Unskippable game intro waffle.

[charlesr]

One of the cool things about MW2:

When you load it up, you can skip all the carp at the start - within seconds you are doing something useful. None of this Forza rubbish.

[figflair]

I agree with Charles. Endless wading through title screens is my pet peeve. Although they still haven't got rid of the other main issue I have with games; the f**king 'are you sure?' question when saving, quitting, restarting missions etc. Yes I'm sure!

Sorry, it's my problem.

[charlesr]

It should be a mandatory part of any review, with 3 points knocked off for failure. Even if it's only a 2/10 game.

And instant restarts like Trials HD and er MW2! The instant starts in Trials HD are so instand it's almost instant. It wouldn't have worked nearly so well if you had to sit through some footage of the bike with the camera swirling around for 10 seconds.

[Matt]

*Well, ok, it's not the best, but it's cool

When you load it up, you can skip all the carp at the start - within seconds you are doing something useful. None of this Forza rubbish.

id are the masters of boot speed. I want to get to the menu ASAP, no loading an intro, you're straight in; and then a quick loading game follows. So important to me

[chopemon]

Getting this thread back on track, despite people desperately trying to run it off the rails, here is an article by a game designer about logo screens and being able to skip them.

Linky McLinkson.

I imagine that the designer who wrote this is probably a dashingly handsome man. A man of wit and wisdom. A playboy, a sexual tyrannosaurus, a rock star and an all round good egg. I imagine that if I were to meet this man and I were a woman, I would offer myself to him and if I were a man, I would be awed by his rugged good looks and erudite charm.

[charlesr]

"The player is not impressed by a feast of moving objects on the screen; they are impressed by a menu that lets them efficiently get into a game" - Dirt 2. Flashy, but ultimately far quicker if I could just click down a list....

[chopemon]

Which is why Mw2 works so well.

Skips all the fluff and then gives you a screen that asks you which three things you want to play.

The best Power Point slides tend to have about three things on and so do menus.

[Flabio]

Most of this comes from a combination of publisher and middleware contracts. Use their stuff, or have them publish your game, and it usually comes with a minimum amount of time their logo must be on screen during boot.

The bigger and more important your game is to said publisher, the shorter they'll let you have it.

[PeteJ]

I agree Mr C, I was plesently surprised when I could skip through all the front end fluff. All games should get to the menu as quickly as this does.

[SuperDanX]

My thread title has really cocked up the discussion. It was meant to be about games that have excessively long unskippaple intro rubbish Vs games that do it well.

i'll try and drag it back on topic- Okami ps2, infuriating 20 minute unskippaple intro, is one that springs to mind.

[abigsmurf]

How about Persona 4? 2 Hours before you get to any real gameplay (admittedly it has a fast forward option but you're still looking at a lengthy amount of time before you can play)

[chopemon]

Assassins Creed 2 has an unskippable publisher screen and a message about the team being multicultural AND unskippable cutscenes.

Grrr...

Anyway, any chance we can delete all the posts that don't relate to this thread seeing as most of them are either trolling or nonsense in relation to the thread subject.

[Dogg Thang]

I have one major one that really bugs me - Peppa Pig on the DS. It has a stupid amount of logos before getting anywhere near actually playing anything. No, I'm not playing Peppa Pig but my daughter does and has nowhere near the patience of an adult or the understanding of why she has to wait for logos she cares nothing about.

Anyone involved in making a game based on a preschool show should know that their target audience don't wait well.

But I must admit this is something that bugs me in any game. Who honestly wants to sit through company logos? It's a complete indulgence on the part of those responsible and to make them unskippable actually tells me that the companies I'm looking at don't actually have my best interests at heart. If they did, they'd let me get to the game as quickly as possible.

Another gripe on the subject - those games that make you select options like language every time they load up, getting you through intro screens and then asking if you want to load your profile. If they checked for a saved profile immediately, they'd know what language you want.

[prinnysquad]

Take the lowest point you have ever reached in your gaming life. Dig five miles deeper and you'll find FamMyDoDD playing the Hannah Montana game.

I don't mind those games where they have 3 or 4 intro screens, like the develepoer, then the publisher, then the bollocksware, then whatever else - as long as you can hammer a button and they immediately move on. I can't think what games allow you to do this, but they do exist, and all parties should be satisfied to an extent. The dev/pub/whoever have their name on screen, seen by the gamer, even if only for a second. I, the gamer, can skip past all that with a few speedy button presses. Like most, though, I can't abide the startup screens where you've got unskippable, set-time expose-me-dos for all the creators.

It's counterproductive.
If I can skip through them all, I will notice who they are and think (especially if it's a decent game), hmm, thank you gamer's friend - I'm impressed. Even if only on a subconscious level, I do know the creators by about the third bootup.
If I can't skip them - if they're forced upon me, I either sod off and do something else, totally ignoring them, or sit grumbling and cursing these damn fools wasting my precious gaming time.

[cutmymilk]

I agree. I like GTA4 myself, where they are all essentially loading screens .