Do you think that shooters should have a longer campaign?

When I play shooters I instantly play single player. It is fun to know the characters and then have feeling for them when they die. But the problem is that most shooters today have campaigns of 6-8 hours. That is REALLY short. I can complete the game in a day if I tried. Wouldn't you want a shooter that had good story and long campaign? I would. Thoughts?

If the single player campaign is the primary aspect of the game then yes it should be longer. I expect at least 20+ hours out of single player games to make them worth the expense, unless the game's plot is good enough to merit the purchase on its own. This being said, I usually play action RPGs and platformers with RPG elements which last well over the 20 hour mark.

If multiplayer is the primary aspect of the game, then I don't really care if it even has a single player. As long as it has a tutorial and some abiilty to practice offline I find that the rest of the resources put into making the game should be focussed on the multiplayer.

Given that most shooters come equipped with a multiplayer component these days, I'd say the 6-8 hour campaign is an acceptable length. Most sink their time playing shooters in the multiplayer side of things, anyway, so lengthy campaigns become rather unimportant in the eyes of the developers from that perspective. That's the real problem here. If everyone weren't so focused on throwing multiplayer in with every shooter available we'd probably see more strong single-player campaigns in shooters. Unless it suddenly dies out overnight or something, however, that likely won't happen.

I don't know how long Dead Space was, but it had a lot going for it - it kept me immersed.

i don't know about anybody in this thread....but i dont wanna play a 30 to 40 call of duty campaign....i feel like the lenths just fine

When I play shooters I instantly play single player. It is fun to know the characters and then have feeling for them when they die. But the problem is that most shooters today have campaigns of 6-8 hours. That is REALLY short. I can complete the game in a day if I tried. Wouldn't you want a shooter that had good story and long campaign? I would. Thoughts?

Rutzfuz

I think 10-15 hours is a good campaign length for a shooter.

I dunno, seems to me 8-12 hours is pretty standard for most single player games these days in any genre. The FPS genre in particular may be on the low end of that average, but they are still in the range.

But I do think some are far too short yes. Halo: ODST and the last few CoD games being obvious picks.

Hot-Tip!!!!!

Its possible to double or even treble the length of a game by playing it twice or maybe three times. its a misconception that its only possible to play agame once.

I tend to play shooters on harder difficulties, not because I'm super pro, but because it makes the game last longer. :P Your 6-8 hour average shooter tends to take me around 10-12 hours.

But it's easy to see that most shooters (especially the popular ones) put an emphasis on multiplayer, so that's a part of it too. Honestly, the only shooters I see lasting longer than the 6-8 hour mark and remaining fun and interesting are hybrid shooters such as Bioshock,, the new Deus Ex, or Fallout 3 (only partially a shooter) because those games add in different dynamics to enrich an lengthen the experience.

But hey, sometimes it's nice to play a game and be done with it after a week. Nothing is wrong with that in my eyes as long as you didn't drop too much money on it.

i don't know about anybody in this thread....but i dont wanna play a 30 to 40 call of duty campaign....i feel like the lenths just fine

youngmurk911

well...thats why god and valve made half life...im sorry but i was kinda sad with the campaign ended...i kinda enjoyed the beefed up gravity gun...i never got tired of the campaign in that game...it was awesome...its not a perfect game but its a d*** good canon to measure to...if more fps games had good story like hl2 and good gameplay like it...with stuff to break up the gunplay (puzzles) then id have a hard time buying games...thered be too many to choose from

Hot-Tip!!!!!

Its possible to double or even treble the length of a game by playing it twice or maybe three times. its a misconception that its only possible to play agame once.

dog_dirt

While this is true, many shooters lack gameplay variety or well written story, so after playing though the campaign 3-5 times at the most there's little reason to go back to them.

When considering how often I replay games I've come to expect 100+ hours out of a game to make it worth the purchase. Of course this isn't the only deciding factor, but the game had better be damn good if I'm only going to get 10-20 hours out of it in total.

This being said I really only like shooters for multiplayer, so well designed multiplayer modes easily make the game worthwhile.

I'd prefer longer campaigns in Call of Duty games, but I don't want the developers to sacrifice quality for quantity. Gears of War and Gears of War 2 on the other hand have decently long and brilliant campaigns. Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 are also similar in that aspect.

Hot-Tip!!!!!

Its possible to double or even treble the length of a game by playing it twice or maybe three times. its a misconception that its only possible to play agame once.

dog_dirt

I doubt anyone misconveived whether or not it is possible to replay a game. When it comes to shooters, they often have minimal to moderate replay value due to the fact that the campaign does not change.

When I think long shooter campaigns I think Borderlands. When I think Borderlands I think boring. So, no thanks. If there are developers who think they can make a campaign that has enough variety and a plot good enough to fill up 20 hours they may try. But I'm sure that is extremely difficult without making the game primarily a RPG, like Mass Effect or Fallout.