I spent Christmas this year at my brother in-law’s place. You may know my brother in-law as ‘Ben White’, or the guy who made the Kotaku redesign look all purrty. Anyway, Ben’s just had a kid, he’s married; he claimed he doesn’t have any spare time to do anything. I almost believed him until I saw his Skyrim save file: 120 hours. It got me to thinking — what games have you spent the most time with in terms of raw hours?
For me, it was Halo 2. Easily. Just in multiplayer alone, I estimate I put roughly 300 hour into that game. 300 hours. It really dominated my entire life for a while. I got diminishing returns from later Halo games, mostly because I never really found that deadly combination of boredom and spare time ever again.
Anyway — what about you guys? What games have you spent the most time with?
mattroe
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:02 AMI probably spent waaay longer on Pokemon or Mario as a kid but my longest time spent on a Steam game is TF2 with around 250. I dunno if I feel good or bad when I look at my friend with over 1,000.
Glenn
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:07 AMBorderlands.
To tally up my time I’d have to load my 360 copy and then my PC copy. definitly several days worth. Considering I also only played co-op with my fiance, collectively we’re well over 500 hours played… I went on to play other games, she still only plays Borderlands.
Jayden
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:08 AMpokemon, halo, halo 3, oblivion, age of empires 2, homeworld, that starwars podracing game on n64, wipeout pure on psp, banjo tooie, sudeki on xbox
D.C.
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:09 AMFallout New Vegas is currently at 125 hours for me.
Dunnowhathuh
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:11 AMTF2, Guild Wars and Final Fantasy X (yeh, spent a lot of time trying to complete everything properly) I think. I suspect the most time was spent on TF2.
Matthew K
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:12 AMAs I said on Twitter, I reckon I’ve spent 1500+ in Halo 3 – though I can’t check easily because HaloCharts went down.
At the height of Halo 3′s popularity in 2008, my wife and I played nothing else for months. We were on there every night, endlessly playing the same maps. We had it down and we still weren’t as crazy good as some other people. I don’t event want to think about how dedicated those people had to be to stay on top like that.
We joined a site called Halo Charts, and we even sponsored the site for a ‘lifetime membership’ of $10 apiece. It took all our stats from our Bungie.net profiles and generated ludicrous amounts of metadata. I can’t even begin to explain it.
When Mark mentioned earlier today that he’d done 300+ hours in Halo 2, I went to Bungie.net – there was no ‘total time played’ for me to refer to. Aha! HaloCahrts! My dependable old chum – I know I haven’t checked you for awhile since I stopped playing Reach awhile back, but surely… no. They closed their doors in November after four years of excellent service.
Oh Halocharts, you were always a step ahead of your imitators and you represented the passion I had for Halo 3 that no other game has recreated. I can still play Halo 3 on Xbox Live, and all my stats on Bungie.net are still intact… but now that HaloCharts is gone it feels like Halo 3 is dead to me as well.
For me, it’s the end of an era.
ninjaweedman
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:12 AMaround 3500 hours in BF2
Jaded_Buddha
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:55 AMI clocked up two weeks (336+) hours in BF2142 alone
Rod
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:13 AMTeam Fortress 2. 700 hours since 2007, nearly 100 hours of pyro-mania alone. I am aware that this is a very sad fact, and I wish Steam would stop pointing it out to me.
The GTA and Civilization series also probably deserve collective honourable mentions.
Tristan Damen
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:13 AMFunny you should ask, as I was posed the very same question for the Secret Santa Writing Challenge at Bitmob. My answer: Gears of War. Spent hundreds of hours playing that game online:
http://bitmob.com/articles/how-gears-of-war-saved-my-life
bazuden
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:14 AMTF2 at about 850 hours for me, since the end of 2007. Although I play with some dudes who have clocked up about twice that.
Then Skyrim came along…..
Lone Wolf
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:15 AMTeam Fortress 2, easily. That thing just keeps drawing me back in.
In terms of solid, unabridged hours, probably Twilight Princess. That had me by the jewels good and tight and I stayed up late playing through the story, collecting tears and enjoying the game.
Cakesmith
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:17 AMThanks to the wonders of technology I can tell you my most played games (on PC) are:
WoW: 4605hrs
Team Fortress 2: 163hrs
Dragon Age: Origins: 142hrs
Star Wars: The Old Republic: 107hrs (Yes, I’m aware this came out like 2 weeks ago. I’ve been on holidays!)
I also used to have a Final Fantasy X save file that was up around the 200hrs mark.
Charles
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:19 PMHoly fuck dude that is over 191 days!!! Christ… anyway, the most I’ve played is probably FFVII when I didn’t have terrible guilt about playing video games. I love video games but there is so much for me to do out there in tha ‘real’ world hahaha… ahhhhhhhh DAMN YOU RESPONSIBILITIES.
