"Come onnnnnnnnn"

[DaiSuki]

I don't think we've had this one before... perhaps there's a good reason for that, but I'm gonna go for it anyway.

We've all been there, sitting in front of the telly and hammering madly between the Start and A buttons... nothing to do with playing games, just to do with trying to get the damn things started. Which game bothers you the most with long and unskippable publisher and developer credits, menu screens, etc?

I don't mean unskippable FMVs, or intro sequences that you have to watch - I mean actual menu screens, or credits at the start. My vote goes for Monkeyball and Monkeyball 2... after the fast paced nature of the game, when you finally run out of monkeys the length of time it takes to get through "game over", "you got x play points", "autosaving", back to the main menu, through the slow animated menus back towards challenge mode.... gaaahhhhh. At least it saves your choices so you can just click through it, I suppose. Illustrating the publisher and developer credits, MSR and PGR were terrible... it felt like months waiting for that Bizarre Creations logo to go away.

Oh, and there's more... an associated topic. Which game most badly needed a "quick restart level" option? I'm going back to Dreamcast days... Hydro Thunder. You messed up at the start of the level, it took the best part of two minutes to get back to it due to dodgy slow menus (again) and terrible loading times. It really, really needed "Restart" between Continue and Quit on the pause menu.

[nips]

The start of Rogue Leader (GC) - 'COME ONNNNNNNNNN'

Drove me MAD!

[FelixofMars]

Dam you, Games Designers who don't have skip buttons in your FMV/cutscenes, I will hunt you down!

[Ish]

What bugs me in most games these days is the number of company logos we have to sit through to get started - movie style in many way (you know the thing - oooo look how clever we are here's our company name in a CGI sequence). So annoying.

Developers, publishers and middleware vendors need to realise that games aren't movies. Sure - you want your credit. And deservedly so. But unlike movies a game is something you load up every evening and maybe severa ltimes a day at weekends. Usually you can skip each section - I start hammering buttons the moment games start up these days. But all the same... come on!

[Mayhem]

Burnout 2 on GC. Think that's the longest set of screens I've seen without being able to bypass them

[King_of_Hyrule]

Burnout 2 on GC. Think that's the longest set of screens I've seen without being able to bypass them

I agree. That and Finding Nemo for GameCube, (which I rented). Once you boot up the GameCube disc, the first thing you?ll see is a ?Loading? screen, with Nemo swimming in place. Why you have to go through loading screens to get through the publisher and developer names is beyond me. After the credits roll, you?ll then get another screen. But no, it?s not a welcome title screen with options like most games have, not at all, it?s another Loading screen. OK, fine; after you select whether or not you want to start a new game or load up a previous one, you get yet another loading screen before the level select comes up. Then, once you select your level and watch a short clip from the movie, guess what comes up next. Can you? Yep, another loading screen, and this one is twice as long as the others. One screen clocked in at an amazing two minutes! Why?!

It just took so damn long to get to the actual gameplay, which ended up sucking anyway.

[revisedgenocide]

Unreal championship on the xbox. Why do i have to sit through overly long developer/publisher animated logos until i can skip the dreadfull cutscene? Strangely enough im sure it used to let me skip them.

Amped-Losts of mini menus that make a crunching sound every time you make a selection. Plus my copy is bugged slightly, meaning the menu will sometimes freeze for 5 seconds before moving on.

Socom- Published by scee-----developed by zipper interactive. Yes yes i know. I knew the first time i read it and i dont want to be reminded of it every time i load the sodding game up.

[Max M]

The whole Playstation 2 frontend gets on my nerves to be honest. It just takes ages to go through all the "Sony Computer Entertainment" stuff and all the flashy effects. Then it tends to take ages to load each disk. The Xbox Live boot sequence seems to take ages to get through as well (The bit on the dashboard).

At least with my GameCube and Dreamcast I can just pop in a disk and go. The Sega Swirl and the dropping Cube's are very quick. Minimalist.

[Ish]

On a more positive note to my previous post in this thread:

No One Lives Forever 2There's nothing to it really. Just menus. But the colours are so bright and vibrant and well contrasted. Superb.

HaloI love the gregorian chanting. Beautiful.

CivilisationA bizarre one to most I'm sure. But seeing the game started and going through the menu's to start a new game I know I'm looking at as long as I can keep awake of gaming oblivion ahead of me. And thats heartening.

Any Japanese imported titleThe mystery of the menus... working out whats what.... what option means what. Its just that new game feeling.

[nips]

Halo I love the gregorian chanting. Beautiful.

If all game started like this I would be happy. My friends say that levels can take a while to loads of the discs, but the start up sequence is fine. You can skip all that you want, and what you see is pretty cool anyway.

Very nice!

[overlord uk]

HaloI love the gregorian chanting. Beautiful.

Halo's menus are nice and simple, don't take more than a split second to change after a button press, and have the ringworld arcing away into the distance in the background. Not only that, but Halo's superb musical score plays three or four tracks. Halo in my oppinion, is how you do a good menu system.

I think PGR is probably the worst offender that I own, perhaps with JSRF coming a close second due to the unskippable "This game contains naughty things" screen.

What annoys me most are the animated menus that you can't skip. Once you've seen all of the whizzbang special animations and so on, they just get annoying. I can't think of any off hand, but they get on my nerves.

[Crisp_Rapper]

Unreal championship on the xbox. Why do i have to sit through overly long developer/publisher animated logos until i can skip the dreadfull cutscene? Strangely enough im sure it used to let me skip them.

Amped-Losts of mini menus that make a crunching sound every time you make a selection. Plus my copy is bugged slightly, meaning the menu will sometimes freeze for 5 seconds before moving on.

yep to both of those... on occasion UC lets you skip, and on others it doesn't. highly annoying.

and Amped? what's with the big ass pauses every now and again? it just holds on certain screens.

[FelixofMars]

The team Viewtiful logo for VJ is very pretty plus you can skip it, its perfect.

[Brats]

Eye Toy. A wonderful concept with a attrocious front end. Not only does it have stupid "Are you sure? Yes/No" questions, but you're required to wave your hand over the Yes/No buttons for ages.

Simply replaying a game again is a total chore. Returning to the menu screen ane choosing a different game is brain numbing.

[Fuddle]

replays in racing games bug the hell out of me....i never ever watch them

it seems that practically all racers instantly go to a replay after a race.
pause
quit
yes i really do want to quit
no i dont want to save it
yes i'm sure
arrrGHHHH...just go to the next god damn race already.