There are too many clicks required to play this Xbox game.

I've been sick lately, and so I've allowed myself to play some computer games. This is something I try not to do too much, but because I've been sick, and because I've recently read about the cognitive benefits of playing first-person shooter games, I've been playing Half Life 2. I know, I'm several years late. I'm having a lot of fun.

However, this is my rant blog, and I have to rant about how long it takes me to actually get playing the game. I think I'm spoiled on my iPad, with which I can start playing a game in about two or three clicks. In contrast, here is what I have to do on my Xbox to play Half Life 2:

1. Turn the Xbox 360 on.
2. Turn the television on.
3. Sign in to Xbox live.
4. Select that I want to play the game (as opposed to watch movies or whatever.)
5. Select from the Orange Box menu that I want to play Half Life 2 and not Portal or whatever.
6. Click down to "load game." (The default is "new game." Why? How often do people want to start a new game compared to loading one they're working on?)
7. Select "load game."
8. I get prompted "Would you like to select a storage device?" This is for where my saved game is located. Note that I'm not actually selecting the storage device, just affirming that I want to.
9. Click "hard drive" as my storage device.
10. Select the save game.

Then I'm finally playing. It takes over a minute. I know, there are greater problems in this world, but geez, it really seems like this takes too long.

Shitdog!

Pictured: Killing Antlions in Half Life 2. From Wikipedia.