As I recall it was about the time console gaming began to plague the pc that games increasingly featured checkpoint autosaves... I have been noticing recently how annoyed I become when I am forced to replay entire sections of a game because I got killed and the game didn't allow manual save and only saves maybe at the end of each level. Hard Reset... I like it. Seems fun, until you get killed and have to replay the entire level section again. Bulletstorm... Fun, until you have to redo the entire section you just did because in this case I got killed right before completing the section where u destroy the eggs and then run to the copter. I was standing right beside the copter waiting for my buddy to start it then I died. Back to the beginning of the egg sequence. I believe forcing these replays every time you die creates a sort of insanity in the player. They become more and more frustrated and end up wondering why they're wasting their life on something so retarded? I associated this crappy autosave with console games but I guess even some of the early games I played on the spectrum in the 80's probably had it too.
At least we have checkpoints... back in the day console port meant NO save game, so you die, you begin again from the start. Be thankful.
ahhh good old sega megadrive - 6 hours of playing sonic 2 to get to the last boss - called for dinner, so left it paused. came back - it had been switched off cause my sisters wanted to watch neighbours - Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo still havent completed that game
I guess I have it easy with the gamesaves compared to the horror stories told here. I never had a megadrive or played dark souls. How about a game so extreme that it has no save point? A game where you simply have to stay alive or play it all from the beginning.
There are some like that The most recent that I can think of is Dungeons of Dredmor which has a "permadeath" feature. There are also some games that started restricting the amount of save games you can use. I can't remember them all, I think Hidden & Dangerous 2 was one of them though. It was really cool because you couldn't just save then charge in like a fool and die, and reload. You only had a couple of saves on the entire mission (which back then could be an hour long or so), so you had to get as far as possible before you saved, and even then, you had to play out the rest of the mission knowing that if you needed to reload, you would have to go way back. I think there are some games too which had no saves and just checkpoints. I remember Flashback was like that, but can't remember any more modern ones. I always wanted to make a single player RPG which works like an MMORPG - no saves at all, if you die you die and you have to respawn at an altar or something and then go and recover your gear or you get an experience debt or something. It's only once you play something like that and become absolutely terrified of dying, that you really appreciate how exciting it can make the game become. But yeah, shortly after I started seeing these games with limited saves and stuff, consoles came along and stopped that hardcore progression in its tracks, and then reversed it by having the game save itself regularly. The only thing really annoyed me was that you can't change the name of your saves anymore. I miss saving the game and naming it, "just before dragon fight" or whatever. Now you have go on date and time or hope that there is a little screenshot which is big enough to see.
Treasure Island Dizzy! The idea of lives seems to be completely lost. Imagine BF3 with 3 lives. Once you were killed 3 times back to the train!
I think perhaps the old style of save where you could save whenever you wanted (as in the Half Life games) perhaps doesn't encourage careful gameplay as you say. Some games I have had to replay a section over and over because I couldn't figure out what to do and got killed each time trying to move on. Bioshock had respawn points in single player didn't it? Well I went back to the egg section in Bulletstorm and hadn't noticed the timer counting down so I realised the reason I died at the copter was because I didn't get there quick enough! Went back and completed that section.
I have to make a confession - I play CoD on the PS3 on and off... and in it there is an online game mode where you get 1 life - if your killed you just get to watch the rest of the battle
I Played CSS for over a year each day and it's funny how you accept sitting and waiting for the right game. It wasn't annoying with CS because you got to watch what everyone else was doing.
My love with computer games began back when my dad bought us a megadrive II for christmas - the endless hours of trying to complete games, "tagging in" my sisters to help get past difficult sections etc. this then grew when we got a PC - I was exposed to the delights of Duke Nukem 3D, Raptor, Blake, and my particular favourite - Baludur's gate 2. then when I went to university I decided to build my own PC - then I was introduced to steam and MMORPG's - notably WoW. I must confess CSS is one I skipped over as at the time I was playing BF2 with my housemate on PS2. finally I finished my degree and moved out of home - at this point I was introduced to the delights that are HL2 Deathmatch (gravity guns only ofc), BF BC, and so on... as well as the gamut of games on the PS3 - Final fantasy, Metal gear solid, CoD, etc do I feel that some games are too "nice" regarding allowing us to save our progress - sometimes yes I do but as Dara O'Brian puts it (about 130 on) Video games anyway I am off to be bad at BF3 and be punished for it
On another gripe about saves - when you are blessed with a manual save feature, does anyone else find it really irritating when quick saves are just a single save, rather than making a new file every time. In the days of multi-TB hard drives we're still not allowed multiple save files on demand! :\ I think that was FarCry 2's best feature.
Dark souls has a strict death system über difficult game to play though. Star ocean last hope final dung once you beat the game has no save point and it's a 6 hr trek to bottom of it you die you start over and the queen can one shot all your characters. Not many über difficult pc games, crisis 2 has no real save game function
Was just thinking of these games having come from your thread about the PC port. Things like auto-save sound more like game design than bad ports. Personally I'm all for the death of the quick-save, always thought of it as a safety blanket that didn't need to be there. If you can always pop off a new save, particularly in games where you can make a new save file each time, there's no risk. I absolutely love the persistence of single save files and autosaves/save points. Killed that NPC which you end up wishing was around later? Time to work around it, or start a new file or lose a lot of progress going back to the last save spot. Very few games which allow for quick saves and multiple save files really stand out to me and those games typically find other ways to add risks and challenge such as the MGS series.
Yeah it's all about good game design. It ideally should have you try to get it right, but without becoming too tedious. It's a hard balancing act and it takes a lot of talent, and it's hard to see that in the industry these days. I think the talented people probably do exist, somewhere, but they don't get given the freedom to make what they want. Sadly these geniuses who used to work on classic games are now all locked in EA's basement churning out whatever 5 minute wonder they are told to work on. The "replaying a section" thing was apparently a big criticism of GTA4, which also has no saves. You die on a mission and have to drive all the way back to where you start the mission again, sometimes even needing to go through a toll booth along the way. People said it was like having to "commute" before they got some fun. Personally I think as annoying and stupid as it seems, it's stuff like that which makes games addictive and compels people to want to beat them. But again, it's gotta be 'just' the right amount of annoying.
See on the other hand i find it annoying when you get used to playing console auto save games then get confronted with a constant "F5'ver" where you need to quick save all the time! Hitman being one of them! Mega rage when you forget to save in that after getting deep into a mission undercover!
IMO quicksaving takes a lot of the suspense out of the game - the penalty for failure is too small when your last save was just round the corner. Ravenholm isn't scary at all when you quicksave every few seconds! That's not to say that game designers don't get checkpoints wrong (they do) but I think checkpointing is a better system.
there does seem to be a disinct lack of PC only titles coming out and even those that are multi platform they just don't do enough to really make it "work" on the PC the biggest travesty coming out soon is the latest Ghost Recon game which has just been so over consolified and they are still releasing it on PC... just eurgh
