Gaming Firewatch Review

Interested to see if this game gets Oculus Support or if Vorpx can inject it, would be superb game for VR.

Game sounds awesome, enjoyed the review, may pick up end of month.

 

Looks and sounds interesting (heard about it a while back, and the same applied then), but £15 seems really steep for a ~5 hour game. I aim to get an hour of enjoyment (or not, as is the case with some games!) for every quid I spend, so I'd have to play this two or three times through. Which generally does not happen with these kinds of games.

I've already got 26 hours out of XCOM 2 for example, and I only paid £21 for it. Already paid itself off, and I'm not even close to done. Same with The Witcher 3 at nearly 97 hours for a £25 purchase (yeh I know, I'm late).

I'll be adding it to my wishlist, but it will definitely be waiting for a sale. To be fair though I can't say I blame the developers; if people are willing to pay £15 on launch, they can get the stragglers like me several months down the line anyway, without imposing such a low upper limit on the price.

 

The problem with that strategy is that a lot of people then forget about the game and never buy it. Articles and reviews of games only happen in the early stages or even before the game is released without a full review after launch, so then unless you add it to a wishlist it just isn't going to get bought. Then there are those whose wishlists are so overloaded that they then get ignored too...

 

measuring a game in hours/£ is like measuring food in meals per £
all you'll end up with is rice vs oats vs wheat and you'll always be too damn tight to buy any cheesecake cause you don't get as many meals/£
I heard candy crush is free and lasts loads of hours....

 

Whilst I'm intrigued, a part of me wants to just get out and go for an actual walk instead!

 

I had the same thought. With the witness as well. Hopefully both see support.

As for the game value decision going on here I actually put more value on shorter games now. I love a game I can knock out in under 8 hours. It took me 3 1/2 *******ing months to play through the Witcher 3 and I'm about 1 month (26 hours) into far cry 4. I relish the thought of my next game being a shorter one.

...though I always wait for some sort of sale before buying any game. I already have a backlog I'll never get to let alone replay so I'm pretty patient.

 

While on the superficial level I understand your point and agree with it, I think you have missed the depth of the analogy. It isn't just about the length of game but the length of playability as well. A 'AAA' that costs full price (£30-£40) but lasts just a couple of hours is not good value, but then neither is a game that 'could' last 20 hours but the game is so dull no matter what it looks like that the playability is only a couple of hours.

To use your own comparison, you could have a great steak meal but if the full meal is the size of a 50p coin and costs £50... I don't see that as value either, no matter how good it tastes. A good game has to have a mix of multiple aspects, duration, playability, graphics as well as hitting the correct price level. If any one of those aspects are sacrificed then at least one of the others have to increase to compensate.

Candy Crush is a very poor example to use as the business dynamic of the game is different. While the game is free, it plays on it's addictiveness to 'certain' people to get them to buy in game purchases thus making the game anything but free. More and more in game purchases just goes to show how the gaming business has and is changing and not for the benefit of us the gamers or the business itself.

A better example is Tetris... This game sacrificed graphics for immense playability and duration and because those two aspects were so high, they compensated for the lack of graphics while still charging Gameboy owners full price for the game (although it was often bundled with the handheld).

 

I respectfully disagree. For £15, you could get (on release) any of the Shadowrun games (Returns/Dragonfall/Hong Kong) which were astounding value for money, had excellent graphics, gameplay etc, and gave a decent amount of game time too.

Steam tells me I got 16 hours out of SR: R, 25 out of SR: DF and 37 hours out of SR: HK (each one just a single play through).

In fact..on Steam right now, if you were going to spend £15, you could get ALL THREE and still have £3 change. So, is it really fair to say that a 5-hour walking simulator is better value for money than 78 hours' worth of superb gameplay? It certainly isn't in my mind, anyway.

Just my 2p's worth.

 

Don't think it's an unreasonable way to get a quick judgement, obviously exceptions can and I'm sure will be made.

Remember thinking this game looked pretty great when it first was shown, didn't realise it was going to be a narrative game with exploration elements, definitely think it looks stunning though.

 

I didn't say this or any game was a better buy than anything else, just merely highlighted that judging games based on hours of play per £ they cost is a fools way of calculating value.

 

Time is money. Every minute of a game I play is costing me, so I definitely don't apply the £/hr justification to games. I just use my instincts as to how much I want to play a game compared to the asking price. At t'end of t'day, 5hrs spent mostly walking about while someone chunters in my lughole doesn't particularly whet my appetite.

This sort of game I prefer to play the long game. Will it retain it's initial reputation 12 months down the line. If it really is good/different enough to be worth experiencing, then I can pick it up as and when it dips under the £5 threshold I have for such games.

 

I just checked this. Dark Age of Camelot keeps track of how long each character has been played. On 1 single character, I have played 3,960 hours. And, I have about 100 characters.

 

Well I bought the game this afternoon based on this review and have just completed it. Pretty underwhelmed to be honest, you can see the storyline coming from a mile off, and there is a distinct lack of difficulty or anything to really solve/do. Not a buy at £15 in my view - at a fiver, sure, it's a decent interactive storyline.

 

I thought I dig this one up

Anybody played it as well?
I'm thinking of buying it, but price is still same after over a year.