In the beginning, bigger was always better, mostly because we had some little to start with. To a kid trying to persuade a computer with 1K of RAM to play games in the early 1980s, 32K felt like an outrageous luxury, 64K almost beyond the realms of understanding. If your machine could display eight colours, you envied the rival with 16, while on the audio side there was little shame to touch that of those with just a solitary blooping channel to their names. It was a numbers game, with entire marketing campaigns built around scale. In 1984, Mike Singleton’s acclaimed strategy adventure The Lords Of Midnight was hailed for the 32,000 possible “views” it was capable of generating. (Just three years earlier the original Donkey Kong’s four unique stages were celebrated for providing such rich variety.) Sequel Doomdark’s Revenge, also from 1984 (this really was a different time), raised the stakes somewhat, boasting 48,000 “screen views” across 6,144 locations, with “128 objects to collect”. On it went. Until at some point we decided that we’d had enough, apparently. When Techland announced recently that “to fully complete Dying Light 2, you’ll need at least 500 hours”, Twitter was swamped with demands to know who, precisely, has that sort of time just lying around. But Techland had bungled its message, and quickly clarified that the game’s main story requires 20 hours, with 25 times more than that only necessary if you want to squeeze every last drop of juice out of the entire package. To be fair, 500 is too much for many, but who is to say that the same is true for everyone? If Dying Light 2 turned out to be one of your favourite games, why wouldn’t you want as much of it as you could get your hands on? As
Fireproof boss Barry Meade said of the entire furore du jour, “500 hours isn’t even in my top three most-played”. (How does it match up to yours?) Ultimately, we want long games, short ones and everything in between.
This issue’s cover game sits at the more accessible end of the scale, but feels capable of leaving a big impression. Our story begins on p54.

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