The current generation of games are technologically brilliant, gorgeous to look at and the result of thousands of man hours by dedicated teams of designers, artists and programmers.

Reviewers often fawn over the big budget triple A titles, smothering them with praise and adoration. But do games deserve their kudos when they’re so damn easy? Who doesn’t get irritated by buying a new title – perhaps based on reviewers’ hyperbole or pre-launch hype – only to complete the game in only a few hours?

Consider Alan Wake, Modern Warfare 2, Red Dead Redemption and Heavy Rain – all recent big budget, massively-hyped games that have seen sales large enough to support a small country. They’ve been lavished with praise and were the recipients of countless positive reviews.

But none of them were too taxing, were they? Did anyone else feel a little cheated when the credits scrolled up the screen a little too prematurely?

We all know that reviews are subjective and that these pearls of wisdom are only an indicator as to how good a game is, but rarely do they factor in how easy a game is or the longevity of its main storyline. Sure, this may get a passing mention but it doesn’t often seem to affect the overall score, does it?

Take Red Dead Redemption as an example. A fine game, epic in scale, gorgeous to look at and one of Rockstar’s greatest achievements… but with a main story so easy to complete, little likelihood of failing missions and debatable replay value, is it really worthy of such high scores?

Score aggregator Metacritic says Red Dead Redemption has an overall score of 95% on both Xbox 360 and PS3. That’s enough to make any potential buyer rush down to the store and grab a copy – but shouldn’t the scoring have been a little lower given that it’s unlikely you’ll replay it once you’ve seen the poignant but disappointing ending. Granted, there are stackloads of outfits to collect, animals to hunt and herbs to pick... but I doubt the majority of gamers will painstakingly traipse round the map to find them (I actually am doing this because I felt so short-changed by the 57 missions). The point is that story-wise, it's waaaaaay too short...


Triple A titles are expensive these days and we shouldn’t forget that we’re in the midst of a global recession; reviewers have a responsibility to mark games not just on their graphical and aural merits but on their longevity and replayability. Us gamers aren't made of money - and I don't know about you out there, but I see each purchase as a pretty big investment. I want value for money at the end of the day.

Just take a look on your shelves or in your cupboards and see how many games you've completed with little difficulty... and then consider how often you've booted up the disc and played it again and again. Of course, there are exceptions - for me, it's Crackdown. But I'd wager that the majority of those titles remain dormant, gathering dust.

Do easy games deserve to go down in history as classics? Do they deserve all the praise? Have some of the recent mega-selling titles been worthy of those high scores? What are your thoughts?