VeNT said:
Doom 3 being the BIGGEST EVER letdowns in lenth of levels EVER, Fears not too bad, HL2 wasn't too bad but could still have done with more REAL levels!
Can't agree with that really, Doom3 is a pretty lengthy game compared to a lot of FPS - took me around twice as long as FEAR I think (at least +50%).
I think what is happening nowadays is that developers are focussing more on quality over quantity - i.e. they are creating very detailed levels, with things concentrated together. Max Payne 2 is the perfect example in my book of a game which was branded "short" by many, but which I would call "highly polished". It has tremendous attention to detail and packs a lot into each section.
Look back at the old days - FPS would often have quite a few levels (say 30), but many of them would be filled with bland corridors and 'samey' sections, simply mixing up the enemies to try and create their variety. There wouldn't be much 'extra' detail in the environments like diaries to read, phone messages to listen to, video discs and stuff like that (there were exceptions, of course, such as System Shock 2).
Admittedly most FPS are a bit shorter nowdays but each level must take so much longer to create (in terms of adding all the extra details). Some FPS managed to be genuinely huge in scale, such as Unreal - that was an absolute monster of a game - but I don't think we are likely to see anything like that in the near future. Modern WWII FPS like CoD for example tend to be so action packed and concentrated that the actual gametime is under 10 hours - but it is a highly focussed experience, with very little filler. It's not like Doom2 where you were aimlessly wandering around some levels trying to find the exit.
Far Cry is a good example of a game which I thought got the combination of detail and length about right. You get 20 levels, most of which are pretty sizeable, and an engine capable of rendering large chunks of it at once.
the bit where the invisible soldiers that jump off the wall appear really scared me 
