maxfisher

I picked up Psychonauts for the PS2 among some games I got at Toys R Us during their December sale and more recent going-out-of-business liquidation. I popped it in about two weeks ago and have played it a couple times, but the load times are just killing me. To start with, they seem quite a bit longer than any other game I can remember playing. On top of that, you have to put up with them every time you switch areas, which can be pretty frequent. Whenever I've played it, it feels like 25% of the time I'm just sitting there watching those birds flit around on the damn loading screen. I'm seriously thinking about giving up on it and trading my copy in to GameRush for some store credit. It's really frustrating, as it seems like a pretty fun and original game when it actually lets me play it.

So anyone else ever have worse-than-normal experiences with load times? Ever sell or quit playing a game over it? I find them generally annoying, but have never experienced them as badly as with this game.

PixyJunket

Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger on the PS1 were pretty bad.. I wanted to play Chrono Trigger again and see the new (little) stuff they added but it was just unbearable. WWE Raw vs. Smackdown 1 and 2 are so bad that it made me stick to the older version of the game.

Josh H

The first Legacy of Kain on the PS1.

Picked it up years down the road and never got through it as I just couldn't deal with the load times everytime you went through a door etc.

Liver&Onions

Do not give up on it. You won't regret playing this game.

On Xbox, the load times didn't seem too frequent or distrupting. But then again, it's been a long time since I played it.

I think that on Smackdown 2 or something on PS1 I did stop playing because of the load times. Between every menu and match and cinema there was a long load time.

darkside

Yeah, the load times on the PSone could be bad especially on the above mentioned SNES ports. Personally the load times have kept me away from most of the PSP software as well. On the PS2 though the load times have never bothered me that much, but they are much better on the Xbox and Cube.

PixyJunket

Psychonauts was made for Xbox and when MS dropped it the company did a port to PS2 so it may not be optimized.

fujishig

Magna Carta has maddeningly long load times for a recent PS2 game. Geez.

Stuntman, I remember, won some "award" from gamespot or something for worst load times on the PS2, though I've never played it.

A lot of PSP games suffer from that. I've heard the PSP WWE game is bad. Xmen Legends 2 is pretty bad, since it loads whenever you go into a menu, but it's still playable.

Michael Corvin

Pariah on Xbox. Decent game but atrocious load times.

It would routinely take 60-120 seconds to load a map, which mind you doesn't stay in the memory. So every time you die you have this fucking load time. I started out on the hard level, but dying so often and experiencing the load time madness, I quickly bumped the difficulty down.

This is from a game 4 years into the systems life. You think the developers would have load times figured out by then.

warcp

The PSP is rotten with games that take minutes to load. World Championship Poker 2 takes about 5 minutes from the start screen to the first hand. Midnight Club 3 is legend.

xmiyux

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on the Xbox had painful loading times as well. If i hadn't adored the game so much i would have given up 2 hours into it. As it was i never finished and only logged like 40 hours instead of the easy 100 i would have spent otherwise.

DJ_Longfellow

PSP....nuff said.

Quake 4 for the 360 had long loadtimes for a next-gen game....and it would happend after EVERY time you died.

Outlaw

what load times?

spainlinx0

KOTOR 2. That one mission where you're trying to find out who was the murderer was abysmally tedious when you had to go in and out of the bar, loading each time. The loading seriously disrupted most of the enjoyment I would have gotten.

DeanoBKN

The Resident Evil's for the PS. The loading time between each room (with the door animation) drove me nuts. That + stupid puzzles = no fun.

kgrogers1979

The load times in the PS2 version of Mercenaries were horrible. One time, I actually got up, went to the bathroom to take a crap, and when I got back, the game had just then finished loading.

Flay

Morrowind was painful for the PC as well. Even with a 10,000 rpm raptor, the load times are unbearable.

Superboy

The load times in RE4 for PS2 were a little annoying. Otherwise the game flowed fine.

The worst load times i've ever experienced were on the PS1 ports of the SNES RPGs. For one, the Japanese versions didn't have the loading times, so someone at Square screwed up what would have been an awesome game.

The most annoying were in Burnout for PSP.

Giantrobo

Resident Evil:Outbreak on PS2 without the hardrive add on this game takes 4fuckinever to load.
KOTOR II - This had more to do with the screwy cd drive in my XBOX but it was still enough to ruin a game I was halfassed about anyway.

Michael Ballack

I remember the ps2 having big problems when it first came out. I was completely turned off by the long load times for the first nba live game on the ps2 and the first Crash Bandicoot for the ps2.

xVladx

Burnout Revenge.

The amount of time it takes to load an event isn't that bad in and of itself, but the game reloads the entire thing whenever you want to retry an event, which is a massive hassle when doing the events like Burning Lap, where you're retrying quite a bit in order to get a perfect time.

Ginwen

Beyond the Beyond, which was pretty much the only RPG available for the PS1 at the time. I finally just couldn't stand it anymore and sold it without finishing.

Setzer

Square needs to bring this to the GBA.

As for load times....the PSP. Untold Legends and Madden '06 were pretty bad -- there are probably others I didn't get the privilege of suffering through. It was bad enough that it actually made me sell my PSP until the game selection and load times improved. I understand devs need to get the feel for the system and it's capabilities before we start seeing some real quality games but they know the battery life on this sucker is 2-3 hours so you'd think they'd focus on cutting down the load times before releasing something.

boredsilly

Even though it's the only one I've played in the series, the load times in Smackdown vs Raw drive me kinda batty.

mrglass

Half Life 2 (xbox version)...the frequent loading drove me crazy.

tor_greg

For POKER?