Load Screen Review

PlayStation 3 Home is a new free “virtual life” simulator for people who have to download the outside of their apartment the first time they become bored with standing alone in the middle of their living rooms.  Since so much of PlayStation 3 Home involves downloading data from the network, I have clarified our policies on what is and what is not a loading screen.

For the purposes of our reviews (at least for the time being), loading screens involve loading data from local storage;  not from a network server.  There are all sorts of things which make loading data from a network server tricky and unpredictable, and I don’t want to penalise anyone for our often-flaky Internet connection.  So I am only here including load screens which occur after having downloaded all game content.

I should also add that ordinarily, we don’t review betas.  However, as this is a publicly available beta of a free service, we assume that Sony believes it to be ready for prime time, but will continue to call this a “beta” for the lifetime of the service.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about PlayStation 3 Home’s load screens;  they’re a bit interesting.

Full review under the fold.

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I want to clarify something very quickly, here.  This review of Prince of Persia is a review of the 2008 game “Prince of Persia”, brought to you by UbiSoft Montreal, not of the 1989 game Prince of Persia, by Jordan Mechner.

Prince of Persia makes a nice change from all the complicated multiple-load-screens-in-one-game that we’ve been seeing lately;  it’s a nice return to the heady days when games had only a single load screen which was good enough for every purpose.

Keep reading for the full review.

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Mirror’s Edge is a game based upon Parkour, an informal sport invented by the French which has several times been attempted to be turned into a video game, though never resulting in particularly interesting load screens.

It is interesting that in French, “Parkour” is a homonym for the phrase “par coeur” which translates back into English as “by heart”, and this is certainly a game where you’ll end up knowing most of the levels by heart by the time you complete them.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention such a thing, except here it’s important, as when you die (which you will, frequently), you get to see a load screen.  More on that later.

Mirror’s Edge has no fewer than five different types of load screens, used for different purposes.  So with five load screens to cover and not much time, here we go!

Mirrors Edge Chapter Load Screen

Full review beneath the fold.

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Here’s a game that everyone was looking forward to.  Finally, the minds who got us all excited over Rag Doll Kung Fu have a chance to.. um.. make up for Rag Doll Kung Fu.  It’s a gorgeous little game;  let’s take a look at its loading screen!

Little Big Planet's loading screen

Full review beneath the fold.

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Fallout 3 is the sequel to Fallout 2, which was the sequel to Fallout 1, which was a bit of an homage or remake of the earlier game Wasteland, which was a science-fiction version of the then-popular Ultima series which was being made by Origin Systems, which.. okay, I’ll stop now.

Fallout 3's initial loading screen

Full review beneath the fold.

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Fable 2 is (unsurprisingly) the sequel to Fable. It’s some sort of action-RPG thing that’s doing the same old “you can be good or evil” thing that everybody’s been pretending that nobody else has been doing ever since KOTOR was released about half a decade ago. But enough about that; let’s talk about what we’re here for: the loading screen.

Fable 2's Loading Screen

Full review beneath the fold.

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