Homefront: As Long As Every Other Shooter Out There, And Probably Better Because Of It.

Its campaign is about five hours long. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be.

As is always the case when a shooter's campaign length is brought into question, there's a furore erupting around the Internet. "If I'm paying £40 then I want the game to be at least 50 hours long," rant the self-entitled fans. "I'm not buying this game now."

We're really, really getting tired of this drama surrounding campaign lengths. You want the facts: most people don't finish games anyway. Ubisoft revealed not too long ago that only 40% of players actually completed the 20-hour Assassin's Creed II. Too long for you? Here's the thing: if a game is really good, it's good regardless of length. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has one of the best campaigns of this generation. It's four hours long. God Of War III has one of the best campaigns of this generation. It's eight hours long. Fallout 3 has one of the best campaigns of this generation. It's thirty hours long. Final Fantasy XIII is not a good game just because it takes 60-hours to reach the conclusion. Nor is it value for money. The value comes from the mechanics, the story-telling, and the general craft of the experience. We'd much rather play Modern Warfare twenty times over, than Final Fantasy XIII twice, because the former is a much more tightly crafted and varied experience.

Sow e think Homefront's creative director, David Votypka, is right to hit back at message board critics, telling Eurogamer: "We've done a lot of focus testing on the game. We've seen really expert players race through it pretty quickly – five hours, a little less. We've seen players take eight to 10 hours to play it. So it's a range, there. It depends who you ask.

"It's competitive with the lengths of the other top shooters out there right now, especially the ones with the big multiplayer components," he added.

"Where there's a lot of game time in the multiplayer, the single-player doesn't tend to be 12, 15, 20 hours long. The Mass Effects, those types of games where it's all about the single-player, then they put all their time and content into that."

Regardless of the criticism, Votypka said he felt "pretty good" about the game's campaign, which sees players join a resistance force as a united Korea conquer the USA.

"We wanted to create this occupied America and tell the story of this small resistance band and have the game campaign be long enough to tell that story and play through and experience that.

"You start off in small town Colorado and you end up on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. The number of events and character development and things you play through and experience throughout that campaign is pretty diverse.

"There's a lot of bang for your buck in the time you play the campaign."

The moral of the story: quit complaining about game lengths. If you don't like it, don't buy it.