Well, darn.

Score and full review are beneath the fold.

The screenshot above is the standard loading screen, commonly seen when beginning one of the game’s chapters, or when using a “fast travel” mechanism to rapidly transit from one part of the city to another.  As you can see, it is about as bad an example as we’ve ever seen;  flat black backdrop, “Loading” text, and a spinner.  Worse, the spinner is made up of two arrows which indicate spinning even in a static screenshot.  It’s quite disappointing to see so little effort on such a core element of the game, even when seven years of development time were available.  Team Bondi:  you need to lift your game!

There is a second loading screen, though, for loads which take more than four or five seconds.  Here it is:

This loading screen displays a static screen with a black and white photograph which is largely unrelated to what is being loaded.  As with the more usual loading screen, there is loading text and a spinner.

Some have come forward suggesting that LA Noire be considered a contender for game of the year.  But to be honest, looking at these screens (and the resulting ratings), I can’t see that as being likely.  Really, at this stage, there’s nothing else to do but to go to the scoring.

“Travelling” Load Screen

• Solid black background: 0 base points.
• “Loading” text on screen: 0.5 penalty points.
• Load spinner: 1 penalty point.

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars (capped at zero)

“Lengthy” Load Screen

• Static image background: 2 base points.
• “Loading” text on screen: 0.5 penalty points.
• Load spinner: 1 penalty point.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 0.25 out of 5 stars

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

Full review beneath the fold.

Well, that’s a flat black screen, with the game logo on it.  The logo has a pulsing blue glow (not visible here), which I’m scoring as “activity lights”, in our objective scoring criteria.

Infamous is an “open world” game, and does not visit the loading screen often;  mostly just when initially loading a saved game, and when it needs to quickly transport the player to a new, distant location (most frequently to a medical clinic, if the player has been defeated in combat).  So for those who care about the frequency with which they’ll see the loading screen, the answer is “inFrequently”.

Infamous Load Screen

• Flat black background: 1 base point
• Activity lights: 1 penalty point

Rating: 0 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

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.

This is how the game handles loading avatar data.  It’s theoretically done within your character’s apartment (though your apartment doesn’t actually contain this room), and your ghosted character continues to animate during the load.  To reach this particular pose and position, the camera does cut, and your avatar is just popped into place in this new location;  he returns to where he was before, when you exit this interface.  The smooth animation awards this loading screen a base four points out of five.  (If the character had walked into position and the camera moved without a cut, they would have earned five out of five, base).

That’s kind of the end of the good news for this screen, though.  You’ll notice that there are actually two different icons on screen here in the top right corner;  one labelled “WWW”, one labelled “HD”.  I need to stress that when I took this screenshot, I had already downloaded both models;  no model data should actually be being downloaded from the web.  These are not spinners;  these are activity lights;  the segments on the icons light up and darken again to show that something’s happening, rather than spinning.  According to our standard scoring policy, where spinners incur a 1 point penalty, activity lights incur a 1.5 point penalty.  With two instances, that’s 3 penalty points in total.

When travelling from one place to another, PlayStation 3 Home stages the loading screen in front of a still, blurred image of the game.  That gives a base score of 2 points.

In this screen, PlayStation 3 Home uses an unusual two-stage loading system.  After downloading the required data (not scored), it then shows a loading bar (half a penalty point).  Once that loading bar fills up, activity light icons appear in the top right corner for a short extra time (1.5 penalty points), before the load completes.

Note that while beside the name of the location to which you’re travelling there is a circular icon with arrows suggesting a spin, that icon does not actually spin during the load, and so does not incur a penalty point.

Avatar Load Screen

• Smooth animation: 4 base points
• “WWW” Activity lights:  1.5 penalty points
• “HD” Activity lights: 1.5 penalty points
• Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Travel Load Screen

• Blurred gameplay still background: 2 base points
• Loading bar:  0.5 penalty points
• Activity lights:  1.5 penalty points
• Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 0.5 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

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.

As you enter a new chapter, you get a fully animated loading screen;  these play out like flash movies.  The early ones are better, the later ones start looking a lot cheaper.  Or maybe the novelty of the art style started wearing off and I started noticing places where things were sloppy, where I was inclined to let that slide, before.  Nonetheless, it’s smoothly animating throughout.  Once the load has completed, you can press a button to skip past the rest of the animation, or you can allow the animation to finish playing through.

So, this loading screen has smooth animation, which gives it a base score of four out of five.  It displays the word “Loading”, so it earns half of a penalty point, for a final score of three and a half points.

