Long Ass Games Make Me Nervous

On 11/22/2014 at 08:04 PM by asrealasitgets

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Long Ass Games Make Me Nervous

Been a while since I posted. In truth, I was planning on doing another game club for December but couldn’t quite decide on a game. There are so many games releasing at the moment that it would be difficult to focus on one specific game. I think it might best be suited as a summer time thing or for when there is a gaming drought, and currently we are in a gaming downpour. I’m sure we will be getting hit with holiday sales for games all over the place pretty soon so asking people to buy a game for a game club would be ill advised at the moment.

I kind of like the idea of playing along with at least one other person. With most games nowadays people play them when they release and then completely forget about them. I like the long hike up the mountain approach myself, so the idea of marathon sessions with these games for deadline or review is kind of dumb. If you are a game reviewer or blogger you got to admit that rushing through a great game is really dumb.

Anyhow, I had planned on doing a Game Club on Dragon Age II. I played DA:Origins but never finished the sequel and since the new game Inquisition just dropped I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the city of Kirkwall again. Well, part of this idea came from looking up the completion time on howlongtobeat which estimated the game requiring 30+ hours to complete. Well, this hasn’t been the case at all. The game is divided into three acts. The first act alone took me 35 hours to complete, including all side missions. The second act was another 20 hours including side missions, so yeah it’s like 55 hours so far and I just started the third act with tones of side quests to still dig into. I should note that on howlongtobeat it does show different times for either Main story or Completionist, and I’m more of a completionist so it will probably take me 60+ hours to finish.

Obviously I wouldn’t have invested this much time into a game if I didn’t like it, so I must be enjoying it. I usually just pick off quests from my quest journal before progressing through the main story and you can pretty much do them in any order which is really great. It is very linear but also open world enough to let you take on tasks in your order of choosing. The game is very long. I’m sure if you’re a god like player you can finish in like 10 hours or whatever shortest time is listed on howlongtobeat. I’m also not including any DLC, of which there are like three. It’s a lot of game.

I don’t plan on getting into the new Dragon Age until I tackle this one, which I’m really enjoying, but it was unexpectedly long and I really need to get back to Mordor and Borderlands pre-sequel. I had this idea for a game club with short games, like 5-10 hours or maybe Indie games game club so we can try out cool Indie games we might have missed. If you plan on playing Dragon Age II at any point I’d be happy to offer advice. The game is pretty streamlined and much easier to get into than Origins was so there shouldn’t be much of a problem for new players. Although I read Inquistion might be the heavy action game new Dragon Age players really want and can completely skip 1 & 2. I don’t know how I feel about that. I quite like DAII. It’s grown on me.

Oh, and the blog title…I never got to what the blog title meant? I’m playing DAII on PC and it is much longer than I anticipated and being an RPG I tend to save often all the time so I have tons of save files everywhere. I just remember the days of unreliable OS that would crash from viruses or spyware and lock me out of my PC or require a clean install. DAII has been like 50+ hours so the thought of losing all that progress only 2/3 of the way through a long ass game makes me nervous.

-asrealasitgets.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

11/22/2014 at 08:15 PM

I bought inquisition today. Downloading it now. Im really looking forward to it.

Glad to hear from u man.

asrealasitgets

11/22/2014 at 08:17 PM

I'd be happy to leave review impressions of DA2 and trade you for review impressions of DA:I. I read that it is a really long ass game and I'm hesitating to jump in right away because of this. Did you play 2?

11/22/2014 at 08:22 PM

I played a real little bit of 2. I mean to play it though. I got stuck in origins and really wanted to finish both before inquisition but it didnt happen. Ill definitely be bloggin about inquisition but ill try to be spoiler free and just talk mechanics

Machocruz

11/22/2014 at 08:48 PM

Inquisition has a lot of trash quests that you are better off skipping if time is a concern. Think MMO collection quests. Padded length. Origins is filled with more quality time. DA2 makes me ill just thinking about it, so it's about a 1 hour long game to me :D

11/22/2014 at 09:00 PM

But I like the characters and story of DA2. It could have used more variety of environments, like snow, jungle, forest, etc. but for the story the level design fulfilled it's purpose. It isn't a globe trotting EPIC, but I like it for what it is.

