The inexorable march of progress in video game technology. More pixels! Less jaggy edges! Visuals that take us closer than ever before to the quality of a 2004 Square Enix CGI rendered movie but in real-time gameplay! Most important of all, however, is that loading screens are almost a relic of the past. Sure, there’s always the starting load, but in most games now, once you’re in you’re in. It’s worth the 30 second wait to get going on a game.
Did I say 30 seconds? I meant nearly five minutes, in case you were thinking of quickly hopping into a session of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3. Eurogamer got their hands on a PlayStation 4 version of the game, and they found that on average that it would take 4 minutes and 50 seconds to from menu to actual in-game action.
This isn’t an isolated instance, as GameSpot also reported that they’d felt the sting of a five minute loading screen. Replying to a query from GameSpot, a representative from Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 developer CI games said that the team was well aware of “long initial loading times”, but that this was to ensure that the world available for players would “shorten any loading times during missions, respawns, and fast-travel to a minimum”. Which should translate into fast-point travel times of 4-15 seconds and checkpoint reloads of between 15-30 seconds.
Ultimately we feel like this inconvenience is rewarded with a comfortable experience once the game is loaded
Well alright then. Mind you, this is only for the PlayStation 4 edition of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, as the game also launches today on PC and Xbox One. Does a long loading time lessen the broad appeal of a game? Not really, but at least there’s a silver lining to this. Eurogamer reckons that you can do a few laps of Mario Kart while waiting, whereas I’m pretty certain that the dreaded piss-break that rears its ugly head and need to actually hit the head right when you start a game, will be mitigated somewhat by this feature.
See? There’s always a bright side.
Last Updated: April 25, 2017
TJames47
April 25, 2017 at 11:00
After recently playing Fallout 4 I welcome this approach. Id rather wait 20 min for a initial loading screen then hundreds of in game 1min long loading screens.
Lu
April 25, 2017 at 11:52
I had that problem when I started modding Fallout 4. Chucking it on an ssd makes the load times near instant
Gounder
April 26, 2017 at 23:00
Agreed. I am playing SGW 3 on an solid drive and the game loads very fast for me. SSD should be a standard nowadays
Robert
April 27, 2017 at 01:50
You’re right, I use SSD as well, so I can’t complain about loading time. And the game is good.
Draco Lusus
April 25, 2017 at 12:20
“Feature” yeeeah, no.