It often feels like more and more gamers are demanding to know how long it will take to beat an upcoming title. If that number dips too low, even otherwise rational gamers may start to entertain arguments about whether it’s really worth its price. At least that’s what happened to two of the year’s biggest recent releases: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2. When it was revealed that both games could seemingly be beaten (even if not at 100%) in less than 20 hours…well, the conversations about both were suddenly dominated by that topic.

I sympathize with anyone who worries that they may be spending what is, for many, quite a lot of money on a game that won’t last them long. I also feel obligated to say that I often receive review codes for games as part of my job, which allows me to play many of the major games released in a given year without spending any of my own money. Obviously, that kind of luxury will impact your perspective. It’s almost certainly impacted mine in ways that I’m likely not even entirely aware of.

Yet, as someone who is privileged enough to play all those games, I can tell you that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2 are two of the best games I’ve played in 2023 by a significant distance. Both will easily be in contention for our 2023 “Game of the Year” award. Of course, the same can be said for much longer games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

What you probably won’t hear us talking about come award season are the games that are really responsible for this argument: those that artificially inflate their value by incorporating often superfluous (or lazy) content in the name of justifying their high price tags and/or microtransactions.

Without naming too many names, I can tell you that more and more years are being filled with games that offer a theoretically longer playtime but inherently don’t appreciate the value of the time that you put into them. They are games that seem more than happy with abiding by the “$1 = 1 hour of gameplay” rule because that’s pretty much all they have to offer in the first place. 

What we too often lose in this modern era of “hours=value” are games that are trying to offer an intended experience rather than an endless experience. In this case, I’m specifically referring again to Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2. Both offer side activities and distractions (Spider-Man 2 certainly features many of both), and both will receive DLC expansions in the future. However, the heart of both experiences is a 20-hour or less interactive and narrative adventure. 

Danofgeek