Greg Mueller is an associate editor at GameSpot. He's still trying to beat his measly score of 75K on the Waterworld level of Resident Evil 4. E-mail your high scores (and tips) to gregm@gamespot.com.

n the old days, I remember people complaining that games weren't long enough. Yet I recall a completion time of somewhere around 66 hours on my first save game in Final Fantasy VI (III, by the American convention). These days, ironically, I think I hear more often the complaint that games are too long, as though most gamers would prefer a polished, honed, yet brief gaming experience rather than a less focused one stretching on ad nauseam. Would you rather play five exemplary 10-hour games, or one pretty good 50-hour one? I think the choice is simple enough.

There's something to be said for familiarity.

For those with limited free time, even one 10-hour game can feel like a big commitment. It can be tough to find time for games when you have to balance work, school, a social life, and everything else that eats up the hours in an average day. I'm fortunate enough now to get paid to play games a lot, but that wasn't always the case. I remember a time not too long ago when I was lucky to get a couple of hours of game time in a week. That makes it difficult to pick up and play new games, because you have to be especially confident that your investment of time and money will pay off. It's ironic, because when I was younger, I had all kinds of time to play games; I just didn't have the money to buy any games. Now, though, I'm less concerned about wasting money on a bad game than I am about wasting time on one. Either way, deciding which game to play can be difficult. And when you finally get some time to play, the last thing you want to do is spend that time just trying to figure out what to play.

The easiest thing to do in those situations is go back to an old standby--a game you know will give you that fix, even though you've played it to death already. It's the same reason you might keep your five or six favorite CDs (yeah, I know, "get with the times grandpa") handy, because when you want to listen to music but nothing in particular comes to mind, you know that one of your favorites will fit the bill, even if you can practically recall every single note in your head because you've heard the songs so many times. I have a go-to game in just about every genre, just to simplify the decision process even more. For a role-playing game, I'll go back to one of the older Final Fantasy games (usually Tactics). If I feel like fighting, it's Capcom vs. SNK 2. If I want to blast some stuff, I'll play Resident Evil 4 to see if I can set a new high score in mercenaries mode. If I don't have a particular genre in mind, I'll just load up GTA III and go crazy for a while. There's at least one or two superb games in every category you can think of.

ICO is the hot dog to Zelda's hamburger.

But with so many good games already out there, why are we compelled to keep buying new ones? Why do I care that Resident Evil 5 has been announced when I'm still playing Resident Evil 4, even after beating it multiple times and unlocking all the extras? It's a matter of finding a new itch to scratch. Maybe we're looking for something more advanced technically, and maybe we're hoping that the next game will provide an experience unlike any we've had before. Or, maybe we just need a break from the games we've already been playing. No matter what the reason, there's something to be said for trying new things. When I first saw ICO, I thought it looked pretty boring. It was just a kid with a stick running around with a helpless girl. Then I took a chance on the game, after it received a lot of praise from critics. And to this day, it's one of my favorite PlayStation 2 games. I'm sure I would have been just as satisfied if I played through The Ocarina of Time again instead of playing ICO. I also like hamburgers, but occasionally I want a hot dog instead. Nutritionally they're about the same, and I'll be full after I eat either one. But they're still different enough to warrant switching between the two once in a while.

It doesn't look like it'll ever get easier to decide which games are worthy of your time. You can read our reviews to know which games you should avoid, but beyond that, it's really a matter of how you feel at the moment. Perhaps the episodic approach to game delivery that people have suggested would be a good way to let you divvy your time up between several ongoing games, rather than just dedicating a block of 10 or more hours at a time to a single one. Or, maybe casual games are the way of the future, simply because they provide the fun of gaming in quick, easy-to-swallow doses. That certainly doesn't sound like a bad thing, considering that a game like Contra could basically be labeled a casual game by today's standards.

There will definitely be a constant need for new games, as long as those games are different and good enough to be worthy of our attention. So in turn, there will always be a steady supply of games, as long as we keep buying them. At the same time, we don't have to leave our favorites behind. Thanks to the inclusion of backward compatibility in next-gen consoles, we can be sure to have access to that familiar old feeling any time we want. I've heard people suggest that when (and if) the Xbox 360 launches this November, Microsoft's biggest competition won't be Sony or Nintendo. It'll be Halo 2. That may be true, to a point, but we'll still always crave newer--if not necessarily revolutionary--games.