Waiting to load

[Graustein]

Some games have a bit of downtime in them, such as long loading times, unskippable cinematics you've seen 50 times, bits where you need to spam the same button for a lengthy period of time, stuff like that. I'm one of those people who NEEDS something to do pretty much all the time, so I've found numerous ways to entertain myself for the one or two minutes of downtime.

For example, I'm playing Diablo 2, my Sorceress has killed all the enemies and needs 2 minutes to recharge her Mana, and I can't be stuffed chugging a Mana potion, which I prefer to keep for battle. So what do I do in those 2 minutes? I open up my DS and clear a floor in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon! By the time I look up, my Mana globe is full and I can resume my rampage.

Related to this, I often play Turn-Based games like Pokemon while reading a book at the same time. It's very enjoyable actually.

What do you do during downtime?

 

[imperialwar]

i wait, coz i am patient that way...
or i talk to my wife, coz RL interaction is part of a healthy life.

 

[meatloaf231]

The DS is the answer to long loading times. I probably spent more time on my DS while I was playing Gothic 3 than I did actually playing Gothic 3.

 

[PersianLlama]

DS/Reading, I remember reading one of the books The Witcher was based on, while I played the game.

 

[Mariena]

I have patience..

 

[Phoenix Arrow]

Put on a song. Pause it when it's done loading.
Same goes for those ridiculous, unskippable, game-breaking cutscenes. Devil May Cry, I'm looking at you.

 

[MarcusStrout]

I play the Sims 2 on a comp that might as well run on steam. Not Steam, but honestly, I should be shovelling coal into the back of it.

When its loading, I play Pokemon Pearl on my DS. Thank God my computer is getting better, now that my music shit the bed and I freed up over 24 GB. Not bad, but where is my Imogen Heap NOW?!?

 

[Novajam]

Load screens are a pain in the arse, period.

I usually do what Phoenix does, play a song, and pause when it's done loading. That, or read the manual. Or in the case of Oblivion, shout unintelligibly.

As for unskippable cutscenes, one thing I noticed in the Battlefield: Bad Company demo was that you could skip the cutscenes but you could also pause them. Which was cool. I'd like it if more games would do that.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

One of my brother's friends tryed playing Pokemon (Silver I think) while he was respawning in Halo 3. Halo 3 for crying out loud! He couldn't wait 15 seconds!

I myself am just patient, you can get a lot of thinking done in load screens and unskipable cutscenes.

 

[Beefcakes]

When a game is lagging/loading, out of instinct i usually click a whole bunch of stuff and hit random buttons to see if its frozen, and when in most cases it hasn't, I usually end up in doing a whole bunch of stuff I really do not want to do, which makes it lag,load more....
Rinse lather repeat, always repeat

 

[CIA]

In oblivion you could dump the cash data to speed up loading times.


EDIT: Note that this post is not helpful in any way.

 

[Bowstring]

I dread going into elevators on Mass Effect. Jesus Herbert Christ they take forever. I usually just pick my guitar up and improvise some random cacophony of musical notes. Then I put my guitar down and carry on playing. Then I see another elevator...

 

[VitusPrime]

and they could have at least had some type of elevator music in mass effect rather than had you two misfit sidekicks talk on
i would say farcry was a bad criminal at the unskipable film which you always have to watch it and it would just to be annoying allow you to skip once every so often

 

[PureChaos]

depending on how long i have to wait, for something like the sailing at the beginning of wind waker i put on some music, for loading screens and the like i just wait.

 

[Raynaux]

I always play my vidya games with either music or a dvd playing on my tv or pc depending on which I'm not using, this means that loading times are not an issue ^^

 

[nathan-dts]

I tend to use download time on the PC or watching T.V, why even now i've just returned from holiday and am downloading and installing firmware 2.23, Folding@home and then replacing Folding@home with Life with PlayStation (keep in mind I only do this when downloads and updates aren't background downloadable).