Sun 8 Jun 2008
Its MGS4 week, for many fans (yours truly included) we have been waiting with great anticipation what could be the greatest game in the series that created the stealth genre. Yet with metacritics already reviewing it at 95% with 10 early reviews, people have been going around now complaining about the mandatory installs that may take up to 15 minutes in games like Devil May Cry 4, GT5P and now MGS4. Its become such an issue in fact, that Konami went as far as as listing the mandatory install as forbidden to be spoken about in the press’ reviews. In all fairness to Konami, they have taken back that ridiuculous restriction, but what I want to know is why on earth is this an issue?!!?
We have been installing games in our PCs since we got them, and game developers have been complaining of the lack of hard disk space on the 360 making it impossible to have an install! And I don’t know about you but when I played Baldur’s Gate oh so long ago, I chose the longer full install to not have to swap discs and for better loading speeds. Fans have been waiting 19 months since the PS3 came out to get their hands on this game, having to install it for 10 minutes won’t make us change our minds about purchasing it… Especially if it means getting faster loading times. To all ye Nay sayers out there, I will quote Capcom producers who responded to people’s complaints about install time for devil may cry 4, “If you don’t want to watch the ‘Previously, on Devil May Cry…’ portion of the install process, go make a sandwich and a grab a soda, then come back”
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June 8th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Although I don’t care about MGS4 at all and think it’s totally over-hyped, I do share your opinion on the over-reaction to loading times. I just simply don’t understand what the big deal is about at all. I understand that when people pop a game in they want to be able to play it right away, but with the PS3’s slow 2X drive, games need to be installed or we’re looking at ridiculous loading times.
For more details on loading speeds and comparisons between the 360’s 12x DVD drive and the PS3’s 2X Blu-Ray drive, check out this great article:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/1/17/6658
June 9th, 2008 at 12:12 am
For me, it isnt about the load times. It’s about the fact that if you are a gamer and own 10+ games you have to worry about HD space. Thats not including the “casual” gamer who bought a ps3 and assumed that it will work the same as his ps2
June 9th, 2008 at 9:22 am
You know I didn’t actually consider that Jeremy. Still, it’s more of an annoyance than anything else. It almost feels like a step back to old PC days when I had a 640 MB Hard Disk and could only have 2-3 games installed at a time.
Since the save games are stored separately, this mostly means that you’d have to uninstall old games to install new ones. It’ll be more of a pain to people who play a lot of games (and isn’t that who you should make even more happy?)