Super Pause No More…
When x-box 360 came out I remember reading a few articles about how this next gen system was not so next gen. The main argument of these articles were that besides the graphics being better, there was not too much that was revolutionary. Of course, when the wii came out no one doubted that the next gen was here.
I bought a wii to play the latest entries in the Zelda and Metroid series. After I beat both of those, there was not even more game for the wii that I found even remotely interesting. So, last x-mas I gave my wii to my youngest brother and that pretty much sealed in his mind just how cool I was. It reminded me of when I was young and my uncle who was just out of college was living in our basement. He had an Atari and when he got his own place, he left the Atari for me.
The only exercise any of these systems induced was forcing me to getup after sitting down and deciding to play a game.
Being wii-less and having literally no friends to hang out with anymore, I picked up an x-box 360. Very quickly I realized that the 360 was indeed a next gen system. For starters you could turn the unit on from the controller. This sounds like the simplest idea and feature to add to any system. However, the 360 was the first system I am aware of that had this feature. It literally blew my mind. You must understand that I had owned or played extensively an atari 2600, sega master system, sega genesis, sega cd, sega saturn, sega 32x, dreamcast, nintendo, super nintendo, gameboys, nintendo 64, gamecube, and more. Excluding the gameboys which have the controller embedded into the system itself, not one of the aforementioned systems could be turned on from the controller.
There are plenty of other x-box features that made gaming so much more convenient, but my second love was super pause by pressing the x-box button. I thought “At last!” Now I could pause when the phone rang, the pizza guy showed up, I really, really, really had to go to the bathroom, and all of those other real life events that interrupt one’s immersion into a virtual reality. Previously each game had to make their own pause system, and the fact that Microsoft took care of that issue for all game programmers put me in a blissful state of 360 love.
Then I bought GTA IV. Of course, in my rush to play it I realized I had just been out shopping for hours, and had not gone to the bathroom in quite some time. In the middle of the opening scene I press the x-box button to run off to the bathroom. If you have played the game you should be able to guess what happened next, my 360 bliss was utterly destroyed when the non-interactive scene kept going. I thought something was broken, I tried pressing the button a couple of more times, the damn scene would not stop. My next course of action was to press what used to be the pause button, which is now labeled start, but that just skipped the opening scene entirely.
Various people who worked on GTA IV photographed the exact moment they uncontrollably crapped them self.
I can understand that in an online multilayer game that pausing could allow for some cheating depending on the game. However, game programmers who override this x-box 360 function in single player mode should all be cursed to have explosive diarrhea at the most inopportune times. For example: Flying on an airplane when sitting in a window seat; When sliding into two their pants should be filled with goo; When at the DMV and number 59 was just called, they have number 60, and have been waiting since person 25. Excreta, excreta.
Tags: 360, gta, gta iv, super pause, x-box
