It's a frequent complaint of gamers that modern games are simply getting shorter and shorter; you need only look as far as the 4-5 hour Call of Duty campaigns to see how true that is. However, as an adult I find myself increasingly more strapped for time, and so above all else I favour games that make the best use of it; I prefer exhilarating 6-hour games over bloated, laborious 20-hour slogs. Though far too many games are too short, yes, there are also plenty that seem to not know when to put things to bed. Though some games keep going long past the logical end-point, a trickier tactic that developers use to mask their padding is to insert the filler elements throughout the game as "downtime" between the big set-pieces, such that you don't recognise them as easily. Still, here are 10 games that didn't quite get away with it as convincingly as they thought. Here are 10 video games that didn't know when to end.
10. Metal Gear Solid
There's no denying that Konami's Metal Gear Solid is a great game, and I would go as far as to say one of the best ever made, but that doesn't mean it's perfect, as demonstrated by one glacially paced, needless slog of a section in an otherwise breathlessly entertaining game. Near the end of the game, you're required to prepare a PAL key card which will apparently deactivate Metal Gear REX and prevent Liquid Snake's nuclear strike. To do this, you have to first take the card to a cold area (the warehouse) and then a hot area (the furnace) to change the shape of the card. This essentially amounts to a woeful amount of back-tracking that was so loathed by players that this section of the game was altered for the GameCube remake The Twin Snakes, speeding it up considerably. It's all for nothing anyway, as the PAL card in fact ends up activating REX, and finally the game gets back on track. Though the sections that follow through to the finale are excellent, the game could have been a good 30-40 minutes shorter if this segment had been excised completely, along with having to run back to the armoury to get a PSG-1 to fight Sniper Wolf earlier on in the game. Both of these instances just reeks of filler.