interesting is always happening.

Offhand I can't think of a single-player game in which the campaign takes the average player 100 hours to complete and which is consistently engaging throughout. Have you played any games meeting that description?

I can't think of "a single player game in which the campaign takes the average player 100 hours to complete" at all...

It seems cost-prohibitive for AAA games especially.

It's not uncommon for RPGs. Persona games are that long, several Trails games are that long, etc. For other genres you're right though.