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Save me!

Back in the day of the NES there were no save points. We toiled through hour after hour of playing a game in order to complete it. We had to, there was no other option. We played this way for several years. Cursing a blue streak when you lost your final life and had to start over. Or for no reason the console just up and decided it didn’t want to recognise the cartridge anymore. These were the days of needing much patience to play console games.

Luckily it wasn’t too long before we had the ability to save our games and we didn’t have to sit there for hours killing our thumbs anymore. First of course were the RAM modules on the cartridges, then soon after the memory cards. Gone were the days of having to sit in front of the TV for 20 hours hoping your Sega Mega Drive didn’t overheat just as you were reaching the very last boss. Now we could finally stop when we got to a save point and save our game and see that we had saved it.

Some games used devices in the game to interact with to let you save, such as Resident Evil and the typewriters. While other games let you save wherever you liked as long as you weren’t in a fight or were relatively safe. Either way you knew for definite that you had saved at that very moment and could turn the console off without fear.

Recently though I have noticed an annoying trend with the new consoles and games. They’re stealing our save points. Instead they have been replaced with checkpoints and the game savnig when it feels it is necessary. They even take away your ability to manually save at all. Getting to a checkpoint doesn’t always means it’s saved either. You have to keep an eagle eye out at the corner of the screen to see if the game has saved at any given time.

They’re taking my manual save points and I’m not sure I like it.

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Donna

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Comments

9 responses to “Save me!”

  1. Kirsten avatar
    Kirsten

    Agreed. I hate it too. I want to save a game anywhere I like. Doing a bit over again I’ve already mastered is incredibly annoying and cheats me of the game’s true length and experience.

  2. Laura avatar
    Laura

    In some games I feel like they get the checkpoints just right. Like in the Call of Duty Games for example, the game keeps you battling on cause you know any second your going to get one and you can breathe a sigh of relief. It is nice to be able to turn a game off though and pick up exactly where you left off like a dvd or book.

  3. Ben avatar
    Ben

    Save points…the source of one of my pet hates. Which is of course save points that are set to a fixed location, meaning you can only save when you reach that point.

    Commonly found in quite a few JRPG >.<

  4. Lorna avatar
    Lorna

    I too have noticed this trend and I despise it. It means if dinner is ready or there is an interruption, I have to leave the Xbox on the pause menu and switch the telly off – not healthy for it. If I have a need to switch off or just a want, then I should be able to save and do just that, I don’t like having to hold on for some crappy pre assigned point. Also I like to build up multiple saves in case my main one gets corrupted or I make a mistake or miss something that will cause me to loose out on soemthing – with manual saves, I wouldn’t have to start over.

  5. Kirsten avatar
    Kirsten

    I understand they don’t want people breaking their own game by accidentally saving in the middle of being shot, over their last save. That would still be preferable though to having to play a bit of the game I’ve already completed.

    I agree about JRPG’s. Some nights I don’t play Infinite Undiscovery because if I don’t have more than an hour to play I worry that there won’t be any save point in that whole time.

  6. City avatar
    City

    I remember the blue diamond checkpoints in Tomb Raider, well the early ones, they used to drive me mad!
    And that whole thing with my Master system, when i would pause it for dinner and then it would just decide to freeze.. gah!!

    Another save trend ive noticed more lately are the lack of auto saves, COD4 used to drive me mad with it, and now Spore doesnt have any!

    Maybe they are trying to revert us to the patient gamer of the late 80’s/early 90’s

  7. Donna avatar
    Donna

    I don’t mind the fixed save points like in Resident evil or the Final Fantasy games. I can save and I know I’ve saved and I can do it when I want to.

    JRPGs aren’t the offenders I’m talking about. Usually in those you can go back to a previous location you’d saved. The game doesn’t dictate when it’ll save for you.

    I’m talking about games like Haze and Assassin’s Creed that dictated when it would save for you. They’re taking away our control of when to save and seeing that we’d saved.

  8. Michael avatar
    Michael

    Yeah, I don’t like Assassin’s Creed one – there I was, the other night, doing the ground work for a job… got enough tasks done to allow me to carry out the hit (on Jubair) so I visited whatshisface at the Damascus Bureau, took the usual nap then I found I couldn’t do the other intel tasks before getting on with the stabbiness! GAH!

    Powermonger, on the Mega Drive, was awful – good game, yes, but the level completion codes got so long that you eventually couldn’t enter them! I’ve never finished that game.

  9. ppopovitya avatar
    ppopovitya

    Никогда не сдаваться идти до конца 🙂

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