Your take on "Press start" to start game screen

I thought the whole idea behind this was to enter "codes" for games.......but no...not any more......

 

Quite handy when you are in hurry to toilet.

"Where's the button to pause??? Ahhhh!"

 

That, at its most fundamental level, is meant to be an error dialog in case the save operation failed for some reason, which is entirely possible, but not terribly likely. It's borne of much the same history that gave us "Are you sure you want to do what you selected?" windows. There are also a whole bunch of weird TRCs regarding UI...

 

The whole concept of the Start screen is that there is a point at which you are not playing the game, and the game will then enter a demo mode, occasionally returning to the Start screen to invite you to start the game. I think this originates a long way back from the Arcades, and is useful for demo purposes as well (nice screen at demo stands and such at fairs, etc.)

Besides you'd still get to experience it, in the sense that the game doesn't have to even show the Start screen (which is part of what this thread is about) because it knows that you're holding the controller (unless of course you have very steady hands)..

 

It's not just that. I think it's also a confirmation of that it is now again safe to accidentally tip your console off the table, plug in that wet hairdrier, and so on, as that dangerous, vulnerable period of file IO has passed. That said, I wouldn't mind to see the 'press back to continue' option in PSP and PS3 games go and instead just immediately see the save screen close and return to the game.

 

It's simple, the "Press Start to begin" screen is there for you to indicate which one of your controllers is the one you're going to use to control the game.

"Press Start" screens also supposed to respond to the A button as well.

 

You could just have the message pop up and go away after a second. What I would also like to see is "Press A To Advance Dialogue" go away, which still pops up in RPGs...which is especially annoying when you end up pressing the button 20-30 times to get through a whole cutscene! I realize not everyone reads at the same pace, but no one is going to take ten minutes to read four lines of text.

 

if the hardware engineers went through the trouble of putting a Start button on the controller its pretty obvious you MUST make use of it.

now this i dont agree with. People read at many different levels (from kids to adults), unless they set a timer that was obscenely long and forced you to wait anyway it wouldnt work. This is something that has annoyed me to no end with movies every once in awhile. Trying to read text, usually text that is way too small, and it fades out when im 2/3 of the way through.

 

Pause Menu says "Hi"...

And personally I hate the start menu. Shit takes long enough to boot up as it is. I like to put a game in and go get something to drink before I sit down. You come back and have to hit start and wait for it to load some more. It makes no sense. All game systems have profiles. Put the game in, it boots, loads last used save tied to player profile, and your in the game. Streamlined with no bs filler.

Then you need to get to menu use the pause. You can load another save from there if you want. Its not like you wasted any time because you would have needed to hit start and load it anyway. And 9/10 you want to use your last save anyway therefore it probably more than weighs itself out.

Games with multiplayer should just load to a main menu with a continue option that loads last used save.

 

That is what I remember that the Call of Duty PC games have and I liked it. Every game with Single Player mode should have that.