Along with another thread I posted, the concept of playing time is something I want to explore a bit more here. When you're young, at least for me, you were lucky if you got one new game to play every few weeks or month or if you just rented a bunch from Blockbuster (RIP). If a game wasn't very good, we had little choice but to plow through if we wanted to keep playing at all since our choices were limited, though inversely, we had plenty of time to really dig into.
As we have gotten older though, things have reversed drastically. Now, the choices are endless but the amount of gaming time we have has lessened. Thus, I pose to you, how long will you give a game now before you stop playing it and move on to a new one? I mean in terms of giving up on a game, not taking a break from one but with plans to return to it later.
Is it after the first few hours? After the first couple of levels? Or can you sometimes tell right away, if say the opening cutscenes are boring or the voice acting is terrible and you can't fathom sitting through it?
For me, I usually like to give a game about 2 hours of play-time. Not straight away but total time. If by about the 2 hour mark, the game hasn't hooked me, I will most likely not play it any more. It's unscientific but 2 hours more or less feels like the equivalent of what a pilot episode of a TV show would do: introduce the world, key characters, some plot, themes and enough mystery to get the story going.
Do you find you give a game more leeway than a TV show to find its feet or do you use the same standards?
I also find myself to be much more selective about what games I play, so my hit rate has gotten higher but there are still some that I give a whirl only to not get into them.
Take care all.