Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1

[Shamus Young]

Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1

Not everyone has the kind of endurance it takes to play the Crysis demo.

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[The Rogue Wolf]

It's bad enough when it's the demo. When it's the ACTUAL RETAIL GAME? It makes me want to reach through the Internet and squeeze the throat of whatever marketing genius decided we need to be advertised to every time we start up their game.

Thank heavens for editable config files!

 

[Theissen]

To add to the injury, I can't even skip the movie. My Crysis takes like 5 minutes to start. Needless to say it's collecting dust now.

 

[pseudoidiot]

They should put these ads in Commander Keen. Because that's someone who needs to upgrade.

Haha. Hilarious.

 

[Abedeus]

You have obviously never player Warhammer Online.

At least a minute before you get through the ads, then more loading. Yeah, it doesn't load during the cutscenes...

 

[Brotherofwill]

That's longer than it takes to reboot my computer

Well then you obviously don't have vista, I could go grocery shopping during the start up loading times.

 

[CitizenMac]

Huh. And here I was thinking of buying Crysis 'cause I found it with a 15? price tag. Getting second thoughts now.

 

[badsectoracula]

Crysis isn't the second coming, but its not a bad game either. If you won't be playing in 1min sessions, this shouldn't matter much.

Although these 'splashes' are annoying. I don't mind them telling me that they're proud of their engine or their connections with nvidia or intel or whatever, as long as they don't block my game. Why can't they put these somewhere in a menu background or something. You know: this pointless movie many games show at the left or right side of a game. Well replace it with another pointless movie that show your logos. I don't mind them, but i do mind looking a bunch of logos without the ability to proceed to the game.

 

[paketep]

Skipping with the spacebar is no excuse either.

All those POS videos should be skippable with ANY key or a mouse click, and then never played again unless you click in some "Intro" button in the menu.

Especially Crytek's. I have enough already listening to Cevat Yerli's deranged comments every 2 months.

 

[Tiamat666]

I feel your pain.

If publishers don't revise their unskippable splash & ad screen policy, I'm going to die from a heart attack before I'm 30.

 

[Danny Ocean]

I feel your pain.

If publishers don't revise their unskippable splash & ad screen policy, I'm going to die from a heart attack before I'm 30.

I know, right?

Why do they bother trying to sell their game to us when we already have the game?

 

[johnman]

I did'nt notice these, i was too busy reading the manuel.

 

[lesterley]

Unskippable splash screens are akin to showing advertisements before a movie. You're essentially a captive audience.

I absolutely hate both.

But at least your comic made me laugh about it. Good work, Shamus!

Leslee

 

[Veloxyll]

I feel your pain.

If publishers don't revise their unskippable splash & ad screen policy, I'm going to die from a heart attack before I'm 30.

I know, right?

Why do they bother trying to sell their game to us when we already have the game?

To influence pirates to buy the game I guess! I would like to know why I can't press escape ONCE to skip the logos, then once more to skip the intros. (not counting movie style intros like Westwood tends to put in).

But, I've downloaded a demo: presumedly I know about the game a little and I want to try the it before I part with my money. LET ME SKIP THE INTRO, and don't give me "oh, you can skip with spacebar." I have other games that can occupy my time, I don't really feel like playing 20 questions with my keyboard to skip some adverts, either any key skips, or the escape key, those are your choices.

Or even worse, I've parted with $110 of my skinny Australian Dollars, spent 20 minutes INSTALLING THE DAMN THING, and now, every time I get the urge to open the game, it spends 2 minutes telling me who made it. I do not care who made it. When I click my NWN2 button, it is not because I want to see the ad for Bioware, it is because I want to...play NWN2. I in fact, paid $90 (+~$100 in expansions) for the privilege of playing NWN2, not watch ads!
Your game does not load instantly though, that's fine. this means you can put in a splash screen with the game title with all the developers and sponsors logos arrayed around it. This gets me playing quicker, and still gets your logos in my face WITHOUT making me RAGE.

Ahem.

 

[Robyrt]

Remember when Commander Keen had splash screens telling you to upgrade? The demo would tell you that Episode 3 had "SMOOTH SCROLLING 256 COLOR GRAPHICS" which was pretty sweet at the time.

 

[oneplus999]

Has anyone seen anyone other than EA pull this shit? I've noticed it in Battlefield 1942 and Mirror's Edge, too. It makes me feel like they just don't value my time. Fortunately, as someone mentioned, you can usually do a small hack to get rid of it. In BF1942, there was a flag you could add to the game shortcut to make it skip. It's still ridiculous though.

 

[Liverandbacon]

That's longer than it takes to reboot my computer

Well then you obviously don't have vista, I could go grocery shopping during the start up loading times.

That's odd. I have Vista, and my PC gets to the point where I'm browsing the internet in around 45 seconds from initial power-button pressing. And I have quite a few of programs that run at startup.

 

[headshotcatcher]

Has anyone seen anyone other than EA pull this shit? I've noticed it in Battlefield 1942 and Mirror's Edge, too. It makes me feel like they just don't value my time. Fortunately, as someone mentioned, you can usually do a small hack to get rid of it. In BF1942, there was a flag you could add to the game shortcut to make it skip. It's still ridiculous though.

I think you can do that with all games. -intro I think?