Mario 64 was perfect at this. Mess around or progress the choice was yours.

Sorry, I meant to post more but I had to go somewhere.


Now I can't remember what I was going to post. -_-

Take RPG's for instance. They rely on the story, but also the improvement of abilities in the story at the right moment,well at least some of them do. It adds more meaning to the story along with intensity. In an action game, it can be a bad thing to have nothing but non-stop action. RE4 is known as one of the best games of all time because of how well the game's events, weapons, and gameplay mechanics are introduced. Plus the game is not completely non-stop action, there's also the shooting gallery for liesure time, and it's not useless either. The cut-scenes in the game are good to look at, including some of the conversations on the radio because they give the player a resting period and a time to collect themselves for the next fight.

RPG elements seem to give games better pacing because they add depth to the gameplay, in which most action games seemingly lack in terms of strategy. RE4 gave you the chance to upgrade the power and speed of your weapons among other things.

I think Call of Duty 1 had far better pacing than all three sequels.
It was the first WWII FPS to make me go "Jesus f****** christ!" and jump in my chair while frantically trying to take in the entire battlefield to find opening or just a place to get cover in order to survive!

I don't think it's a huge problem in most games i've played . I HL2 bored me to death so I didn't take note of the pace.

 Thirdsies.

I think pacing should be considered. A game like Call of Duty 4, while short, is very intense and was very fun throughout the entire game. Other games are good and are paced well enough that I'm not getting terribly bored with them.

Depends on your preferences I guess. People have told me that they'd rather have an extremely long game, but I think that length isn't everything if I'm going to get bored of the repetition. I guess it also depends on your mood, sometimes I just want to chill with an RPG and other times I want to have some insane TF2 battles.

When it comes to Japanese RPGs, pacing is pretty important.

I'm weird, I like my games to be slow, with lots of non-voice acted talks. FE:RD graphics on talking are just fine with me, I prefer that to voice chat, and fast paced FPSs are horrible, I hate them.