Back in the dim and distant
early Nineties, there was a computer magazine called
Zero. Much has been written about this
legendary publication. They reviewed
Amiga,
Atari ST and (sporadically)
PC games with a keen critical eye and some fine humour. One of the best things about there reviews was that they would give each game a 'Hassle Factor' mark out of ten (which had no bearing on the overall score). This was important, as anyone who has tried playing
The Secret of Monkey Island on an
Amiga will tell you.
Most games hovered around a hassle factor of 2 (indicative of lengthy loading pauses between levels). Games with frequent bouts of disk juggling (or any other form of hassle... like excessively crap copy protection schemes) would receive much higher figures. The hassle factor would come in handy when reviewing modern games I feel - some recent PC games have had a large amount of hassle involved. Console gamers of course have no hassle of this kind at all to deal with (at least until the advent of disc-based systems like the Sony Playstation).