I have an hour or so.
I feel like playing CMBB/CMAK, but usually a scenario is going to run longer than that. I can sometimes spend 30 minutes just studying the map, objectives, and unit deployment!
This is one thing that I love about 1830-PC. You could always get a decent strategy gaming experience in about 1 hour of play. Chess can be like that at times as well ...
So, what do you play to get a complete game experience in an hour?
I looked through my horde of game shortcuts and further realized what I already know: I don't like playing short games.
I'd say the shortest ones I have are Steam & Iron, Battlefield Academy (aka 'Battle Academy'), Guardians of Graxia, and Montjoie!. And those are cutting it close - could easily go over the 1-hour limit in the larger scenarios.
Gotta say the same for Steam & Iron. It was just so darned easy to learn and get started with this one.
Thanks for the mention of steam and iron. I may check it out.
The TW games typically hit that sweet spot in an hour.
If I have any turn based games I usually try to get in a couple of turns.
Right now I have a Panzer Corps campaign going and I'll sit down and take one or two turns. It helps keep me from getting burned out on a game.
The downside to just playing a game for small amount of time is I go through the day thinking through my strategy until the next time I can play it.
Lately I was farming Diablo 3 for 30-60 minutes at a time. I'll also fire up a game like CMBN or CMA and study the map/units for awhile and play out the first few minutes of an opening strategy.
If I don't feel like really getting into something and just want to play for 30 min or so, I will often fly a quick 4 vs 4 dogfight in Rise of Flight. I also like to go into the armoury in ArmA II and take up a helicopter and just fly around until it assigns me a good random attack or defend mission.
I also sometimes play a level of Defence Grid or a quick game of Gin or Canasta in Hoyle.
Quote from: Bison on June 10, 2012, 05:16:21 PM
Lately I was farming Diablo 3 for 30-60 minutes at a time. I'll also fire up a game like CMBN or CMA and study the map/units for awhile and play out the first few minutes of an opening strategy.
LOL
I think he's asking about games you can
finish in an hour.
Well I have no game that last less than an hour except maybe Dungeons of Dredmor. I usually die before the hour expires.
You can finish most of the scenarios in Unity of Command or even Conflict of Heroes in under an hour.
A scenario from vanilla Company of Heroes can be finished in an hour, as can scenarios from WarCraft II.
Quote from: Bison on June 10, 2012, 07:52:30 PM
Well I have no game that last less than an hour except maybe Dungeons of Dredmor. I usually die before the hour expires.
;D
What difficulty setting is
that on? I'd expect you to last at least 2 hours if it's the "Elves Just Wanna Have Fun" level. :P
I will play an ongoing Civ IV game for an hour if that's all the time I have. Although, if it's JUST an hour, I will usually just read.
ooooohhhh....I thought you said complete satisfying GIRL friend experience in one hour. I know a few girls in town who provide that. ;-)
As for games World of Tanks is fun for an hour. Not sure about satisfying....
Quote from: TheCommandTent on June 10, 2012, 05:12:17 PM
If I have any turn based games I usually try to get in a couple of turns.
Right now I have a Panzer Corps campaign going and I'll sit down and take one or two turns. It helps keep me from getting burned out on a game.
The downside to just playing a game for small amount of time is I go through the day thinking through my strategy until the next time I can play it.
A routine PBEM turn of WitPAE takes me about 30 minutes. It's always satisfying when you have some hopes of inflicting some
damage and not getting too blown up...though of course you don't know for a while.
I just started playing Operation Star and a quick battle can be pretty quick.
There are a ton of games that I can play for "just one hour" but I think the question is, what game can you pick up, play, and have a complete experience in an hour.
It's funny you pose this question now because it is something I have spent some time thinking about over the last couple of months. I can't tell you how many times I have sit down to play a game with an hour or so available and I just can't find anything worth booting up because I can't get a whole lot done in an hour. Could it be that as games have gotten better and more complex we've moved away from the one-hour experience?
This is sort of apples and oranges, but I remember when I was a kid that we played a lot of games on the Atari 2600 and those games could all be finished in a few minutes...30 minutes for something like Adventure was probably the exeption. Even C64 games, when I moved into those, could be finished in a reasonable amount of time- certainly no more than an afternoon. I remember playing some D&D game (the one where you pressed a button and it clicked once for each arrow you had left) on Intellivision and you could finish that game in an hour or so.
I definitely don't want to go back to those days, I love my modern games, but it is hard to find many games in my collection that are meant to be finished in an hour. About the only one that comes to mind right away is Carriers at War, in which a scenario can be completed in an hour. I suppose I could extrapolate that to a mission in Rise of Flight or Falcon, or a quick combat in Medieval Total War 2...but I don't know. Does playing one mission of a campaign count as a complete experience? You don't finish with that feeling of closure, like "the game is over!" that you get from CaW where once the scenario is done, it's done.
Lately, when I really don't have a lot of time to play, but I want to play something without thinking too hard, I've been booting up multiplayer FPS games- Mount and Blade, Red Orchestra 2, etc. I don't know if I get a really strategic satisfaction from those games, but I find that they're filling that niche of not a lot of time to play, but I don't want to play the middle of a campaign with my limited time. I wonder if there is a market for the one-hour strategy game out there?