For people who complain about having 6 hours, but aren't willing to jump back on that ride and play it again wouldn't have really benefited from a longer campaign. It has to be a game thats fun for you to want more of it. You can't extend the enjoyment of a turd, unless you're a worm.

If it has no multiplayer, then 50 hours is desired. If it has good multiplayer or replay value, then that is obviously reduced

That''s just a totally unrealistic expectation for any game except things like JRPG's.  Making an 8-hour game is a large enough undertaking but making a quality game even just 8 hours is a incredibly huge undertaking.

Then that tells you a few things about me

I'm essentially unwilling to buy an FPS that doesn't have (local) multiplayer

I don't like how skyrocketing costs have forced a reduction in gameplay length, which is why I prefer Wii exclusives

Wii exclusives aren't immune to that length rule.  Games usually aren't longer than 12 hours because 1) people usually don't finish games longer than 12 hours and 2) costs just start raising through the roof the longer your game gets.

I am all too aware of this. Wii games are longer, but not by enough. I'm not getting Red Steel 2 because it doesn't have multiplayer - and I was so looking forward to it.

Absoluetly and the Online Coop of World at War was great fun only problem was hosting a server. I played WaW for donkeys before going online in a more traditional style.

It's about quality and what fits the title. A game that is padded to get extra length tends to get boring and repetitive.

It also depends on the style of the campaign, to an extent. Halo (and other FPS like CoD4) are built around a fairly light narrative with almost constant combat situations and almost no exploration.

Half Life, though, is built around a bigger narrative with more exploration, puzzles, etc. balanced with combat.

Both approaches are great, although of course Half Life approach means you end up with a bigger campaign in terms of play length.

I think it should be considered too, the huge swing to MP, with many people seemingly seeing that FPS = MP and the campaign is just a nice to have, something they may not even touch. This seems particularly to be the case with the heavily combat focused titles and I don'[t think it's a surprise that today such FPS almost always go for a short, tight campaign.

My favourite FPS are by Valve, and I prefer their approach of putting out titles that are either heavily SP campaign focused (such as Half Life) or heavily MP focused (such as L4D). Their approach means a huge focus on just that aspect of FPS gameplay and is why, IMHO, their SP campaigns are superior to pretty much every other FPS SP campaign, and their MP is the equal of anything out there too.

I think Bioshock, Deus EX, Stalker, etc. are hybrids, mixing a lot more exploration, RPG, etc. with the combat. If you like that (and I do) then they're great. If you're more orientated to a Halo style campaign they're going to seem to drag at points.

it's hard to say how long ODST campaign really is - it's obvious that reviewers made speedrun going from one flashback to another, but it's a sandbox game. if you play normally i think it will give you atleast 12-14 hours to finish it - especially if you want to find all chapters from side story and simply explore the city.
for me it all depends on the game, replay value and experience.
i don't mind 20hours rpgs/jrpgs if they are intense and don't feel like rushed, but i also like 100+hour games if they can still be interesting.
for action games i would say that 12-14 hours for a full game that is like Bioshock(singleplayer experience) is a must. if it's more of a multiplayer game then 6-8 hour of singleplayer campaign is okay to me.

I can agree with much of what has been said regarding quality over quantity, but I think I can put a new perspective in as well.

Since I rarely touch online multiplayer of any kind, the SP is what makes or brakes a game for me. For this reason, I would regret getting Killzone 2 at full price, just like I would never buy CoD4 at full console game price (I've only ever bought it for PC, which I'm okay with). I do wish there had been more longevity to the campaigns in those games, even if it had only been an hour or two.

All of this is easy to say now of course, when I will probably end up buying Modern Warfare 2 at full price. Well, at least it has coop.

>_>