It's interesting to note that it also wasn't until id software came along in 1992 and made Wolfenstein 3D that a load screen was added to the game.  And with that effortless segway, let's talk about the loading screens for the latest entry in the series, simply entitled:  Wolfenstein.

Score and full review are beneath the fold.

Well, that's a static backdrop with some dull text, including a bit of information culled from the game's manual, the ubiquitous "Loading..." text, and inside the "Wolfenstein" logo is a loading progress bar which fills from left to right as the loading completes.  As far as progress bars go, this one is not particularly well implemented;  its motion isn't smooth as the load progresses, but instead it increments by leaps and bounds, sometimes stalling on a particular spot for several seconds before resuming movement.  However, it's still far more useful and informative than the loading spinners which are so popular among developers these days, and so we do not ever apply penalty points for the presence of loading bars.

Unfortunately, that's not the only type of loading screen in the game.  There's also this one:

Yes, this is a load screen;  it reliably occurs about ten seconds into the interactive portion of the game, just as this friendly chap in front of us finishes asking us to follow him.  You'll notice that there's no on-screen indication that a load is occurring.  In fact, the game gives every indication that it has locked up entirely, for the four or five second duration of the load.

This "game lock-up load screen" situation occurs at several points during the game, and can be quite alarming when first encountered, and remains quite disconcerting even when you know to expect them.  To be honest, I'm kind of shocked that someone thought that this sort of behaviour across a load was acceptable;  even Valve's Half-Life-based games have the common courtesy to at least put a warning on the screen when they've decided to make the game freeze so that they can do some loading.

Well, with that out of the way, it's time for scoring.

"Travelling" Load Screen

• Static image background: 2 base points.
• "Loading" text on screen: 0.5 penalty points.
• Progress bar: 0 penalty points.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

“Game Lock-Up” Load Screen

• Static image background: 2 base points.
• Appearance that game has locked up:  2 penalty points.

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 0.75 out of 5 stars

Full review beneath the fold.

This is the loading screen which you see when you’re loading into a saved game.  It plays a smooth FMV showing clips of game footage, 3D models of Ghostbusters equipment, various special effects, all accompanied by the classic Ghostbusters track by Ray Parker Jr (or Huey Lewis, depending on how closely you want to follow the rumour mill).  As loading screens go, this one is very long, often clocking in north of thirty seconds long.  But with the amount of attention that’s gone into the light and sound show, I really don’t care.  Oh, and there’s a bit of text on the screen which shows tips.  Boring tips, like the one in the screen shown above.  No bonus point awarded for parroting the manual at us.  Developers, if you’re aiming for those bonus points, the tips must be entertaining!

There is a different loading screen used between scenes of gameplay.  In these instances, the player is shown pre-rendered (and often lavishly produced) cutscenes while the next game level is being loaded in the background.  In truth, both the “Main Load Screen” and the “Cutscene Load Screen” are basically the same, as both are loading a gameplay level while displaying FMV.  However, since they do look different, are used in different places and for different purposes, I’m rating them separately.

Main Load Screen

• Smooth animation:  4 base points
• “Loading” text:  0.5 penalty points
• Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Cutscene Load Screen

• Smooth animation:  4 base points
• “Loading” text:  0.5 penalty points
• Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Street Fighter 4 is a great new release to look at, as its roots are in the era where games were burnt into ROM chips, and data access times were so low that loading screens were never really necessary.  In the coin-op arcade versions, of course, there were short “Character vs. Character” splash screens to announce the fights, and as games have moved from fast chip storage to slow disc storage, these splash screens have typically become used as the load screens, and this is the case here.  Mostly.

Full review beneath the fold.

The basic flow of the game is from the main menu you choose one of several game modes, and then select characters to play as.  Then the game goes to the classic VS load screen, and into the game.  After the fight, you either return to the classic VS load screen for the next fight, or return straight to the main menu.

The VS load screen is nicely animated;  it has two basic phases.  Transitioning in from black, it performs a highly animated initial sequence, then settles into a still foreground with smoothly animated fire effects in the background to cover the rest of the load.  When the load completes, the game fades to black, and the game fades in.  Awesome.

