Back in the Day...

Since starting my weekly reviews, I've noticed something quite worrying. All the games I've reviewed are games I've finished within a week, even though I have lectures during the week and work at the weekend. I remember a time when a game would keep me entertained for weeks, if not months. I remember even just a few years ago buying Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and taking about two or three months to finish it, and last March I got hold of Saint's Row and finished it in a week. And that's while working weekends and being at college for six hours a day, five days a week.

Looking back, it seems that the older the game, the longer it would take to complete. Take Super Mario World for instance. Although only about 5 or 6 when it was released, I remember taking a ridiculous length of time to finish it. Even my older brothers took a good few months to finish it. That was during the 16-bit era. Modern console today are capable of teaching small nations how to juggle while simultaneously playing games from that time without breaking a sweat. So what the hell happened?

Nintendo seems to be staying true to this idea of making single player games nice and long, with the likes of Zelda, Mario and Metroid games. The problem, however, is that they've been reusing these three franchises for about 20 years - if not more. It is for this reason that I think Majora's Mask was the best Zelda game. That's down to the fact that it plays like a smoother version of Ocarina of Time, but there's absolutely no mention of Ganon of the mother fucking Triforce. Playing it was odd, I was expecting at any minute that Ganon would show up with the Triforce and reveal his latest diabolical plan to kidnap Princess Zelda and destroy Hyrule using the moon. I finished the game and felt a combination of pride and surprise, because for once, Nintendo had made an original Zelda game! And there was scarcely any mention of Zelda herself, but I don't think "The Legend of Clock Town: Featuring The Annoying Kid From The Zelda Games" had the same ring to it. Don't get me wrong, I love Zelda games and think that Twilight Princess was fantastic. But I bought it on Christmas Eve 2006, and had it finished shortly after the new year.

The Xbox 360, for example, reads 4.7Gb DVDs, and yet the average single player campaign can be finished inside a week. It's nothing to do with being rushed, these games spend years in development, and people get paid quite handsomely to make them. I do, however have one theory.

Being amazed by Metroid Prime on the Gamecube, I was delighted when Metroid Prime 2 came out, albeit a bit worried about the idea of having to stay inside bubbles to avoid a mild case of the deadsies. To this day, I have never finished that game, and I have no intention to, for the same reason I've never been tempted to pick up Metroid Prime 3. Anyone who played Metroid Prime will know that it is a long game, with about 30 hours of gameplay for mere mortals, such as myself, although I believe I clocked it at about 43 hours. My point here is that Metroid Prime 2 was more of the same, if not longer. With less blasted back tracking. If memory serves, the last time I played it I had found the screw attack and finished a good few puzzles with it. I figured this was about 3/4 of the way through, because I had a lot of items and I'd spent a lot of time without seeing my friends. Then, for no reason whatsoever, my memory card formatted itself and took all my hard earned work and shoved it up the arse of cyberspace, never to be seen again.

If a small memory card can die for no apparent reason, then it's probably best to not make games incredibly long, should the gaming public feel their beloved games have betrayed them by forgetting they ever existed after a ludicrous amount of effort had been pumped into it. This can happen to a puny amount of storage space, so the monster 120Gb of space on the 360 Elite has the potential to cause more suffering than Bono when he starts talking about the environment. I love Metroid Prime, but I was so hurt by my betrayal that I will probably never play Metroid Prime ever again. I felt bad enough playing Metroid Prime Hunters on my DS, and had to sell it to ease the pain. Then I waited eagerly for Halo 3 and realised there are even better games out there, such as Crackdown or Bioshock.

I only hope that GTA IV can keep me entertained for longer than 10 minutes.