The "Loading..." Awards

[Onyx Oblivion]

[HEADING=1]Categories:[/HEADING]

Worst Loading to Gameplay Ratio: Given to games where the amount of time spent loading is large considering the amount of time spent playing

My nominee: Forza 3. Some races are less than 3 minutes, and it can take up to a minute to load the freaking race. On the plus side, it doesn't reload if you restart the race.
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Best Loading to Gameplay Ratio: Opposite the last catagory.

My nominee: GTA games. Big load at the start, no loading times for anything other than cutscenes otherwise.
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Most Out-Of-Place Loading: Badly-placed loading screens/bars go here.

My Nominee: The Orange Box. Great game collection, more than made up for the sudden loading bars that popped up. But still...
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Best Use of Loading Screen: Whatever the game does to entertain you in loading screens. Usually tips, or a tiny minigame, or player stats.

My Nominee: Bayonetta. Being able to practice your combos in a combo-intensive game is always a good thing. Especially with helpful button input lists.

Honorable Mention: The only good thing about "Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad" was the loading screen, where you slice up cute little zombies.
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Worst Loading Screens: Loading screens that suck.

My Nominee: Lots of games. Anything that hides loading behind a boring, black screen, without even so much as a spinning icon, bar, or LOADING... on the screen.
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Worst Attempts to Disguise Loading: Bad attempts to "secretly" load the game, making it painfully obvious that its loading.

My Nominee: Mass Effect's famed elevator rides. At least the team conversations and radio announcements kept them interesting, rather than totally boring.
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Best Hidden Loading: Opposite the last category.

My Nominee: Unknown, they did it so well, I failed to notice.
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Any nominations, opinions, or category ideas? Praise, criticism, or comments?

 

[BlackJack47]

I can only think of two.

Best Use of Loading Screen

My Nominee: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
An awesome video and its just Snake smoking!


Worst Attempts to Disguise Loading:

My Nominee: Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
It boasted having no loading screens, instead a silly animation of your avatar throwing to board to himself.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Dragon Age could get pretty bad when you had to travel from place to place, and even then, it wouldn't be done loading.

Oblivion and I have a love/hate relationship because it would often crash when trying to load up the game, even when I was just going into a house. This happened most noticably in the Shivering Isles.

The Darkness' were entertaining, but more than a few times, the 'entertainment' portion of the loading would run out before the game was actually done loading, proceeding to go to a very ugly, grey screen with a simple 'LOADING' bar. Made me sad. =[

 

[TheNamlessGuy]

DELETED

 

[DazZ.]

Worst Loading to Gamplay Ratio:
Oblivion

Really? I found Oblivion loaded really quick, it loaded a lot but it usually just flashed the screen.
I also played stealthily so I wasn't charging through the areas so I suppose times were further apart.

Worst loading screen:
Any game that has a loading bar and then shows a loading screen.
I know there was one, I just can't remember what it was, it annoyed me immensely that it said loading, then a loading screen came up after it had loaded.

 

[Sassafrass]

My pick for worse loading times: Forza 3 and Dragon Age: Origins.
Both are reaaaaaaaaaaly long. I installed DA: O to the 360's HDD and it seems to take longer and glitch more.

And a new category: Pointless loading of a loading screen.
This goes to any Smackdown! game. It had a blank loading screen so it could load a picture for it's next loading screen. Hurrah(!)

 

[UltimateZ]

Worst loading time ever in a game: Sonic 06. Anyone who tells you differently either never played it before, or is lying. Some dudes on the Something Awful forums did a Let's Play of the game, recording their total times to beat the game, literally 2 of their 20 hours were spent through loading screens.

I know one of the Tony Hawk games tried to disguise it's loading by making you skate through empty areas to get to the next section.

 

[FolkLikePanda]

WWF Smackdown Just Bring (I was 7!) It took quite a while to load up and save.

 

[MR T3D]

Worst loading time ever in a game: Sonic 06. Anyone who tells you differently either never played it before, or is lying. Some dudes on the Something Awful forums did a Let's Play of the game, recording their total times to beat the game, literally 2 of their 20 hours were spent through loading screens.

I know one of the Tony Hawk games tried to disguise it's loading by making you skate through empty areas to get to the next section.

saw that LP of sonic06, lulz@loads.
best use: test drive on the ps2/xbox, you played PONG against the computer while loading.

 

[magicmonkeybars]

Vampire the masquerade bloodlines has very long very frequent loading screens but they give you some lore so it's not pretentious at least.

 

[open trap]

I just played Half Life 2 and noticed the randome loading sreens. I then got stuck and played portal.

 

[hotdogoctopus]

I can only think of two.

Best Use of Loading Screen

My Nominee: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
An awesome video and its just Snake smoking!

As much as I love MGS4, fuck that sir.

The next set of big-ass games like MGS4 should be on solid state thumbdrives or sumthing. You know, come full circle back into super-advanced cartridges. Hideo Kojima would never pass up an oppurtunity to name his product the 'solid snake' drive.

 

[Chrono180]

Lifetime achievements: Everquest.

 

[Dark Knifer]

Force unleashed had alot of loading screens. I mean, it had to load just for the pause menu, that annoyed me alot.

 

[LivingInStereo]

The Metroid Prime games do a pretty good job of concealing the "loading screen"-it isn't a screen per se, but you're not doing anything other than waiting for the door.

 

[Bloody Crimson]

Most games I play....they get the "Bland Screen" award because it's a black screen then I'd look in the lower right corner of the screen--the last place I look--says in glowy white letters "Now Loading" or "Please Wait".