MAG 2.10 Missing the Take?

Recently, Zipper unleashed another slew of tweaks and patches as well as a few sought after additions to their 256 player shooter. The most intriguing and questionably integrated feature however, came in the form of the ability to take in game screens in nice 720p quality. The issue herein lies in just exactly how you are supposed to take such a shot.

You must open the XMB and select "Take Screenshot" from under the "Photo" section. Now before I go on, when I first saw this I was bombarded with mixed feelings. First off, I began to wonder, if you have to access the XMB to activate the feature to be able to take the shot, does this mean that the whole ability to take the screen is merely a tool provided by Sony that's available for developers to use and Zipper felt like taking advantage of it? If so, does that mean that every other game can be launched or patched with this ability? If this is true then I could see this being useful in many other games, ones particularly that don't require you to completely stop what you're doing.

Which leads to the next part: once you have selected the "Take Screenshot" icon the XMB will close and an option to press "X" to take the shot will appear on the bottom right of your screen. Cool? Not exactly, because at the same time, your character is locked in place, you cannot move, turn, switch weapons, etc until you take the photo. Then once you take the shot, the system takes anywhere between 3 and 5 additional seconds to save the shot, all whilst you cannot move.

Now, this is a problem for me and I'd imagine most gamers as well because we want to be able to take some pretty amazing screens on the go. For example, you just lobbed a 'nade right into 4 guys and boom, "+20" pops up and you want to take a screenshot to capture the moment. Well unfortunately, depending on the PS3 and how it's feeling at the time, it could take up to as much as 5 to 15 seconds to go through the steps required to take the screen and get back in action. And even if you are fast enough you risk dieing and losing the take all together because you were standing still for so long.

Of course, we all shouldn't complain about free features, as Zipper has been quite generous in my opinion with their unrivaled community support, however we would like to be able to take full advantage of this feature. My suggestion would be to be able to move while setting up your shot whereas you can defend yourself and get the perfect screen. Change the "X" button that you have to press to save the shot to a combination of buttons whereas it won't interfere with gameplay, and if possible, have the screen save in the background.

I feel this is an overall welcome addition to MAG and hopefully it will be refined in the future. I'm sure it's something we can confide in as Zipper has also addressed the much needed MultiQueue feature in the update as well. So for now I see the screenshot feature well suited for taking a snap of your after game stats so you can finally brag about that 50-1 your friends weren't around to see.

If anyone wishes to express their concerns or share a few screens feel free to do so and post your links!

Why I'm not a noob:
http://picasaweb.google.com...

[gamerdude132]

I also think it's a great feature, but that's some pretty shoddy execution. If anything, I think pressing Triangle and Circle is something like that on the face buttons because L1 and R1? That wouldn't work in a whole lot of games.

[lex-1020]

I think that the ability to take in game picture is a great idea. Sony has had this feature all along but few developers actually make use of it. The same thing with being able to play music in the background of the game. I wish that every game offered the ability to do that and that they refined it to make it easier to use. It would also be cool to be able to record video from the ps3 (without a capture card)

[Christopher]

It's the screen capture tool from Qore. So, it is likely built into the firmware and they just enabled the code for MAG. Not really a good option for games like MAG, IMHO, but does allow you to line up a group of clan members and take a screenshot or similar.

Hopefully they improve on this implementation to use a specific combination of button pushes (why not L3+R3 or similar?).

[ocnkng]

What do you think will happen if you stop by with a camera trying to take a snap while actually engaged in a gun battle in the middle of a frikkin warzone?
Also give your poor PS3 a break its already stretched thin having to accomodate 256 players not to mention 3d grafix and 7.2 surround sound.

[wat634]

Are you trying to downgrade or defend the ps3?

[ocnkng]

:) I am actually defending it. I work in computers and I can tell that no matter how powerful the console is, modern games demand so much from it that not everything would run perfectly smoothly all the time all places. When u press the home screen and the XMB comes up, there will be a delay nothing much can be done about it, thats something that will work perfectly in the next gen. If you want the pic taking process in the background you are only asking it to carry out another thread of processing to add to its workload. Also u always want to preview the pic u have just taken, so it can't be completely silent either. Bottom line this feature is overly complicated with not enough importance in a live FPS online match. I am happy for it just to be there.