How long is just too damn long?

Bear with me here. Think back through your life for a moment. You've no doubt engaged in countless entertaining activities in that time. Probably more than once. In fact, you've probably performed these activities enough to call them a hobby. Be it sport, painting, knitting or most anything else. Now take one of these activities and narrow it down to one particular item. Like, one painting or one knitted scarf. Now, think. How long did you do these activities for? Was it over 50 hours? No? Well, back the fuck up.

Hey Roger! When was your last 50 hour match? Yeah, thought so.

Recently, I was very relieved to place my copy of Fallout 3 back in my cupboard for good (at least a long while) after finally finishing it. After 50 hours. Starting off escaping Vault 101, I gripped my 10mm pistol and walked into the wasteland. Along the way I (deep breath) defused an atomic bomb, talked to robots, gave bottles of water to homeless people, decorated a house, shot over 1000 things in the face, built a rifle out of a crutch, traded motorcycle parts, counselled vampire cannibals, fired nuclear warheads at cockroaches, convinced children to run away from their alcoholic mothers, drank out of toilets, befriended a Super Mutant who was named after Guy Fawkes, slept in the Washington Monument, ate dog meat, walked hundreds of miles and listened to Ron Perlman say "War. War never changes." in that awesome voice of his. 

"Pardon me, are you Liam Neeson? No? Well then BLAP BLAP MOTHERFUCKER!"

Now, as incredible as the experience was, I have to admit towards the end it became taxing. I was simply wanting to wrap things up and finish the game after hour number 40. Little did I realise there were another 10 hours before me (and just so you know, people have played this game for more than 100 hours). So, does this place me in the 'hardcore gamer' category? I guess if it doesn't, nothing will huh?

But, I got to thinking. Can you have too much game? Games like Call Of Duty 4 and Portal can be finished in just a handful of hours but that doesn't make them worse than Fallout 3. So, does that make Fallout 3 bad? How can it be bad when I got over two days worth of gameplay out of a $99 game? Value for money right? And besides, this completion of Fallout 3 wasn't actually done in days. It took months. Who of us has the goddamn time to invest dozens of hours in a role-playing game anymore? Much as we'd like to, it just ain't practical anymore. 

I... I just...can't do this anymore...

I'm not sure. But one thing I do know is that I don't want to see any kind of Fallout game for a long fucking time after this. Downloadable content? No thanks. Fallout: New Vegas coming in 2010? Do not care. I am completely DRAINED. If I never see one more box of Abraxo Cleaner or a psychotic Raider saying "It's go time!" before shooting at me, it will be 100 trillion years too soon.