I'd figure by playing full and indie games, that length has become more and more of an issue as of late. With all the money poured into big games like this, it's already known that audiences will find issue with paying $50 $60 for a short game, while there's economic issues with making it cheaper. Hence in the end we have games that are long enough for the mechanics to start a little tired of the game mechanics.
It's hard because the shorter a game is, the more people do fail like it's a waste of money. But making it longer doesn't necessarily make it better and it can actually even ruin some games (if Wasteland 2 cut out it's first 15 hours it would probably be a lot more approachable)
Lara from the new Tomb Raider was awful and had no development though.
YMMV
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The ultimate Alien game (with a few shortcomings)
Boy oh boy has SEGA had a run with the Aliens license. Up until this point their Aliens games have either been kind-of good (See AVP 2010) or fucking awful (Aliens: Colonial Marines). But along came The Creative Assembly, with a truly fresh idea for the next installment in SEGA's polarizing licensed franchise: to follow in the steps of Ridley Scott rather than James Cameron.
I only have 330 words now to I'll skip the plot summary. However, I will mention that the thing that made me pre-order this game was the fact that you get to play as Ellen Ripley's daughter Amanda. I was very excited to see what this game would do with her character. Unfortunately, the game fell flat in this department. Amanda Ripley may be unique as a female protagonist in a first-person survival horror/stealth game, but she has all the personality of a brick. You never get to see her grow as a character, like say Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2013), who was also thrown into similar do-or-die survival circumstances. All of the other characters, with the exception of a synthetic named Samuels, didn't pique my interest as well. A shame since, as I said, you're working with someone from the goddamn Ripley family.
Now let's talk about what this game does right, because there's a whole lot of right in this game.
Gameplay. Playing this game is not like playing the original Ridley Scott movie, it is being in the original film. Everything from the sound design, to the retro-futuristic aesthetics, to the truly terrifying nature of Alien itself is spot on in its delivery. The Alien cannot be defeated, merely hidden from. Later on in the game you get a flamethrower to make it bugger off for a few seconds, but it still doesn't make any less vulnerable. I appreciate how this game treated the Alien with respect in these terms. Too many (read: all) Alien games thus far have treated the Aliens as cool looking monsters to shoot at, not the unholy creatures of unstoppable terror that they were designed as, even in the more action-packed Aliens.
Biggest issue: campaign length. This is a damn long game, and you feel it after about level 15 or so. The Alien just becomes annoying, you don't remember why you're pushing buttons, it just falls flat.
Overall though, this is the best Aliens game so far.