D.C.
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:17 AMSeems that multiplayer is responsible for these epic playthroughs! I’ve replayed all my single player games many a time, but I usually consider all these playthroughs seperate from the other time wise. :D
Trjn
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:19 AMRagnarok Online.
I don’t know how many hours it stole from my teenage years but I think it was most of them.
Harli
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 12:05 PM/hi5
Trjn
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 1:38 PMI don’t think you should give anyone who admits to playing RO positive reinforcement :p
masha2932
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:19 AMJust cause 2- Over 150 hours just dicking around and trying to get the platinum trophy, which I eventually got.
Burnout paradise 100 hours- I loved this game so much that I played it non stop for a whole week. Great game and my first platinum trophy.
PES 5- Pro evolution was king on the PS2
masha2932
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:21 AM* over 800 hours on PES with my cousin. We went through all the premier leagues and all the cups and just random leagues for money.
Adam Ruch
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:21 AMWeird that no one has brought up World of Warcraft. That’s a game that you measure in days, not hours. So… that. By a long, long, long way.
Other contenders though would be Civilization IV and Tropico 3. But probably both pale in comparison to older games like Super Mario 3 or World, perhaps F-Zero, Battletoads, StarFox and GoldenEye. Hard to compare that stuff that didn’t track it, and its been a few years!
Jo
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:26 AMHalo 3 easily, no idea time wise but thousands of games were played back in the day.
WoW would probably be second and Diablo 2 the most played singleplayer game but I have no time record for them.
Though I clocked 160 hours in Oblivion on 360, probably another 50 on the PC character I lost.
Ruffleberg
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:29 AMI’ve clocked in a lot of hours on the more popular RPG games. About 200 hours in Fallout 3, 150 in DA:O, who knows how many hours in WoW. But the game i’ve played the most in Diablo 2. I probably clock in at over 1000 hours.
N0NEoftheAB0VE
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:41 AMBattlefield Bad Co 2 I’ve racked up over 62 hours and I’ve barely touched the single player campaign, GTA IV I’ve notched up 54 hours, TF2 on the Xbox would be at least as much as that. GTA San Andreas I have over 100 hours to my name – I fully played that game for the whole of 2009!
Chuloopa
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:52 AMI think it was acutally Final Fantasy 8 which was roughly 120-140 hours if i remember correctly
Mawt
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:55 AMThe “time played” clock on Pokemon cartridges maxes out at 999 hours 99 minutes.
I’ve maxed the clock on:
Blue
Sapphire
Leaf Green
Pearl
And at minimum an additional 100 hours on each of:
Silver
Ruby
Emerald
Fire Red
Platinum
Heart Gold
Soul Silver
Black
White
So, 4900 hours dedicated to Pokemon. I probably sunk nearly another 1000 hours or so into the old net battle/shoddy battle back in the peak of Gen 3-4.
Closest runners up I can think of would be:
TF2 (300+ hours)
FFX (250 hours)
Not sure what my /played was when I quit WoW this time last year, but considering that I used to play Pokemon while I was grinding & sometimes when I was raiding (resto shammy WotLK era). I know it was a lot, but definitely less than Pokemon.
Glenn
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 12:18 PMI think you win.
Charles
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:21 PMThat is almost a year of Pokemon. Jesus.
kanechif
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:59 AMI’m with you Mark; Halo 2 by a long shot, well over 300 hours along with about 150-200 in Halo 3. Also spent plenty of time in Fallout 3 and Mass Effect, multiple 40-50 hour playthroughs there.
Gotta say too, I’m amazed at these 1000+ hour figures, that’s incredible dedication and I’m in awe of anyone who can stick with it for that long!
buckE182
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 7:43 PMI played 4022 games of Halo 2 over 2 accounts. So if you avg 10 mins per game thats 670hrs of just in game time. That doesnt include all the time in menus and matchmaking.
CS 1.3-1.6 I’d hate to know how much time I spent playing that…Im guessing over 1000hrs because I definitely played it a lot longer than Halo 2.
In recent years my most played games would be 107hrs in TF2, 120hrs in Skyrim, 205hrs in COD 4 and about 160hrs in Black Ops. Those COD times are just Xbox and I played both of those iterations on PC as well (but only about 50hrs each).
Repneiras
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM900 hours in CS 1.6.
Probably 400 plus in WC3 just from custom maps.
No regrets.
Repneiras
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 12:05 PMAlso at least 120 hours each on CSS and TF2, though I can’t check right now.
lambomann007
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 12:01 PMWell, steam would have me believe it’s Portal 2 at 42 hours, but I think the game I’ve spent the most time on would have to be Trackmania Nations Forever. Man, I played that game so much.
Rocky
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 12:08 PM245 hours on GTA IV