Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2's Install Doesn't Suck

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2's Install Doesn't Suck

One thing that gamers love to complain about regarding PS3 games is the system's need to install content before playing - but if more developers took the Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 approach, maybe it wouldn't be such a pain anymore

[viddler=b2536ded]

Now the PS3 has a lot going for it - it's powerful, it's finally got a library of good games under its belt, and it can cook a lean cut of hamburger and get rid of all the grease - but one thing that it's had going against it since the beginning has been the install times. Before you play a PS3 game, you have to go through the install process, whereas the Xbox 360 just lets you plug in and play. The new iteration of the PS3 may reduce these install times [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94388-PS3-Slim-Install-Times-Shorter-Than-PS3-Fats], but it hasn't eliminated them entirely.

Naturally, developers try to hide these with cool graphics like Solid Snake having a smoke break in Metal Gear Solid 4, or suggesting that gamers go make a sandwich and have a drink (or posted on PlayStation Blog [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/2/6/], Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Producer Yosuke Hayashi walks us through some of the game, including an interesting take on the PS3 install: How about actually doing something with it?

When you install Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, you get... well, the game's Prologue, titled "The Vampire War." It's a digital comic that takes place immediately before the game's story takes place. For fans, it's a look at the characters of Sigma 2 being badass, and for people who haven't played the first games (like yours truly), it's a quick way to bring them up to speed on the characters and events of the series thus far. So rather than just rolling their eyes at another loading screen, the gamer gets something actually useful and relevant (and cool)!

There's ten minutes of Ninja Gaiden in the video beyond that look at the install, and it's what you'd expect: Awesome ninjas, ridiculous enemies, and bouncy breasts that can be controlled with the Sixaxis [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94494-Ninja-Gaiden-2-to-Support-Sixaxis-for-T-A]. But really, if the industry takes anything away from this video, it should be this: "Do something with your damned install times."

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 ships worldwide two weeks from now.

(Via CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=223648?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-General-RSS])

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ae86gamer

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Mar 10, 2009
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Xvito said:
Naaaw, I was hoping for jiggly-effects...
Like This? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw_-4VJ4zn4&feature=popt14us0a]

Anyways, that's cool I guess. Fans of the series will appreciate it.

[sup]I'm not a fan.[/sup]
 

ratix2

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Feb 6, 2008
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kinda good i guess, but as a pc gamer ive never really understood why people ***** about the installs. most of them take around 5 minutes and its usually pretty easy to find something to do to kill 5 minutes.
 

cleverlymadeup

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Mar 7, 2008
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seems like a pretty darn cool game, got the first one but haven't finished it, got annoyed at playing the game and haven't really gone back

will probly get this one, if only for the jiggly features in it
 

jamesworkshop

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ratix2 said:
kinda good i guess, but as a pc gamer ive never really understood why people ***** about the installs. most of them take around 5 minutes and its usually pretty easy to find something to do to kill 5 minutes.
Because We have Pr0n and hardware capable of multi tasking
 

hansari

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jamesworkshop said:
kinda good i guess, but as a pc gamer ive never really understood why people ***** about the installs....
How do you know pc game install times are similar to ps3 install times?
 

Treblaine

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Jul 25, 2008
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ratix2 said:
kinda good i guess, but as a pc gamer ive never really understood why people ***** about the installs. most of them take around 5 minutes and its usually pretty easy to find something to do to kill 5 minutes.
Well you can't actually do anything while installing on PS3. Even this comic is just a passive experience, unlike a PC which has a lot of overhead processing power and memory, you can pretty much do what you like as a game installs.

But why are we even comparing a PS3 to PC, shouldn't we compare PS3 to 360 since they are both consoles? Why do so many PS3 games REQUIRE installs for the game to even function while still having slower loading times than on 360 which doesn't require a single game to have an pre-cache install. I know there may be a specific technical reason but I am talking fundamentally, why is it that the PS3 that came out a year after the 360 struggling in this area at all?
 

thenumberthirteen

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Dec 19, 2007
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Finally. I'm not a console developer, but thre must be at least enough power to play a video during installs/long loading screens. Maybe a small mini-game or something? I Had DBZ Budokai 2 where you rotated the analogue sticks to move and spin a little guy around during loading screens. It was good practice for the moves where you had to spin the analogue sticks to charge up an attack (FYI I still have a blister from that game despite I only renting it, and that was on release!).
 

sunpop

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Install times now no or very reduced load times later is a fair trade and how impatient do you have to be to not be able to wait a few minutes before you play your game why not use that time to piss get a drink and bar off your room to be left alone while you play the new game?
 

ZeroKadaver

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Mar 29, 2008
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Install WOW... point made. Mentioning from a technical standpoint one should not mess with a computer while it is installing anything for a prolonged period of time, computers have a lot of processing power now but they are not infallible.
 

ratix2

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Treblaine said:
ratix2 said:
kinda good i guess, but as a pc gamer ive never really understood why people ***** about the installs. most of them take around 5 minutes and its usually pretty easy to find something to do to kill 5 minutes.
Well you can't actually do anything while installing on PS3. Even this comic is just a passive experience, unlike a PC which has a lot of overhead processing power and memory, you can pretty much do what you like as a game installs.

But why are we even comparing a PS3 to PC, shouldn't we compare PS3 to 360 since they are both consoles? Why do so many PS3 games REQUIRE installs for the game to even function while still having slower loading times than on 360 which doesn't require a single game to have an pre-cache install. I know there may be a specific technical reason but I am talking fundamentally, why is it that the PS3 that came out a year after the 360 struggling in this area at all?
well unfortuanetly, what you and the other person who quoted my post kind of misunderstood, im NOT talking about doing something on the computer or the ps3, but finding SOMETHING to do, ie, get something to eat, have a smoke, whatever. really its not hard to find something to do during these install times. with the pc most installs take in the 10+ minute range, but for the ps3 rarely do they go above 5-8 minutes.

the reason for the required installs and slow read times is the blu-ray drive. the blu-ray drive in the ps3 is rather slow when compared to blu-ray drives available for the pc which read and write at up to 8x speeds, whereas the one in the ps3 is limited to 2x read speeds (or about 9 megabits per second transfer rate). in comparison the dvd drive in the 360 has a transfer rate of over 40 megabits per second as dvd drives are much older and have higher read/write speeds. if you could install the entire game instead of just a small portion of it on the ps3 and used a fast ssd or a 10k rpm drive then loading times would actually be faster on the ps3, but the trade off is that a lot of disc space would be used up as many ps3 devs DONT compress the data as they dont need to (even though compressing data does increase loading speeds and has only a minor effect on the quality of data being compressed these days).
 

sanzo

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Jan 21, 2009
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ae86gamer said:
Xvito said:
Naaaw, I was hoping for jiggly-effects...
Like This? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw_-4VJ4zn4&feature=popt14us0a]

Anyways, that's cool I guess. Fans of the series will appreciate it.

[sup]I'm not a fan.[/sup]
Lawl
The music makes that commercial epic :D
 

traceur_

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Feb 19, 2009
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Wait... people actually complain about the install times? Jesus Christ how fucking impatient are these people?
 

Sebenko

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Dec 23, 2008
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Silly console gamers. Don't you have a tasty snack on hand? A book? internet? wibble?
 

Pimppeter2

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Dec 31, 2008
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Thats pretty cool. But I continuing my mudcrab genocide campaign during the load times more