The Good Old Days Are Back To Play

In the beginning there was darkness… then I turned on the ZX Spectrum. At this time completing a game involved sitting down for the best part of a day (of course, I am including the health and safety breaks every hour, as I’m sure we all follow the guidelines) and why did it take so long? For you youngsters out there, this was pre-save points and even before level codes in many cases.

Then man created the humble save point – a necessity for all those RPGs and even the longer action games. Before you knew it every game had save points of some description, even if it was only at a level end… then it happened. Our precious save points were stolen again and replaced by pesky auto-save systems that screwed up many a game when you really didn’t want to go back to a point in which you’d used all your ammo and were half-dead. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of games still allowed manual saves too but those autosaves would either save your life or make you want to have a hissy fit.

Then came Final Fantasy XIII and it brought light back to the gaming world, and people saw that it was good. Gamers everywhere rejoiced. The combination of autosaves that last that session only to allow retries and also the good old-fashioned save point, to me, gives the gamer perfect control back. And my favourite thing about this system and its predessors? Being able to say “I’m so sorry I can’t find a save point anywhere and it’d be a waste of time if I just switch it off. Unfortunately this means I can’t go out/go to bed/do some mindless chore”.

I wasted a good few years of my childhood by taking a break from gaming but the Final Fantasy series brought me running back, swearing never to desert my consoles again (something I have avidly stuck to!). But they also introduced me to the concept of save points. Sure, there’s times when you actually need to sleep, eat or whatever and start screaming abuse when instead of a save point you get a mini-boss, but overall they are the perfect excuse to delay whatever you’re supposed to be doing. I for one, could not stop and write this blog till I’d saved my FFXIII game and turned off the console.

Given unlimited freedom to save simply means I spend as much time saving as I do playing the game, to the extent that I often find if there’s numbered saves, I will have clocked up a 3 digit number by the end, thus retracting from the game’s playability! I need the guidance, the “oh no, a save point, there must be a boss here” feeling that you get so often in RPGs. So, here’s to a combo of save points and autosaves that can be forgotten. Retries and set save points is such a wonderful combination for me to shackle myself to my Xbox 360 but still manage to get some sleep. The FFXIII save system is so refreshing and it’s something I’d like to see replicated. If you fail a fight you get put back in a position to change tactics that is just before the fight allowing multiple strategies to be tried without having to trek from the last savepoint/checkpoint. Unfortunately it does make gameplay a bit addictive. I know I should tidy the house now but… time to head off and enjoy the FFXIII again *gets on imaginary chocobo and hurtles towards the 360*.