10 Video Games That Should’ve Ended WAY Sooner

In The Longing, you play as Shade - a creature who's preparing a subterranean kingdom for his master, who will awake in 400 days in real-time. Even though Shade has a long wait, he can make the time move faster, by performing certain tasks, such as reading, decorating, and drawing.

Look, I get it. Studio Seufz's suitably titled game is obviously meant to be an endurance test.

But it's outrageous how long this point-and-click adventure is (although calling it an "adventure" might be a stretch). Any game, no matter how mind-blowing, starts testing your patience once you get to the 40-hour mark.

As such, there's no reason any game should take 400 days to complete. That's 9,600 hours! If The Longing was a hundred times shorter, it would still be longer than almost any game you've ever played.

To top it all off, Shade walks REALLY slowly. (Seriously, if he could walk any slower, he would be standing still.) Because it takes five minutes for our protagonist to stroll from A to B, the simplest actions become hair-tearingly tedious.

Now, the easiest way to shorten your playthrough is by reading. If Shade breezes through Moby Dick, The Iliad, The Raven, or any other books in his collection, he can slice off a few hours here and there.

But if you take part in this task, you're not playing a video game - you're just reading. Not only that, you are only reading to limit the tedium of the playthrough. If that's the case, you might as well stop playing The Longing and read an actual book!