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I do remember the days when you bought a game and had to manually futz with IRQs and ports and loading things into extended/expanded memory and it's sure better now. But I'm a platform whore. How's that working out for me?
Note that these are heavily influenced by expectations - I expect a downloadable PC game to require an overnight download, but not a console disk. Also, this has nothing to do with whether I like the game once I start playing, just how annoying it is to get to the point where you can start playing.
Crysis 2 - PC - Amazon
Initial: Bought from Amazon sale. 9 GB download, runs overnight. Load it, apparently there's a hires texture pack and DX11 pack. Another hour. I do realize it was nice of Crytek to provide these later for free, but the customer experience sucks.
Subsequent: Over a minute of unskippable videos every time I run the game. I fix this with an .ini file edit, but that's outside the normal experience. Login screen for their social crap I have to skip every time I launch the game. Never fixed that.
Personal launch rating: C+
Bastion - PC - Steam
Initial: Quick download, 10 minutes or so. DX9 install - all my monitors flickering black for a while, XNLA install, unskippable startup logos. Very nice! Is it sad I consider this very nice?
Subsequent: DX9 install - all my monitors flickering black for a while, unskippable startup logos. This is no longer very nice.
Personal launch rating: B
Batman : Arkham City - PC - Steam
Initial: Couple hours download, install. Need to install Games for Windows Live. Need you to log into that. Need you to activate the game key. I honestly forget the whole sequence here, but there was some horrible stupid interaction between GFWL and the game activation that made in an Event just to launch the game. In a bad way.
Subsequent: Log into GFWL every damn time.
Personal launch rating: C-
Gears of War 3 - XBox 360
Initial: Console boots to 'Play the game', since I have it set up to not autolaunch. Hit A, game runs. A few logos.
Subsequent: Boot the console, hit A. Sit through the logos. Once, a mandatory 15 minute system update.
Personal launch rating: A-
Xenoblade Chronicles - Wii
Initial: Console boots to main menu, Wiimote to choose the game in upper left, A. A to confirm launch. A to confirm I'm not a dumbass who will fling the Wiimote through the TV.
Subsequent: No difference.
Personal launch rating: A
Journey - PS3
Initial: Mandatory half hour system update, half hour game download (expected), hit X to go.
Subsequent: PS3 boots to PSN menu, have to go searching for the game. Which then launches fairly quickly.
Personal launch rating: C
Uncharted 3 - PS3
Initial: Console boots to crossbar, game is nowhere to be seen. Apparently Sony wants me to log into PSN. I find it the game a few clicks left and one down. Mandatory update. 20 minutes later it's done.
Subsequent: PS3 always boots to somewhere that isn't 'play the game'.
Personal launch rating: D (it will reluctantly play the game, so it's not an F)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 - Nintendo DS
Initial: Boot, hit A, start
Subsequent: Boot, hit A, start
Personal launch rating: A
Tiny Wings - iOS
Initial: Hit purchase app. Enter password. 5 minute download. Go.
Subsequent: Hit the icon, near instant load. Occasionally updates itself, but that's background.
Personal launch rating: A
Jelly Defense - Android
Initial: Hit purchase app. Sorry, WiFi only download even though you have gigabytes left on your data plan. Okay, 10 minutes later it's installed, launches fairly quick.
Subsequent: Occasionally it updates itself, but that's in the background. Launch is quick.
Personal launch rating: B
Gun Bros - Android
Initial: Free purchase, 3 MB download (couple seconds). Oops, Open Feint spyware. Delete.
Subsequent: No
Personal launch rating: F-
But most users don't care about Open Feint, so this would probably be a B or A- for most of them.
Summary
PC: you are definitely looking at delayed initial gratiification, unless you're lucky enough to get one of the big ticket items that lets you preload, or if the game is small enough that the download time is negligible. Unskippable loading screens seem to be mandatory, and it's expected you will Google (TM) how to disable this by text ediiting an ini file. Every time I see the unskippable NVIDIA: THE WAY IT'S MEANT TO BE PLAYED BRO movie I want to slap Jen-Hsun.
Games for Windows Live is an abomination.
Wii: paranoid disclaimer crap because Americans are stupid, but to launch you point the Wiimote to the upper left and hit A. There used to be system updates, but I haven't had one recently. Some people might see this as stagnation, I see it as an improvement.
XBox 360: has the rare update, but generally it launches the game in the drive or you hit A to launch the game in the drive.
Nintendo DS: generally lets you get where you're going with just hitting A.
PS3: doesn't even want you to play the game. You have to go searching for it. Expect that you can't play a game for the first time without an update of the system or the game.
iOS and Android: pretty much buy and go except for the occasional WiFi only stupidity. No wonder they're eating your lunch.
3DS and Vita: I don't have these - what's the score here?
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Let’s add to the list of offences:
1. A forced four second splash screen showing off the video codec used for cut-scenes. Why does the player care about this? It’s doubly annoying because you know this is used to ensure that the cut-scenes you don’t care about are as long as possible for a given storage space!
2. On starting a game a pre-rendered cutscene is played (usually outstaying its welcome). When it finishes the game starts to load, suggesting that you will get to play. However, once the game is loaded, you are treated to in-game cutscenes and/or sequences with very minimal interactivity (e.g. you get to look around). This is just a slap in the face. (In the most dire cases, this is followed by more pre-rendered cutscenes.)
Reviewers need to start lowering scores for this bullshit.
If you're going to rate down digitally distributed games for having to download them, then to be consistent, shouldn't you rate down retail games for having to either order them or drive to the store to buy them? i.e. penalizing a game for either is ridiculous. Especially since the level of inconvenience of each can vary drastically from person to person. For example, I have fast download speeds but the nearest store that sells video games is a good 40-45 minute drive away (one-way) so it's more convenient for me to buy digital copies of games I want 99% of the time.
I do agree with you that starting a game and having to wait a minute or two while the game loads & throws a million splash screens at you is highly annoying though.