Its to ascertain wether you are alive or not.
Something about verifying controller input and zeroing analog sticks?
Sometimes it's an aesthetic choice. As you all probably remember, the original Deus Ex required you to press escape to bring up the menu. Though I can't very well equate that to the consoles' Press Start screen because you could access the menu even as the developer/publisher logos were flying past. They don't make them like that anymore, do they?
Ah, but the great thing about PC games is, in most cases you can dive right into the game's files and delete those cinematics.
I don't mind them when I start the game. I don't understand the outrage. They're annoying when you exit to the main menu though.
When I load a level I also like to press start to start.
lol outrage? Kind of taking things a bit out of context there aren't we?
Long live House Lannister.
Steam | Origin: xRavelle | Skype: TheRavelle | PSN: Voltburn | Watch me struggle through my backlog
Ok, so we can add pedantry to the mix too :p
Long live House Lannister.
Speaking of unnecessary prompts, I always love having to select which storage device to load my savegame from even if only the connected harddisk is present and holding savegames (together with the config file). There's no reason why it can't keep a default location and offer the option to load from somewhere else as an option... I think Bayonetta did this, and also several of my Xbox games.
Or those where you have to confirm if you really want to load a savegame, then confirm after the read sequence, then wait for the scene/level to actually load (Final Fantasy XIII, I'm looking at you). Going from game launch to gameplay in XIII-2 goes like: Wait for game to boot, hit start to start (disguised as an intro video), select load/continue option, confirm that you want to load, watch it load briefly, confirm that the game has loaded, wait while the game actually loads now (comes with a narrated "previously in FF13-2" sequence so that's nice) for a while, enter in the "time line" screen, select area to go to, wait some more till the actual level is loaded. Fun.
Stealth Mode!
I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You. There’s lots of fog. --tomeoftom
"Saving game - please do not turn off your PC"
If that's the case whoever coded that should be paraded through the streets and made fun of mercilessly for screwing up one of the most basic functions of a program.
No, alt+f4 is not a fallback. It is a default shortcut to very kindly tell a program to quit. What should happen next is that the program should clean up and exit gracefully, maybe prompting the user to safe his data.
There are more rude ways to kill a program, like telling the kernel to give it the boot instead of asking nicely. Programs shouldn't shit their pants if that happens, but it can happen. It's usually a step that is taken when some coder doesn't do his homework and can't even handle shutting his own program down..
Most of the game where it's a problem don't exit gracefully at the best of times. Fallout 3, for example, routinely crashes upon exiting; I don't mind overmuch, as I prefer that to crashing while I'm actually playing (happens, but less often), but if pressing the dedicated "exit game" button doesn't work properly I'm hardly surprised an industry standard quit command doesn't either.
I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You. There’s lots of fog. --tomeoftom
Seems a good idea to me. Some people are idiots, my Dad included, and they will turn it off at any time, they dont care.
I'm failing to writing a blog, specifically about playing games the wrong way
http://playingitwrong.wordpress.com/