The last article by Jim Sterling I posted here on Grep seemed to have come with mixed response. I now give you something new that I think we can all agree on... the cheapness that comes with some games trying to make you play for more than necessary.

As games have become more and more expensive, a focus on longevity has naturally become increasingly important. When we spend $60 on a videogame, we expect to get our money's worth, and that means we don't want a game that's finished in less than three hours.

While we are quite right to demand a certain amount of gameplay to justify the money spent, it unfortunately means that developers have had to come up with creative time-wasting schemes that don't give us the value we want, but merely create the illusion of value.

All too regularly, a game comes along that takes time-wasting to a whole new level, and you realize that what you've purchased is nothing but vapidity masquerading as substance, inconsequential padding that's desperately trying to fill an arbitrary length quota with meaningless activities and regurgitated setpieces. Developers have almost made an art form of tricking consumers into believing they got their money's worth.

In this list column, itself an ironically cheap and easy way of filling up article space, we pay tribute to some of the most obnoxious and blatant attempts at wasting a player's time in the name of longevity. These are games that may advertise themselves as eight to fifty hour-long experiences, but typically only provide about thirty minutes of actual fresh material. Join us as we look at the ten cheapest ways of extending a game's length.

PacoDG via destructoid.com »