The First 2 Hours

Time goes by fast. It is a notion by which many people subscribe to but i never realized it more so than in gaming. As a child with four brothers we would have 5 to 10 hour gaming sessions on the weekends. My mom would often complain about how its anti-social so we brought friends home to play with us during these 5 to 10 gaming sessions. Now that i am older i miss those days as it stands my life is no longer compatible with a 10 hour gaming session. I now have other obligations and duties so it is important to make sure that a game grabs me in the first hour or so that way i am hook and can't wait until i play it again.Many game accomplish this, but others do not.

Assassin Creed 3 was the latter. Now don't get me wrong i don't mind a tutorial level. I feel sometimes they are unnecessary but never has a tutorial level stop me from playing. No Assassin Creed 3 Is unique in the sense that the first 4 hours are tutorial under guise of setting up the story. Assassin Creed 3 expects me to maintain my excitement for four hours (our more depending on how you play) just to play as the main protagonist. This is the equivalent of having your girlfriend tell you she is in the mood but that you must maintain your erection for 4 hours before you two can have sex

AC3 is not a bad game as far as i can tell (though it has some flaws) but it did break my 72 hour rule which is that if i haven't beaten a game and haven't played it within the last 3 days i probably won't beat it. I bought the game in November here it is January and i still haven't beaten it. I find the whole thing unfortunate because i am so far enjoying playing as Connor but i care so little about the story at this point that i just can't see myself continuing to play this for long. Good or bad did not play a role into this decision just time. Time is only matched by money in its value and in some cases not even that. So it sucks when a game can't appreciate your time. Some would claim I am picking on AC3 and that Far Cry 3 does the same as well. I strongly disagree i would argue that Far Cry 3 advertises itself as Skyrim with guns so there is no shock while playing it. AC3 doesn't advertises itself as a 4 hour prelude/tutorial. In the end i think the lesson to be learned from AC3 is that not everyone has insane amount of free time on their hands so it would be nice if games respected this fact stop it with pointless filler. No amount of filler is going to stop a customer from complaining that his game was too short and not worth $60 so lets stop trying to appease them. Good games are good games regardless of the time. So stop wasting mine.