Shooters don't typically last very long these days. While developers are out building more and more impressive multiplayer games, the single-player campaigns have fallen by the wayside: save for games like Halo 5: Guardians and Call of Duty, solo play in shooters definitely took a back seat in 2015.
Granted, it's still better than it used to be: back when the original Doom was released, skilled players could complete the entire thing in just a few short hours. In fact, hitting the par time in every level throughout Doom runs at about 45 minutes - a far cry from the six-to-eight hour campaigns that gamers are used to.
So, where on the spectrum does the new Doom fall? Is it only a couple hours long, like its forebears, or does it fall into line with modern first-person shooters? Apparently, neither: according to the developers, an average playthrough of Doom takes roughly 13 hours to complete.
That's a lot of dead demons.
.@Unreal389 The difficulty level plays a factor, but folks playing at the office average 13+ hours in the campaign
— DOOM (@DOOM) February 11, 2016
Of course, playtime is always tough to determine. As the tweet mentions, difficulty level makes a difference, as do personal skill levels and familiarity with the game: a seasoned player is going to make it through a game more quickly than someone picking it up for the first time.
There's also the fact that some developers exaggerate how long their campaign is: Halo developer 343 Industries once claimed that Halo 5: Guardians would be twice as long as its predecessor, when it was actually about the same size. That being said, the team over at Id Software is being far more specific with their completion time, which implies that 13 hours is relatively accurate - after all, it wouldn't make sense for the studio to throw out a random number on a whim.
It'll be interesting to see what id Software does to keep Doom's gameplay from getting stale. Thirteen hours is a long time to ask gamers to do the same thing - hopefully, there's more to the game than just circle-strafing and shotgunning.
Regardless of length, it won't be much longer before shooter fans can finally get their hands on id Software's latest: Doom is due out on May 13.
