Here’s a game that everyone was looking forward to.  Finally, the minds who got us all excited over Rag Doll Kung Fu have a chance to make up for Rag Doll Kung Fu.  It’s a gorgeous little game;  let’s take a look at its loading screen!

The Good

Wow, now this is a nice loading screen!  Not only is it animated, it’s interactive and networked!  You can edit your appearance, run around in somebody else’s home, deface it, stick peacock feathers to anything and anyone, beat people up, and generally make a fool of yourself, all inside a beautiful, colourful loading screen!

On our standard loading screen meter, this awards four base points out of five, and I’m awarding a bonus point for the load screen being interactive;  more games should do this!

The Bad

Of course, it’s not all good news.  The first problem that springs out at us is that the word “Loading” is written not just once, but twice around the icon representing the world we’re loading into; at a half point each, that’s a full penalty point for the two instances of the forbidden word.

But that’s not all;  as though they were deliberately attempting to sabotage their own score, Media Molecule is actually spinning that doubled “Loading” text around the patch, which incurs them the “spinning” penalty point as well.  And since that apparently wasn’t enough for them, you can see in the bottom left corner of the screen that there’s yet another spinning loading badge!  But we’re going to be really really lenient here, and not deduct a second penalty point for the second spinner on the screen.  So we’re deducting a total of two penalty points for the four infractions.

Score

• Smoothly animated screen:  4 base points
• Interactive:  1 bonus point
• “Loading” text twice on screen:  1 penalty point
• Spinning loading badge: 1 penalty point

Rating: