You are under my control ... You will never put down your controller...

Every once in a while, there's a game Unitdaisy and I are interested in enough that we'll only play it together so one of us doesn't have the advantage of knowing what's next. Unfortunately this results in playing said game once a week for about an hour or two, maybe more depending on the day. This most recently happened with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - well, at least for about seven or eight hours of gameplay over two weeks. At that time, Unitdaisy decided to call it quits because we hit the middle - the story had stagnated and the puzzles were uninspired. Subsequently, I piled through the rest of the game in about a weekend (well, except for this one $#@!'n jump) and quickly realized chopping my PoP gaming time into hour-long cubes was probably the absolute worst way to experience the game. See, The Sands of Time is a game meant to be absorbed into your bloodstream like water - in large quantities and consistently, or else you get this little air bubbles that move to the surface and disrupt the flow when they pop. By breaking up the gaming experience, we had robbed ourselves of the nuances, shifts in character interaction and general pacing of the game.

My mouth was a filthy orifice during this scene.

Luckily I was able to rectify that situation with the second half of the game, but ever since Sands of Time I've been scrutinizing what duration of gaming sessions are best for which games. Typically, without the intervention of Unitdaisy I prefer to go the hardcore route - playing for longer periods of time over several days. In my experience, that approach garners better results than playing for smaller periods of time broken up over the period of a week but your mileage may vary. However, when it comes to memorization and conditioning my fingers to work in completely non-intuitive ways, jamming as much of the game at once into my head has always been more effective than in hour chunks over a week or two. Call it the slacker in me.

Sadly, this isn't a look into the physiology of playing games - this is about the pacing of user gameplay. While I felt we broke up Sands of Time too much, I recently regret not pacing myself more while playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Normally you would think "cute Nintendo RPG? Why wouldn't it be meant to be played in big, bad clumps of time?" Without spoiling my upcoming review, the gameplay is shallow enough that several hours of extended time playing it really begins to grate on you, and frustration mounts quickly with the repetitive and cheap combat. Experiencing Superstar Saga over shorter periods of time would have been much more beneficial (well, except to my Gamefly queue) and would have saved my neighbors much grief over my swear-laden, multi-decimal exclamations, not to mention my blood pressure. I should have known better as Superstar Saga is a GBA game, but my GBA Player just makes it all too tempting to sit back in my gaming chair and play away for hours at a time.

Oh yeah, and then there's always this little factor.

Ultimately, I feel like I'm robbing myself of the best gaming experience with these ill-timed durations. Gamers spend money hand over fist to get the best visuals and sounds from their gaming experience, but the actual duration of playing can potentially ruin each and every video game. Remember, to shamelessly paraphrase a better copywriter than I, "You never get a second chance to play a game for the first time." And when you're dealing with such excellent games like Prince of Persia it's tough to not kick myself in hindsight. By no means do I see this as a fault of the developer - well, not quite yet. However, finding a nice sweet spot to know how not to ruin a gaming experience would be nice. After all, I and many of gamers out there I'm sure have some semblance of self-control, and can keep pacing a game reasonably.

In my opinion, this topic could use more examination and that's where you come in! Ever have a similar feeling, or just want to share how long your gaming sessions normally last? Chime in below!