10 Ways You Can Tell A Video Game Is Going To Suck
2. World Size & "Hundreds Of Hours Of Content" As Selling Points
With open-world games being so flabbergastingly popular, developers will often mention a game's map size as a selling point, enthusiastically claiming that the new title dwarfs the maps of the previous games in the series.
In addition to that, devs will often promise that their game features dozens or even hundreds of hours of content.
But what does a map's size matter if most of it's just barren land populated with only some sparse, generic quests? If the world doesn't feel alive, who cares?
Case in point, Rage 2's map is bloody massive, but it's also painfully dull, and after breezing through the 10-hour campaign there's not much incentive to keep playing.
Similarly, what good is 150 hours of content if 100 of it is just repetitive fetch quests, soulless grinding, and tedious collectathons? Again, looking at you here, Ubisoft - Assassin's Creed Odyssey is an especially severe offender of this.
Most adult gamers have limited amounts of time to play, and even the faintest hint that a game is padded out with experience-elongating homework is an immediate red flag.
This isn't to say that huge games can't be great - of course they can be, but when games focus more on the scale of their world and less on the storytelling, characters, and mechanics, it's usually incredibly telling.