Recommendations on short (but good) 360 games?
 

My backlog of 360/PS3/Wii games is getting depressing. But every time I stare at the stack, they all look like huge time investments.

Work is awfully busy so I just don't have the time available to crack open a 20+ hour game. I'm preferential to the 360, but I'm open to any suggestions for short and fun games. I've got a game rental pass from Blockbuster, and they're really good about keeping good stuff in stock, so most all options are open.

Condemned (particularly the first one)

Bioshock. Gears of War. Halo 3. All have pretty short single player campaign modes, though all are similar in gameplay.

If you really don't have any time, there are a ton of XBLA games that are available as well.

Bioshock's single player seemed much longer than Gears or Halo.

XBLA-wise, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Ikaruga rock the house.

I've played Bioshock and loved it. I actually think I have the first Condemned from an old gift that I never got around to playing. I'm not big on the arcade games yet, but it's something I probably should look into.

So I guess I'm looking at the possibilities of Condemned, Halo 3, or Gears of War. Any ballparks on how long each of those would be?

I haven't played Condemned but IIRC Halo and GoW should take about 10 hours max, probably quicker -- it just all depends upon how much you search/screw around looking for that perfect shot as opposed to "run and gun" ;)

Call of Duty 4 is quite short and if memory serves Kameo wasn't very long either.

I think I've actually finished more games on the 360 than I did on the original Xbox. Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect are also not very long if you don't do all the side quests. Most of the FPS games are short as well (Rainbow Six, COD) since multiplayer is what adds value to those games. Dead Rising can be finished in less than 10 hours, with most of the frustration coming at the beginning as you try to level up your character a bit. Devil may Cry 4 is actually very short, with a lot of the replay value coming from the harder difficulty levels getting unlocked. Games like Rockband and Guitar Hero are easy to pick up and play, even if it takes time to really master the harder levels.

Symphony of the Night actually seems, in my mind, to be longer than most of these games.

10 hours or less:
Gears of War
Halo 3
Condemned
Tomb Raider Legend
Gun
Lost: Via Domus
Lost Planet
Dead Rising (replay value would put this one over the 30 hour mark)
the Darkness
Prey

Bioshock and Kameo ring in around the 14+ hour mark

Awesome, thanks everybody. I went through my pile of games I haven't gotten around to playing and found that I actually already have Condemned, Gears of War, and The Darkness. I'm playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 on my rental pass, so it sounds like I've got a bunch of good options without even using it.

you gotta love a guy that has so many games, he doesn't even know which games he owns !!!!

I got a bunch of games for Christmas and had to burn up a large EB gift card around the holiday B2G1 sale. I usually end up getting tied up in one game and not playing anything else for a long time, and currently that game is MLB 08.

But yeah, I said my stack of unplayed games was daunting ;). I'm sure there's others in that stack I couldn't name off the top of my head.

Get the Orange Box and play Portal!

kameo, and if u havent tryed it rent the simpsons game

Portal is my number one recommendation (from the Orange Box).

Plus all of Michael Corvin's list.

+1

Agree as well.

Call of Duty 4 has the best, tightest, most varied single-player campaign of any first-person-shooter, and a great story to boot - and it's just under 7 hours. It's so great that no one's every complained about it's short length, because it's also very re-playable.

It's also much, much longer when you play at the higher difficulty settings, mainly because you die so much and you have to restart... or maybe that's just me. :)

Another vote for Gears of War and Portal.

Those two games changed the way I viewed what I wanted out of games. I love the short and tight experience, rather than the padded out shit. Hell, I even though Gears' length could have been cut down by an hour or two.

Bring on the 4-to-9 hour games!

I found Crackdown to be a blast, and while I found it to be more like playing with an action figure on your tv than a serious game, the actual game was pretty short if I remember correctly. Though you could sink more time into it looking for orbs and maxing stats and all.