How long do you play?

Inspired by Too much Playstation, I was wondering: when you play games, how long do you typically spend on the game in one session? It's recommended to take breaks every few minutes; do you follow that advice or just keep on going until you're tired?

Personally, I tend to keep playing instead of taking breaks. I know I should, but I just get drawn into the game and don't keep track of the time. It doesn't help when there are cutscenes are three or four times the recommended length of playing.

It depends if I'm really engrossed I can play a game anywehere from 2-4 hours. I try to give myself a few days of no gameply after wasted days of gameplay. Such on the recent Saturday I played Final Fantasy XII for about 2 and a half hours. Then on the Sunday I didn't touch my PS2 all day a went out to my mates house for the day instead and we played some sport and hung out. I try to keep it balanced as much as I can.

Depends on what I'm playing and where. Like, when I'm playing Brawl at gamer's night, generally I am taking breaks because there are more players than Wiis, so we're rotating in and out (and frequently, I run the rotation as one of the Wiis being used is mine and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to play.) But when I play Metroid Prime, which I play for immersion...I don't stop until I'm tired or I have to stop to go to class or something. I play that game with the intent to play it for a while. Anything else I play for immersion I generally don't stop until I'm tired. I do remember playing Earthbound one time after a long day of a choir festival. It was...maybe 8 PM when I started. Next time I looked at the clock it was 11. Wow.

I tend to go nuts with new releases; I finished MGS2 in one sitting when it came out, much to the chagrin of the other guys in my dorm. And being a big DQ nerd, I thoroughly cleaned out all of DQIV in a rather fitting four days.

These days I still like to go crazy with new games, but "crazy" has been scaled back to four or five hours a sitting, max, if I'm not feeling completely exhausted after work, or gone out drinking, or had dinner with friends, or whatever. Priorities now are a lot different than when I was a little kid and could play all day or until my mom yelled at me. I think that's one of those idyllic childhood memories that doesn't exactly translate to adult life. I tried doing a marathon gaming session over the holidays and got so crushingly depressed at how I'd wasted an entire day. I think the primary function of adolescence is to pound into your stupid skull the fact that you need to grow the hell up and do something other than goof-off all day.

I'm constantly playing my DS, though. Usually to pass the time between big releases. It's just so much easier to flip the thing open and resume right where I left off, instead of having to turn on a console and load up a save and then fret over how long I can play until I need to start thinking about finding a save point so I can get to a job or something on time. Makes it easy to play on the train, too.

I tend to usually play a few hours at a time, depending what day it is. Though, it also depends what game it is. Here's an example for you, few years back, I spent about 12 hours straight playing Spyro Year of the Dragon when I was younger because I wanted to beat the game 100% (I didn't have a memory card).

SO if I'm really determined, I'll play for long periods of time.

It depends really, on the game mostly, and on what I have to do that day. For example, I had Monday off from work, so I put 8 straight hours into Lock's Quest, which I just beat tonight and is incredibly awesome. However, on days that I work, I can usually get a max 2-3 hours of gaming in on any given day. That's if I'm completely anti-social.

Depending on the game I usually play straight through. Dragon Quest V is currently sucking up all my free hours

I used to play games for up to six hours at a time, depending on how much I was in the game. These days, I don't have the time to do that anymore. DX I also don't really have the attention span anymore, I tend to lose interest easily these days. So these days, I just play for a 30 minutes to two hours at a time.

When I was younger I used to play well over eight hours but nowadays I'll be lucky to squeeze in an hour - two at the most