Generally people don't like 3 hour games, free mods sold for $50 and scams, but YMMV . (seriously if Activision/Ubisoft/EA had released any of those, you would still be hearing about it, but as it's Valve they just get "the usual")
I think the problem I had with slow dull crap like TF2 is I like faster "skillful" arena games like UT/Q3a, and that's what I'm "used" to.. But then again I guess I'm not the target audience for Valves titles.
At least with Valve games, even if its short, it will be a quality game for a right price. Valve hasn't released games that wasn't worth the price.