15-20 hours to beat the story(around 60-70 stars), claims Eurogamer.

Apparently Final Fantasy IX can be beaten under 13 hours, and most people take anywhere between 40-70 hours.

Depends if you take the time to enjoy the game.

Here's what Legend might have said if his intentions were pure.

Game length numbers are misleading

The worth of a game can't be measured in something like a game length number. Let me offer an example.

One game takes 1 minute to complete. To compensate, it has 3.6 billion difficultly levels, extending the potential length to 1 million hours.

A second game takes 1 million hours to complete even once.

Which game would you rather play?

Obviously, this question cannot be answered without more information.

The real question is: what motivation does the game give you to keep playing? How long does this motivation hold up before the player fully discovers the game's methods and it starts to feel like a chore? If the one minute game remains fun through each of 3.6 billion difficultly levels, but the 1 million hour game gets boring in the first minute, the 1 minute game is more worthwhile and valuable.

I recently saw some unsubstantiated evidence that Super Mario Galaxy may take as little as 7 hours to beat. But I feel this is unimportant. Some other recent games have been bashed for their length as well. But it would be stupid to lump all these games together because they have similar completion times, when some use amazing design or extra content like multiplayer to motivate the player to keep playing (and others don't).

Mario games have always provided great motivation to players to keep replaying the game, even after they've supposedly "done everything." So have Halo games, but that hasn't stopped some from bashing Halo 3 for it's short campaign. Bashing either game seems stupid to me. In the end, each player must decide what kinds of motivation they best take to, and in return, which kinds of games they would most enjoy playing.

-Legend11

Legend, I have a question for you.

Are you Emo?

good show, aston, good show. That's a good example of non-flamebait.

Frankly I see a thread packed to the top with trolls. I do not care if you agree with an assessment or not thats no reason to throw insults at the original poster. Thats also no excuse to attack posters on another site. In other words don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. That said cherry picking reviewers over gamers when it suits your purposes is neither impartial or unbiased.

Ironically why should anyone take a reviewer as the gospel when we argue the scores enough. Equally why is the opinion of a fellow gamer invalid. They are more likely to be similar to you then a dedicated reviewer. The dedicated reviewer is actually more detached, and this might account for the difference.

Speaking from personal experience I almost always beat a game in under the time predicted by a reviewer. You have to see it from the reviewers perspective they are making allowances for incompetence. Further more they are not playing a game at full pace they are screwing around with the product. They are also intentionally trying to experience the game in a linear fashion. Where you and I move on they hang back and screw around for a bit. Basically they underestimate the players to a degree.

The best yard stick we have for this games length is by using the previous two games. Both the previous games were lax on difficulty, and more to the point you can skip entire levels, and still make your way to the end. Unless your squeezing to do the game as linear as possible your going to bypass some stars in some levels, and move on to the next level to get the easy stars there. Basically you can get by playing only half the game on the first play through.

In the previous two games you could beat the game in under ten hours. You need no excessive skill. All you needed was a little drive to get to the end. The follow up play usually took 1.5 to 2 times the original play through. So you come up with 8 to 12 hours initial play, and perhaps 30 hours for the complete experience.

Does that mean the game is short well technically yes if you can beat the game in under 10 hours its a short game. Most players will have beat the game in under a week with moderate play sessions if thats the case. Thats not saying you cannot get a lot more enjoyment out of it, and it would be a waste not to. However some people play just to beat a game. Rather then suck it dry.

Anyway I think there has only been a couple occasions where a reviewer pegged the length correctly for me, and that was Blast Corps which really did take over forty hours, and the Ocarina of Time which really did take over sixty hours. Everything else was twenty percent over for me or more. I would also like to say that I am not an exceptional player. I get stuck, I screw up, and I curse at my television far often then I care to admit.

Anyway the initial play through does not sound half bad if your bound to play the game again, and your going to have fun completing the game. So exactly what is everyone complaining about sounds like a typical fantastic Mario platformer to me. Doesn't sound like they have screwed with the formula, or are trying to make it overly complicated.

Are Nintendo fans threatened by the thought that this gasp might actually be a Mario game. What do I know I thought Sunshine was a fantastic game. Not sure why people slam it for not getting a perfect score from some reviewers.

it must be more than 20 hours of gameplay, if you want to collect all 120 stars..

I have been playing the jap version, and now I have got 30 stars, 5 to 6 hours have been spent...

Dodece gets a cookie.

@Dodece,

As far as I have seen people do bash review scores but tend to agree quite a bit with the written sections. There are obviously exceptions to that but by in large that seems to be the case.

As for why people are complaining. It has nothing to do with the thought that Mario could be short, but that the OP decided to base his opinion off of two anecdotes and ignore the info given by professional reviewers to date. So yes we take exception when people chop away at a game to bring it to a place where they can use it to make their point. I agree it evolved into a pile-on thread but thats only because so many people felt so strongly about it. By dismissing them as just being angry fanboys you ignore their legitimate points and that is a mistake.

As for your 8-12 hours of play, I recently played through Sunshine and M64 again and it took me about 15-16 hours for each just to beat it and a closer to 25-30 for all stars/shines. I hadn't played in a while so I didn't remember everything but I had a good grasp on controls and I could remember a great deal of where to go and what to do and it still took that long.

My point isn't that my numbers are more or less accurate than yours but that neither really matter since it is going to be different for different players and aside from that we seem to agree that the full content provided for first time players who want it (which is what matters) is over 20 hours in those games even for fast players.

Erik Aston had a MUCH better way to approach it and one I can agree with.

1. Do you know what a troll is? Look at Legend's original post, that is pure troll flame bait and nothing else. Look at the respones, those aren't (for the most part), they are telling Legend why he's a troll.
2. It's not we're attacking posters on other sites, it's just they plain just aren't credible. That's really not meant as an insult, that's just how it is. Do you trust everything people says on this site? Would you have the same answer if you didn't know the people on the site? In general, I don't trust random people on forums and I just generally assume everyone is a fake. Professional reviewers at least have some credibility and they can generally be trusted on things.
3. This thread isn't really about cherry picking reviewers, it's about two random people say one thing about a game (well, two things really) and then *every* professional reviewer says something different. I don't agree with a lot of reviewers on various things, but at least in game length that's something that isn't an opinion, that's something that can be measured so there's no reason to cherry pick them.