Load Screen Review

Wolfenstein is one of the oldest game franchises still actively being developed.  The first game in the series, Castle Wolfenstein, was released in 1981, on the Apple ][ computer (and later was also available for the PC, the Commodore 64, and other computers of the era).  This game and its sequel were both stealth games before stealth games were cool, but when id software came along in 1992 and made Wolfenstein 3D, the stealth aspects of the game were dropped, the action elements enhanced, and the FPS genre was born.

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.

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The first Ghostbusters movie was released in 1984, and in the following 25 years, there was not a single Ghostbusters-licensed game to include a loading screen.  Until now.  At long last, Mr. Aykroyd has seen fit to provide one, and we’ve seen fit to review it for you, the discriminating aficionado.

Full review beneath the fold.

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Infamous is an urban super-hero game which charges the player with making moral choices in his attempt to free his home city from.. whatever it is that’s going on.  While the game has been getting a lot of press on various high-profile sites, I’m not really sure what they’re going on and on about.  It seems a little lackluster from my point of view.  I mean, just look at that load screen.

Full review beneath the fold.

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Street Fighter 4 is the 14th iteration of the Street Fighter series, and the fifth major new version of Street Fighter (the earlier 3D ‘Street Fighter EX’ series, oddly enough, was never given its own number).

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.

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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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