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Best Games That Can Be Finished in One Sitting

Portal
Katamari Damacy
Star Fox 64

Edit: Journey

Yeah. I never played Star Fox 64, but those other three were all single-sitting games I loved.

Another one I really enjoyed was Enslaved. I think I liked it precisely because I beat it in one session. I don't think I would've cared nearly as much for it if it had been any longer.
 
If you know the solutions, you can race through Day of the Tentacle and the first two Monkey Islands in about two hours.
 
Streets of Rage.

streets-of-rage_1s.jpg
 
Ys I is probably my most replayed game of all time because of how short it is. Several dungeons and towns with a tight little quest that takes little more than a couple hours. Probably been through 20 times since TGCD version through to Steam release.
 
DMC1.

Also, the Capcom classic "Black Tiger" from 1987 can be completed in exactly 43 minutes without dying once, on normal difficulty settings.
 
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Great story pacing that kinda loses impact if split over several sittings.
 
Don't think I've ever finished a game in one sitting.

I recently played Child of Light for the first time. Started on a Friday night and finished it on the Saturday night. 100%.

So I guess that's possible in one sitting, I don't know? One sitting for me is about 2 hours max.

Absolutely beautiful game though, Child of Light. Loved just about everything about it. Fantastic music.
 
Thomas Was Alone, it will fuck you up. A bit on the longer end of 4 hours probably, though.

There's a great horror Flash game trilogy called Deep Sleep (play on Newgrounds for fullscreen support) and all three are great and probably barely last an hour all together.

Portal probably also counts. Amazing game.

Didn't play it much myself but To The Moon is praised heavily and is short from what I remember.
 
Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Crypt of the Necrodancer and a lot of other rouge-lites are games that you can finish many times over in one sitting; if you're skilled enough, that is. You may very well end up dying the entire time due to their difficulty, but that's part of the fun.
 
Mario 3 didn't have save memory, so I guess you were expected to finish it in one sitting, but it was quite a marathon if you didn't use whistles.
 
im gonna have to say journey but i havent played many of the others games ppl are mentioning so im not qualified enough. Journey def is amazing.
 
I'm going to say either Pac-Man or Ninja Gaiden II for the NES. Pac-Man can't really be completed in a single sitting in the strictest sense (it's possible, but probably not for anyone on GAF) but all but the best of players are unlikely to survive for more than an hour.

Ninja Gaiden II is a combination of difficult and short but, owing to the infinite continues and generous checkpoints, I'd say most people would be able to get through the whole thing in a few hours of trying.
 
The Doom roguelike. It is free, fast paced, and extremely easy to pick up and play. Surprising how well they get across the feeling of doom (play until you get a shotgun) in a completely different genre.

Found at: http://doom.chaosforge.org/

Oh and bonus-The tile art was made by none other than Derek Yu of Spelunky/Aquaria fame.

One of my favorite lunch break games on PC.
 
I'm surprised at no mention of Super Metroid yet.
I agree.

It's a bit of a stretch if you're playing it for the first time, really needing to explore... but if you know where you're going an average (not real speedrun) play through would probably take 3 or 4 hours.
 
Zone of the Enders 2 gets my vote. On a NG+, an experienced llayer can beat the game in less than two hours.
 
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