Load Screen Review

Dating back to 1996, Tomb Raider is one of video gaming’s grand old franchises.  It has never quite played by anyone else’s rules, and has always been a bit of an “also-ran”;  garnering lots of fans, but never quite hitting the staggering successes of other similarly well-known franchises.  But it’s always been interesting to see what the latest set of experiments have been;  when you dive into a Tomb Raider game, it’s probably not going to be a lot like what all the currently trendy games are doing.  So let’s take a look.

Okay, this is interesting.  Right away they move into awkward territory;  let me first explain that the black and white landscape image which is visible here is a static image;  it doesn’t animate.  However, it does slide left and right on the screen.  Assigning a base score for this is awkward;  According to our scoring standards, if the loading screen has a flat black backdrop, that’s worth one point.  If it’s a static image, that’s two points.  If it’s smoothly animated, that’s four points.  So how do we score this screen which is mostly flat black, but has a static image that smoothly slides around on it?

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BioShock Infinite is the latest release from Irrational Games, the third game in their BioShock label, which is the latest label in their “Shock” label.  Irrational Games had previously worked on BioShock, but not BioShock 2.  (this inverts their earlier work on “System Shock 2″, but not “System Shock”)

BioShock Infinite has been getting a lot of press for its visuals, its methods of storytelling, and its character interactions.  No one, however, has discussed that one other critical aspect of any game:  its loading screens.

The game’s standard loading screen depicts a static backdrop, with the name of the location being travelled to at the top, and a small text note underneath.  According to our objective loading screen scoring metrics, a static, representational background image gives the loading screen a base score of two points.  The text at the bottom of the screen is generally not particularly interesting, except (as in this case) where it’s spoiling the game’s own plot by revealing details which had not yet been revealed within the game yet — so no bonus points are awarded for it.  Long-time readers and loading screen aficionados will no doubt also have noticed the “Loading” text (0.5 penalty points) and the symbol beside it, which is a loading spinner (1 penalty point).

But this isn’t the game’s only loading screen.  There’s another one as well, which perhaps gets less notice, but which we need to take into account for the final score.

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Ordinarily, we don’t cover downloadable game releases here;  we focus on the larger disc-based releases, on the theory that it takes a really big and chunky game to really generate the sorts of load screens that we’re normally interested in.  However, I really to make an exception for the latest creation by Twisted Pixel.  It’s a puzzle-based platformer with heaps of charm, and it’s obvious that some member of their development team took notes on our rating criteria at some point during development, and endeavoured to do everything just right, in exactly the same way that most mainstream development studios endeavour to do everything just wrong.

I mean, look at this load screen, just look at it:

Full review below the fold.

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So here’s a game that many of us never expected to see;  an open-world detective game which has been in continual development for well over seven years.  In a world where most video games are rushed out in eighteen months or less, and even “triple-A” titles are typically completed in well under three years, just imagine the sort of loading screens which would be achievable with a full seven year development timeline.  Booting the game up for the first time, I was quite giddy with anticipation of the first load screen.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the longest-awaited load screen yet:

Well, darn.

Score and full review are beneath the fold.

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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 latest entry in the “Tales” series of games is upon us.  Despite being developed by the same team and possessing the same game structure, the same arcade-like combat system, the same off-beat obsession with cooking, several of the same NPCs, and approximately the same character archetypes amongst the player characters, the “Tales” games are actually not sequels to each other, or otherwise related in any discernable way.  Epic battles, epic journeys, intricate plot lines, the Tales games are renowned for these things.  But that doesn’t matter to us here;  we only care about one thing:  Are its load screens equally epic?

There’s only one way to find out…

Oh dear.. this isn’t going to be pretty.  Score and full review 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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It was only a matter of time before the Halo franchise branched out into entirely new directions;  with Halo series’s fantastic highly animated loading screens which catapulted the series into such success, someone was bound to wonder what they could do in a genre outside the first person shooter.

Now Ensemble Studios has brought the Halo world to the Real Time Strategy genre.  Of course, they’re not Bungie, and so one can only wonder how well they’ve managed to measure up against Bungie’s amazing efforts.

So let’s take a look:  how did they do?

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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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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