The World's Longest Video Games

Video games are getting expensive and few things are more frustrating than to pay premium dollars for a game only to finish it the same afternoon. The amount of content or play time of a game is so important that it is considered an important vector when judging the quality of the game. Some games takes this to the extreme and include so much content it takes the dedicated weeks if not months to finish a game.

When listing the longest video games ever made some immediate candidates come to mind. How could any game compete with the likes of World of Warcraft for example? This list excludes games that are 'endless' such as most MMOs like World of Warcraft or games that play 'infinitely' until the player dies, such as Tetris. This list will focus on games that have clearly defined goals and endings that provide amazing amounts of content.

Final Fantasy

The most successful Role Playing game series has built its dominance in part because of the intricate story lines and amazing amounts of sub quests and items for players to collect. Players will argue forever on which games of the series are the longest as this will vary from person to person. Players start spending serious time on these games when they aim to level up all their characters to the maximum levels. Which game in the series that compel players to put in this effort varies baste on personal preference. However, it is common for players to cite Final Fantasy VII, VIII or XIII as the games they have spent the most time conquering.

Legend of Zelda

Legend of Zelda is one of the most cherished video game series in the world. Every entry into this action adventure series is fiercely anticipated. To a good portion of gamers, a new main line Zelda game is automatically the biggest game of the year.

Legend of Zelda games are all about exploring the vast world of Hyrule. Link can collect an amazing amount of items as well as almost unlimited spaces to explore. Gamers aiming for 100% completion of these games will find hours and hours of dungeon exploring and sword fighting before they save the princess.

Animal Crossing

Some might say Animal Crossing does not qualify as a game with a defined end. The game does keep running day in and day out without any hard cut off. It's common among gamers however to consider the game complete once you've collected the maximum amount of money. Animal crossing comes in a few different versions on different platforms. Many claim that collecting 99,999 coins in the DS version of Animal Crossing Wild World is the most time consuming. Others again will find endless hours of challenge in Animal Crossing: City Folk as they aim to earn all town donation rewards, complete the museum collections and collect every single series of items.

True completion of the game is impossible since new items to collect are added all the time, but to collect every main item requires at least a year of playing the game as some items are only available at certain times of the year.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Despite Grand Theft Auto IV being a higher rated game, this game is probably the most loved and most played Grand Theft Auto game. In many ways this is the game that coined the phrase sandbox games. These games give players a lot of freedom to interact with the game world any way they would like. In contrast to linear story games, sandbox games lets the player explore and experience the world any way they wish.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the first game to truly expand on this concept and let players roam about and find things of interest all over San Andreas. The game world is infamous for leading players of track from their missions and promote hours of free roaming. Combined with the large number of missions required before the game is completed San Andreas can easily take hundreds of hours to complete.

Pokemon

Pokemon's claim to longest game is right there in the games tag line: "Gotta catch them all". Gamers who take this challenge seriously or just simply fall for the super addictive charm of the games will find near endless amounts of places to go and yes, Pokemon to find and catch. Some players report spending over 400 hours trying to find every one of the 500 Pokemon in Pokemon:Gold.

FarmVille

The key to players spending enormous amounts of time on a game is to create an addictive game experience that keeps players coming back for more even after having played the game for weeks or even months. No game short of World of Warcraft has managed this better than FarmVille. While FarmVille technically has no real end, the game includes several collection aspects that gamers strive to complete. Some players for example find themselves going for complete mastery of all the crops in the game. A task that easily requires hundreds and hundreds of hours of game time. With FarmVille recently celebrating their one year anniversary there are many helpless gamers out there who has spent more than 1000 hours playing FarmVille.

Sources: Personal experience