Load times - especially "restart"

[booth83]

command and conquer on the 360 doesn't even have a restart option if you fail a mission, which is seriously irritating to the point where im considering getting rid, you have to exit game to the faction selection, then the area selection, then mission select if you want to restart your mission, the load times inbetween aren't too bad but why not just include restart mission option, twats!

[Profit]

Every fighting game should have an option to restart the round upon defeat; but devs retain the arcade feature of taking you back to the character select screen and reloading.

[Anpanman]

Great thread, it's one of my personal peeves in gaming.

If a level takes a while to load - fine but if I need to restart it should be there instantly or very quickly at the least.

I've often thought that if I were a game reviewer I would punitively punish any game with a severely low score if restarts took a long time.

[Yoshimax]

command and conquer on the 360 doesn't even have a restart option if you fail a mission, which is seriously irritating to the point where im considering getting rid, you have to exit game to the faction selection, then the area selection, then mission select if you want to restart your mission, the load times inbetween aren't too bad but why not just include restart mission option, twats!

Surely though this is like 5 minutes after you started ? It's not like you're on the first corner of RR and decide to restart - entirely different proposition !!!

[dataDave]

Halo is always the bar that Developers should aim for in my opinion.

An almost instant jump to the main menu followed by a small 10 - 15 second load into a level and throughout that level you are un-interupted.

I still feel Halo's technical acchivments are still underated and forgottern about by most people. Maybe that's the point, if you don't notice the load or streaming then the Developers got it right.

Although I loved the games concept, Stuntman was a world of pain in this respect.

It wasn't totally seamless though, I sure as hell noticed the freeze and then checkpoint save... unlike the fantastic Metroid Prime where incomplete loading of the next map segment was justified by a blast door hesitating to open. And most of Halo's levels were repeated sections anyway ruined by invisible checkpoints that kept repeat saving if you happened to backtrack by accident after losing your bearings during a firefight.

On some of the really drab missions I totally forgot which way was forward and kept running back on myself to find that I was infact going in the right direction to begin with... but ooops, no! ... was I? errr.... Begin confusion, and begin questioning myself why I was even playing the game to start with. With each checkpoint effectively back-saving this didn't help matters much. The exact same **** happened on the repeatedly copied and pasted sections of Halo 2.

I think you're right though, nearly all developers are using Bungie as a bar to aim for, which explains why nearly all games that feature guns are **** thesedays.

---

But yeah, loading times. They're ****. 2D fighters used to have **** loading times, but the DC sorted that.

[Brats]

Amped 3's mountains are massive. I don't know if it loads them all into memory or streams, but restarts are instantaneous.

If they weren't, the game wouldn't be as half as good as it is.

[charlesr]

An almost instant jump to the main menu followed by a small 10 - 15 second load into a level and throughout that level you are un-interupted.

That might be acceptable for an FPS, but for racing games and others where you can "mess up" within a few seconds of starting, it's still too high. 5 seconds absolute tops.

[capcom_suicide]

Of all the great functionality aspects of the 360, the biggest dissapointment for me, was the lack of Harddisk install support for all games.

I can't stand loading times, and since buying JetPac on a ROM cart, I've always been frustrated by games that haven't tuned the process.

Maybe next generation console will have a few GIG of solid state to help out, until then we can only hope the devs do the best they can with "Fancy Tricks" and streaming algorithms.

**sigh**

That said, the way that games can now load the level on the fly is a much better experience than the "STOP. load next section" games of the previous Gens. Anyon remember RE1? Every new room had that stupid creaking door and a 2 minute load... nightmare!

[MikeRox]

Hopefully by the time next gen comes around, internet connections and mass storage will be the way forwards.

Have to say on the Amped 3 front, the restart times on that were so good I didn't even notice them (that they were good or anything) so I guess that really means they got it right as I didn't even think about it.

[dataDave]

I think the load times, no matter how short, do a good job of quenching out the adrenaline on Burnout Revenge.

[charlesr]

Agreed. Devs. If you are listening. Sort it out. Please

[Profit]

Maybe next generation console will have a few GIG of solid state to help out, until then we can only hope the devs do the best they can with "Fancy Tricks" and streaming algorithms.

A game like Oblivion, Motorstorm or any other modern game on solidstate won\'t load any faster. HDD is by far the fastest and there are still load times associated with it.

[Yoshimax]

Amped 3's mountains are massive. I don't know if it loads them all into memory or streams, but restarts are instantaneous.

If they weren't, the game wouldn't be as half as good as it is.

I think it probably does because you get that holistic view of the mountain you can zoom in & out and it shows you everything you've dropped on it.

Very nicely done considering how early it launched !

[ChrisF]

I think Bomberman Zero on the 360 should be named and shamed in here too. Considering what little there is to the game, it takes years to load a level, and woe betide anyone that dares to die!

[Swallow]

Gah, PGR3 loading times for restart really began to get on my nerves last night, only got 3 championships to go! Instant restart should be the first bullet point in QA.