Ahh, FFVII. This much loved, much derided game will always hold a special place in my heart. I had played RPGs previously, of course, on the Megadrive ( Genesis ); games such as Landstalker, Beyond Oasis, and the Shining Force games. FFVII, however, really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what an RPG could achieve. Since its release, I've recently noticed a bit of shift in critical opinion of the game. I accept that the nostalgia factor of this game is pretty high, but that doesn't stop me from loving it as much as I do.
And so, with this same misty eyed nostalgia making me smile like a loon, I put Disc One in my PS3 and have started up another game of FFVII. I have already played through the game twice back in the day. The first time I missed out a lot of the side quests, so I played through a second time and focused on uncovering all the secrets, such as defeating the Weapon bosses etc. Actually, come to think of it I don't know if I ever actually defeated Ruby Weapon. Bastard.
If memory serves me correctly, I think my play time for the second play-through was probably up around 80 hours or so. On top of the 40 hours I would have spent on the first play-through, this is a hell of a lot of time to spend on a game. I remember sitting in front of the TV for hours and hours, playing this game non-stop.
This got me thinking about how much I play video games now has changed. When I was in my teens, and even up to my early 20's, I could quite happily have these marathon gaming sessions. I remember the longest that I ever played a game non-stop was on Civilization II on the Playstation.
I once spent pretty much an entire day, 14 hours straight, playing this game. I remember that a lot of this time was actually spent doing nothing, just waiting between turns as the little Playstation processor took longer and longer to calculate between turns the longer that the game went. Still, I sat there like a zombie quite happily waiting for my next turn.
In my early 20's I got into EverQuest.
This was a time in my life when I didn't really have that much free time. I was studying at a Theatre school full time, had a girlfriend, had a bunch of really good friends and a good social life, but I still managed to find the time to pump hours upon hours into this game. I spent so many all nighters playing this game, and rather sadly I recall actually forgoing social occasions sometimes in order to stay home and play EQ. I remember that there was a command prompt you could type into the chat box, /char , which would bring up some info about how long you had been playing your character. My main character - because, like most players, I had two or three toons that I would play as - was Smoove Grooves the bard. I typed in /char one day, and to my horror realised that I had been playing for over a month. That's more than a month real time, around 700 hours. And this was just for one of my characters. It wasn't long after this that I quit the game. I did go back on two occasions for short bursts over the next couple of years, but the addiction was never as strong thankfully.
As I've gotten older, I've found that I simply don't have the time, or the inclination, to put in these marathon gaming efforts. It's rare that I'll play a game for longer than two or three hours in a row. A lot of this is due to how I live now. I'm engaged, live with my fiance, and have a full time job. She's very understanding about my love of games, and she's actually a bit of a games player herself, but there is no way she would be quite so understanding if I just shut myself away in the computer room for 12 hours to play a game. As well as this, I wouldn't feel right about it either. There comes a point in your life, of course, when you realise that in the hierarchy of importance games don't really rank as high as they used to.
When I was younger, I actually felt a bit cheated if a game didn't give me at least 20+ hours of gameplay. Now, at the age of 30, I actually prefer games that I can finish in 10 hours or less. Because I can't spend as much time on games as I used to, I really want to play games that I can comfortably complete without dedicating my entire life to them. Obviously I will always make exceptions for certain games, and it's not as if I'm going to not play a game simply because I know that it will take a long time to complete. However, the chances are that I might not actually complete it because I can't spend enough time on it. A couple of perfect examples of this are the two most recent Bethesda Softworks games, Oblivion and Fallout 3. I spent so much time playing Oblivion, but I never completed it. I'm still in the middle of Fallout 3. I go back to it now and then, but I'm not sure if I'll get around to completing it.
The last game that I really had a marathon gaming session on was Mass Effect on the PC.
This was last year. We were living in Melbourne, Australia, at the time and my work hours and her's didn't really match up which meant that quite often I would have the whole day to myself at home. She went off to work one morning, I jumped on the computer and booted up Mass Effect. Eight hours later she got home and I was still playing. I think this is understandable, however, because Mass Effect is a totally fantastic game. It was the game of 2008 for me.
As I'm writing this, I'm also downloading another Bioware game through Steam, thanks to their awesome holiday special they're currently running. That game is Dragon Age: Origins. Will this be the next game to coax me into a long, drawn out gaming session? From what I've read, quite possibly. Of course, this all depends on whether or not I can find the time!
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