In fact, everything sounds really rosy for Street Fighter 4 right now, until I reveal that there’s a second load screen.  You likely haven’t even noticed this load screen, as it only appears very briefly, and only rarely.  It occurs, for example, the first time you enter the character selection screen after boot, and then never again.  Similarly, it appears the first time you return to the main menu, and then never again.  Typically, it appears for about half a second.  Sorry for the slightly blurry screenshot, but here it is:

Damn.  That’s a flat black screen, with the word “Loading”, and a spinning thing;  that’s going to hurt the overall rating.  Even though this is a rare and brief load screen, here at loadscreenreview.com, our ratings policy states that we are to average the types of load screens in a game in order to find the final score.

VS Load Screen

• Smooth animation: 4 base points
• Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

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.

Prince of Persia makes heavy use of streaming technology as you move around within the contiguous world, which means that as long as you’re just running around, you won’t see a load screen at all.  The places where the screens crop up are typically only in two spots;  when the game switches from the main menu into the game world, and when you teleport directly from one part of the game world to another (which is allowed in limited circumstances).

At an initial glance, the screen looks okay.  It has an elegant marble backdrop (two base points).  Okay, there’s that annoying “Loading” text which will earn a small penalty, but there’s a nice little text hint at the bottom of the screen.

However, there are problems.  The first problem is that the text hint isn’t actually very useful;  it’s almost always a repeat of tutorial information which you’ve received earlier, and so only serves as a reminder of something you’ve already learned;  not as actual useful or entertaining information.  But there’s a worse problem;  the text isn’t actually present for the full duration of the loading screen.  It fades in after several seconds worth of loading, which often results in the text appearing for too short a time for the player to actually read it.  For these two reasons, I am not awarding the “interesting text” bonus point.

What’s more, take a look at that circular shape with the spokes around the image showing where we’re travelling to.  You guessed it, it’s spinning.  That’s the second largest loading spinner I’ve ever seen!  And it’s  incurring the loading spinner penalty.

Scoring

• Static image backdrop: 2 base points
• Spinning loading badge (huge):  1 penalty point
• Use of “Loading” text:  0.5 penalty points

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

Fallout 3's initial loading screen

Full review beneath the fold.

Fallout is an unusual beast;  it actually has two different load screens.  When you initially load a saved game, or use the “fast-travel” functionality to travel an extremely long distance, you get the first load screen, pictured above. This load screen is quite pleasant. It’s an animated backdrop of slides, showing advertisements and other information in Fallout’s characteristic retro style. The stop-and-go animated load screen gives us a base score of three on the standardised five-point base scoring meter.

The load screen also shows a useful piece of information in the bottom left corner (static for the duration of the load), a meter showing your progress toward your next level, and interesting statistics along the right side of the screen. These extra bits of textual information give Fallout 3 an additional bonus point. However, see that crosshair-looking thing in the bottom center?  That’s a radar-like device;  it spins for the whole time the load is going on, so it incurs the standard “spinning badge” penalty point.  So that’s a score of 3, in total, which is an extremely respectable score.  Note that later in the game, this tip does once include the word “Loading”.  However, as this appears to be an isolated occurance, I’m not assigning a penalty point.

But Fallout 3 has a different loading screen as well, which is used whenever you travel through a door.  I call this loading screen “Loading Screen 2″, and it paints a very different picture.

Fallout 3: Loading Screen Two

Oh dear.  That’s a flat black load screen, which scores the minimum number of base points; just one point out of five.  And as if that wasn’t enough, they’ve inserted that spinning radar device onto the screen, which earns them the “spinning badge” penalty on this screen as well, yielding a total score of zero points.

So with two different loading screens, I’m forced to average their scores together.

Score

Loading Screen One

• Stop-and-go animation:  3 base points
• Interesting text:  1  bonus point
• Spinning loading badge:  1 penalty point
• Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Loading Screen Two

• Flat black screen: 1 base point
• Spinning loading badge:  1 penalty point
• Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars