Topic: Shantae and the Pirates Curse

This, as well as the fact that most of those games are still complete games, with total story arcs and enough variety to say that the way it ended was not the way it started, and for the ones that don't, the problem usually isn't their length, it's the fact that they didn't make good use of the time that's there.

I want to give examples, but I'm really struggling to even think of games where I thought they needed more variety. All I got really is Destiny, where the story doesn't really give you much sense of accomplishment, the boss battles are generally formulaic, the weapons within their types all seem to work the same so getting new weapons isn't that satisfying most of the time, and there are only 3 planets which you can freely explore at any one time, meaning you could be seeing a lot of the same environments all the time...it genuinly lacked content, but that content didn't need to account towards length, that content needed to be level, weapon, and enemy variety. It was honestly no longer than your average Halo game, but Halo usually uses its time a lot better.

Really cool Easter Egg in this game. If you do a Scimitar Dash into the left wall in the first room of Saliva Island's dungeon, you'll find yourself in a recreation of the Dribble Fountain dungeon from the original Shantae.

BTW, for those wondering about the length of the game, my first 100% run clocked in at 9h22m.

"Intensive research?"

Unless you buy everything the week it comes out, you can pretty much just go to http://www.howlongtobeat.com/ and find out how long you can expect a game to last.

Yes. That applies to everything. Knowledge is power, and most companies are more than willing to exploit ignorance, so to combat that, you must do research. An informed purchase is far more likely to be a good purchase than buying something blind.

Basically if you wait a week before buying a game then you will hear all about how long it is from people that have played it. It doesn't take "intensive" research, maybe just wait a few days or a week before buying then looking at some discussions online.

@arronishere
Expecting to be able to walk into a store and purchase any product and expecting the product to fulfill your need without any research is kinda ridiculous. Lots of people do that, but that is what leads to people being disappointed with a product. It has always been expected that you research a product before purchasing it, just many people don't. If you don't want to do the research, no one is saying you have to but it is a good idea. Would you buy a car or vacuum or a book or a movie or go on vacation without doing research? Why should video games be different?

Any person who is inclined to pay $60 for a game without bothering to spend five minutes researching it on the internet is a bit of a spendthrift, in my opinion. Any good consumer is going to do some basic level of research on a product before throwing money at it. Games cater to a diverse audience, and nothing can appeal equally to everyone's tastes. Many games with short campaigns are so because most of their content is found in the online multiplayer part of the game. Your typical Call of Duty, for instance. There is a large subset of gamers this will appeal to. Others won't care for this approach.

How do you discern whether to plop down the $60 on the game? You could, I don't know, spend 5 minutes on your phone looking up the game in question. Yes, to make an informed decision, you might have to expend the tiniest bit of effort to actually know what you're buying.

People have the right to complain about anything they want. I'm not going to feel much sympathy for them in that regard, though. There have been precious few times I've ever not loved a game I've bought. That's because I actually research what I buy. The few purchasing mistakes I've made have been impulse buys.

I will say this, though. If people buy a game and their gameplay experience is marred by bugs and glitches, they are perfectly justified to complain about that. I agree there should be standards retail releases should meet by default. I just disagree that this should apply to the length of a game's campaign. ALL retail products should be functional, though, which makes releases like New Vegas, which spent months being a glitchy mess, an embarrassment.

I have had that happen. There was this dirt bike movie that my brothers wanted to see and so I went with them (just to spend time with family and I have a casual in dirt biking) we paid full price for tickets, plus it was in Imax, and it was only 30 minutes. We should have done research, it wasn't the movies fault. Doing research on a product before purchasing is normal and what people should do. There is no guarantee that you spend X amount and get X amount of content. That is why plenty of reviews say thongs like "great game but not for the price" and stuff like this.

To get back on topic, I think $20 for Pirates Curse is a fair price, I am just more use to getting a better deal. I like it when I feel I got way more content for the price I paid but for $20 Pirates Curse only feels fair

The stupid thing is that people are complaining about $20 for a download, but most of these same people wouldn't blink twice if they were told they had to pay $40 for a physical cart of the game.

Yeah...I'm very surprised we're having this discussion considering we're on a forum of a review site. Surely you must value being at least a little informed to come here regularly. And for the record, I've been to game shops a lot, and I have yet to see a person walk into a store, pick up a random game at full price that they've never heard of before, and buy it on a whim without asking somebody and/or the internet about it first. I think the closest you can even expect that is someone buying a surprise gift for a little kid, but even that seems rare. Usually they'll look somewhere or ask someone, even a sales person, for a recommendation...

Movies I can see people doing that. Steeply discounted bargain-bin items, yeah, that's pretty much what the Bargain bin's for. $5 or less digital games, people definitely do that (just look at all the Steam libraries where people have games they've hardly played). But none of those require the price investment of a full-priced retail game. To sum it up, yes, you're an idiot if you spend a premium for a game without any research prior. It's not hard, and I doubt the 5-10 minutes it'd require would be worth more to you than 60 freakin' dollars...

Now, to bring us back to Shantae, I get that you're not willing to spend full price on a game that's slightly more expensive than its counterparts. I can't blame you, it's your hard-earned money. I do, however, urge you to do your research on this game, so you can find out whether or not you'll feel your time will be well spent. I hope looking up a review or two, as well as some gameplay footage would be enough to make up your mind, and I should hope that's not too much to ask.

EDIT: Okay...not sure this still applies now, but the latter bit more or less is what I wanted to get across the most...this is what I get for taking over 30 minutes to write something...

A game's length is just 1 component of the overall value to me. Also, not everyone judges any one game's worth based on the same set of criteria another person does. For example, Gunman Clive had excellent gameplay, & length for its price. Others may not feel as I do (about that).

Also, it's smart to research anything prior to potential purchase. That's just common sense. No offense meant.

As for SAtPC, I intend to get it eventually. The game's price will be offset by a combination of gameplay, controls, length, music, sounds, graphics, story, dialog. Again, others may not feel as I do (about that).

It's the best Metroid-style game I've played since OoE was released. To be honest, if it was a bit more challenging it would be up there with Zero Mission and Rondo of Blood as one of my favorite side-scrollers.

Tweet from Wayforward yesterday

Looking like it's going to be a Shantae Christmas~