There is a different load screen when you switch between tutorial and main game, when you quit from the game to the main menu, when you load a saved game, and similar locations.  This load screen looks like this:

Mirror's Edge General Load Screen

In this screen, characters in silhouettes demonstrate moves and techniques from the game while the load occurs.  The animation is quite smooth, and there is text at the bottom of the screen, explaining the move being shown.

Smooth animation gives this screen a base four out of five points.  They again use the “Loading” text, which gives half of a penalty point.  Additionally, this load screen has a load spinner next to the “Loading” text, which awards a full penalty point.  The text at the bottom of the screen is not entertaining or particularly interesting, and does not change during the display, and so does not award a bonus point.

Mirror’s Edge Invisible Load Screen

Well, here we go, guys;  it’s our very first five-point load screen.  Here, we’ve just entered a lift.  I can still move and look around within the tight confines of the lift, my pals are still talking to me on the radio, but the game is loading invisibly in the background, and the lift doors don’t open until the load finishes.  This is a textbook definition of a five star loading screen.  Notice that no “loading” text or spinner is required here; the load “screen” exists entirely within the game world.  Bravo, DICE!

But all is not rosy in Mirror’s Edge-land…

Mirror's Edge Valve Load Screen

Here, I’m in the middle of a high-speed chase sequence, running away from people who are shooting at me with all kinds of unlikely ordinance.  I turn a corner, and suddenly..  everything stops.  It simply places the “Loading Level” text and a spinner over whatever had been displayed before.  When devising our rating scheme, it simply hadn’t occurred to me that people would still be doing this, after Valve was roundly ridiculed for doing it in Half-Life 2.

The new policy is that this technique counts as using a “still image”;  it’s better than going to flat black, but only barely.  Two base points out of five.  It also uses the “Loading” text, and has the spinner, so that’s 1.5 penalty points.

And there’s one final load screen.  In fact, this is the one that you’re likely to become most familiar with as you play Mirror’s Edge, as it’s the one shown whenever you die and respawn.  It doesn’t matter if you died right at the respawn point or if you ran halfway across the level, you’ll see this load screen.  Since you’ll be spending a lot of time with this load screen, let’s hope that it’s a good one.

Mirror's Edge Respawn Load Screen

Damn.

Well, that’s a flat white screen with a spinner.  1 base point, 1 penalty point, zero points in total.

It’s too bad.  Mirror’s Edge has a lot going for it, including the invisible load screen, story progression taking place during the load screens, etc..  it was just let down by some really poor loads performed mid-level.

Here’s the final score:

Score

Chapter Load Screen

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

General Load Screen

• Smooth animation: 4 base points
• Spinning loading badge:  1 penalty point
• Loading text: 0.5 penalty points
• Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Invisible Load Screen

• Seamless-transition load screen: 5 base points
• Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Valve Load Screen

• Frozen gameplay image: 2 base points
• Spinning loading badge:  1 penalty point
• Loading text: 0.5 penalty points
• Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

Respawn Load Screen

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

Overall Rating: 2.3 out of 5 stars

Little Big Planet's loading screen

Full review beneath the fold.

The Good

Wow, now this is a nice loading screen!  Not only is it animated, it’s interactive and networked!  You can edit your appearance, run around in somebody else’s home, deface it, stick peacock feathers to anything and anyone, beat people up, and generally make a fool of yourself, all inside a beautiful, colourful loading screen!

On our standard loading screen meter, this awards four base points out of five, and I’m awarding a bonus point for the load screen being interactive;  more games should do this!

The Bad

Of course, it’s not all good news.  The first problem that springs out at us is that the word “Loading” is written not just once, but twice around the icon representing the world we’re loading into; at a half point each, that’s a full penalty point for the two instances of the forbidden word.

But that’s not all;   though they were really trying to sabotage their own score, Media Molecule actually is spinning that doubled “Loading” text around the patch, which incurs them the “spinning” penalty point as well.  And as if that wasn’t enough for them, you can see in the bottom left corner of the screen that there’s yet another spinning loading badge!  But we’re going to be really really lenient here, and not deduct a second penalty point for the second spinner on the screen.  So we’re deducting a total of two penalty points for the four infractions.

Score

• Smoothly animated screen:  4 base points
• Interactive:  1 bonus point
• “Loading” text twice on screen:  1 penalty point
• Spinning loading badge: 1 penalty point

Rating: 3 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