Well I just finished this game, and as you can see I clocked in around 5 hours. Some people are going to buy a game like this and think after they have finished it, $20 for 5 hours? They may even give it a negative review because of that. For someone like that they are not going to be happy unless they can get hundreds if not thousands of hours from a game, there is nothing you can do to change that person's mind. So this review is not for that kind of person, so you can choose to ignore me now if you fall into that category...

Now for the rest of you. I look at the pricetag of a game, I absolutely do. However, for me quality of the content is more important than quantity. You know when you go into the supermarket and you head to the cereal aisle and you have a couple of options like 5 pounds of Happy Marshmallows that come in a bag costs you $2, or you can get the small box of Lucky Charms for $5? You think it over and you decide "Screw it, the Lucky Charms are just a better cereal."

(I know some of you eat the crap charms because you also only buy a game if you can get at least 1000 hours of play out of it. Wait, I told you you can stop reading my review, remember?)

Anyway, you see games like these are the Lucky Charms in an aisle surrounded by other crappy cereals. The reason this game costs $20 is because it wasn't made by a major development studio with a large bank account to back it up. It was created by a small group of hardworking developers who obviously love what they do, they take pride in what they do, and they are really good at it. $20 for this game is such a deal.

Hear me out. How often in life do we spend $20 and get so little for that money. You can easily spend that at a movie theater. You may even find out you just spent that money on a terrible movie, but even if it was an amazing movie its unlikely to be more than a couple hours long. I got more than 5 hours of play in this game, so I'm already ahead there. You can spend the same buying a dvd with a movie on it, and you are in the same boat. You could go to dinner, it will cost you whole lot more than $20, and let's be real for second, that meal is gone once you eat it. There are loads of things that will cost you more than this game and you still get less.

Because what this game gives you is an experience, driven by an interactive mystery that pulls you in quickly, and takes you on a ride that doesn't stop until its over.

Although as I've already stated in life we expect things to cost what they cost and whether we like it or not we pay it. For some reason gamers have this unrealistic expectation that a game must give you an abundance of content for the least cost possible, and although that sounds great from our perspective. Making a game is hardwork, it costs a lot of money, and the more content gamers expect, the more investment in time and energy a developer must give to fufill this expectation. But being real for a second, nothing is ever good enough for those kinds of people because with all that extra time and energy put in from the developer, the gamer expects the game to cost less, not more.

So we are left instead with a choice of quality or quantity again. And Campo Santo chose quality, and rightly so because Firewatch is a remarkable game that shows what a few developers with a passion can do when they have a vision and execute it.

So for me $20 for this game was a deal. I don't regret it at all. I can't wait to see what they come up with next, but whatever is, I know they love doing the work they do, its impossible not to see it once you have played this game, its truly a masterpiece.

And I know this review isn't traditional, I don't care. I'd rather tell you to buy the game and experience it yourself than explain it and possibly ruin any of the discovery.

10/10