KnightDriver

11/22/2014 at 09:12 PM

Game Club with under 10 hour games is a great idea. More people can finish it and then talk about it.

11/22/2014 at 09:15 PM

And there is also a cost issue and availability, like which console to play on? I might try an under 10 hr game under $10 or something.

11/22/2014 at 09:18 PM

10 for 10 Game Club. I like it.

daftman

11/22/2014 at 11:06 PM

Dragon Age is my wife's favorite series, so she has been so excited to get her hands on Inquisition. She liked DAII as well. It's not the sequel people expected but it's certainly not a bad game.

Might I suggest PS+ games for the game club? Seems like there's quite a few of us subscribers on here, and it'd be nice to have some extra incentive to play Thomas Was Alone or The Cave or a bunch of those other games I haven't touched lol.

11/23/2014 at 12:40 AM

I honestly dont remember a lot about Origins, but you spend so much time in Kirkwall that you eventually feel like you are genuinly apart of it. In this I think the game succeeded and keeping you busy in and around the city was essential to the narrative. I know it's a departure from the large scale epic that was Origins, but DA2 has it's strengths. Also I have a female Hawke and most of my crew are females so it's all girls saving the world this time.

As for Game Club. There is a lot of interest so I'll keep working at it. The only problem with PS+ is that not everybody has it so maybe a seperate PS+ Club might happen.

Super Step Contributing Writer

11/23/2014 at 12:49 AM

There was a time when I was a kid when I had put hours upon hours into Pokemon Blue and thought I had become stuck in a way that meant I would have to re-do all my progress. I was upset. I know how you feel.

11/23/2014 at 01:47 AM

Thats how DA:Origins was. I think it was like a 70-80 hour game when I finally finished it after several failed attempts. I though DA2 was a short game so when I w as crossing the 40 hr and 50 hour mark I started to get nervous. It is possible to hit a wall at the 70th hour if you fucked your party build. I'm not sure if my build will make it through to the end or not. Fingers crossed!

jgusw

11/23/2014 at 06:29 AM

Nice. Someone else who likes DA2! My wife & I finished DA2 a few days ago. I played through the games many times before. My wife is not a big gamer, but she was interested in DA, so I had her play DA2 (because it's easier to play) and then DA:O. We both recently played both games in order. We really like them. Act 3 doesn't take long to finish. I have DA3, but I ran into a couple problems when I started it. I need to get my 360 hooked to a hd tv if I'm going to play DA3.

11/23/2014 at 07:02 AM

Dragon Age 2 is also more or less a self contained story. I don't remember a lot of details about Origins since its' been so long but it didn't matter that much. The whole point is that the characters are trying to rebuild new lives in this city. It is much easier than Origins and it is a better jumping point for beginners. Im curious to see how the trilogiy finally concludes, but I would be just as happy if Inquisition was a self contained story as well. Kind of tired of forced connections in every game.

Ranger1

11/24/2014 at 08:25 AM

Once upon a time when dinosaurs walked the earth and home computers were referred to as either Apples or IBMs and games came on 5 1/4" floppy disks, I used to play Wizardry. Hard drives were pretty much non-existant at that time, as well, and all my character data had to be saved on disk. I learned the hard way to back up frequently, as more than once my save disk would become corrupted, thus losing hours and hours and levels and levels and massive amounts of loot and gold. Hell, I had multiple back ups after one particularly heart-breaking loss of data.

11/24/2014 at 04:32 PM

You understand me Rangergirl! The fear is still alive.

goaztecs

12/01/2014 at 12:03 PM

Oh the fear of losing gamesaves is real, I too have it. For games I really like I will have multiple saves and maybe throw one on a thumb drive if I can. That's the one positive with PS+ is that they automatically upload so I don't have to worry, I just need to pay for the service Haha.

PixlBit