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Games You Can Save Anytime/Anyplace
datac0re
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
One thing that has started to annoy me more and more is the lack of the ability to save whenever the hell I feel like it. The wife, kids, dog, etc. are always vying for my time, so being able to just save and quit is a blessing.
One big offender that I just finished is the God of War collection on the PS3. There were times where the gap between save points was a little longer than I would have liked, and a few times where I just had to call it quits and lose my progress.
So I ask, what are some awesome games that let me save whenever I want? I'm looking for PC and PS3 games, specifically.
One big offender that I just finished is the God of War collection on the PS3. There were times where the gap between save points was a little longer than I would have liked, and a few times where I just had to call it quits and lose my progress.
So I ask, what are some awesome games that let me save whenever I want? I'm looking for PC and PS3 games, specifically.
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Increasing amounts of games have this silly (lacking) feature. Dead Space, CoD, Lost Planet, any sandbox game (including Arkham Asylum), Far Cry, blahblah.
Its a stupid thing devs do because they're lazy or because they're silly geese that are under the impression limiting my ability to enjoy a product (by forced retreading) makes it somehow superior in scare or action.
To quote myself:
Limed so hard.
I loathe checkpoints with a unending passion.
Most games wouldn't suffer in the slightest from having quicksave and save anywhere options. Even some difficult games could use this sort of system; for example, the STALKER games. It's pretty easy to die in those if you don't pay attention and being able to quicksave every five minutes or so is a lot more fun than losing forty minutes of progress in a region because you fall into a hole or something.
As far as save systems in survival-horror games, I find a save-point-only system to work far, far better for the game than a save anywhere system provided the dev doesn't put in horrible parts. I'm talking about things where you can spend twenty minutes doing something and then the really hard part is way at the end, thus forcing you to replay a whole chunk over and over again. And to argue against being able to save anywhere, anytime in any game, what's the point of the game even bother letting the player die if you can just save anywhere? How much would the atmosphere of Resident Evil have been wrecked if you could just quicksave in front of every door?
A save-anywhere system isn't the perfect be-all design for all games forever. The vast majority of games should definitely have it, but games are easy enough as it is without every single game, even ones designed to make failure costly, without being able to just save your way past each and every challenge.
More than usual, I mean.
Leave the difficulty decisions up to the player.
They can not save as often as they like if it will enable them to enjoy the game to the fullest.
Don't try to force people "for their own good" in a piece of entertainment.
It's one of the more subtle and insidious kinds of wrong, because it appears to have a justification behind it. The justification happens to be extremely weak, to the point of irrelevance.
"For your own good" has no meaning or strength for a trivial thing like a computer game.
If I am able to quicksave/quickload, I'm a lot more likely to take risks, blaze a trail, and not feel bad about failure. If I have limited saves, I tend to play it a bit safer. NSMBWii is a great example of this in how its checkpoints are handled. HL2 also features checkpoints that kind of negate the quicksave, but both options are there.
Final Fantasy 7's system annoyed the hell out of me. I know it was the same as 4 and 6, but you didn't have easy access to the world map in 7 for a long-ass time.
So.. really, I'm not sure where I fall on the debate. But I think saves kind of defuse the game a tad.
He/Him
I entirely disagree with you about Dead Space. Which, I did enjoy quite a bit, regardless. See, I'm a hoarder, and, as obvious as it is to say, a quicksaver. This means I need to and want to save around each bend, it makes the game more fun for me, when I have this freedom. Otherwise it becomes a slow slog through a boring and unforgiving game. Now, Dead Space is a weird beast. It uses checkpoints, but those checkpoints can be accessed at "any time". This meant I'd spend upwards of 5 - 10 minutes going back and forth between checkpoints, stores and what have you, in order to ensure I would not lose even 2 minutes of progress to a misstep over a grav-plate. This was tedious horseshit, and felt like a direct slant against my play style, which would've otherwise suited the game just fine.
As for the point about enforced difficulty, I'm sorry, but it is already disqualified. That is a call for the player to make. I'm not even a big fan of Hitman's save system (which has become tragically useless in Blood Money), because it limits my number of saves, which is a way of saying "fuck you and your attempt to replay this game, buddy". When I play a game like Hitman, it is my express intention to fuck about post-game and try different things. 7 saves does not allow me to acquire Sociopath ratings or even experiment with this semi-open game.
For a counter-counter point, Quake 4 had the single best save system of any game ever. Keep in mind, I love mission select. For me, it is a defining characteristic of replay value. In my first play through a game, I don't know where the awesome stuff is, so a mission select is great for ease of access.
Anyways, back to point. Quake 4 had the following system:
Autosave - Beginning of every level (and it didn't save over that, essentially creating a mission select feature)
Checkpoints - 3 or 5 separate checkpoint saves it would leap-frog
Quicksave - 5 leap-frogging quicksaves, ensuring you didn't fall into the infamous "grenade at my feet" quicksave problem
Manual save - The classic.
Why should I ever have to deal with less than that? Its not acceptable. All reasons for not having this are artificial at best and straight lazy porting and shitty behavior on part of the developers at worst.
Edit: And I just want to throw out that sandbox games are the single worst perpetrators of this. Its beyond stupid, really. The Saboteur had me all hopeful when I started it up, it let me save anywhere, and all progress was kept (meaning stuff I destroyed and the like), there was a retry button during mission (which kept progress made, as well), and checkpoints. Accept it lied and saving anywhere just puts your ass back at the nearest safe house, all of which are horribly far away from anything interesting.
Bioshock 1 has save anywhere as well (I played on 360).
I don't really disagree with you on saving anywhere, but these aren't really arguments. Once you start getting into making the player gauge their own difficulty and decide how hard they want to make it, it becomes pretty meaningless. It's like saying that it doesn't matter how painfully easy a zelda game can be, you can just do 3 heart challenges.
Having quicksaving can definitely change the dynamic of a game, whether you think it's for good or bad. I know that with Max Payne especially, I would frequently go through a room, decide whether I did it awesomely enough, and if not, just quickload from right before the room and do it again. I enjoyed it a lot because the gameplay was that good, but being able to take every bit of randomness that went my way meant that it wasn't really a huge challenge.
First of all, I think implementing specific save points is the opposite of lazy. Save anywhere is "add a save menu," boom done. Save at specific points requires level planning, good or bad. But it's there. So
I'll agree on the suspense and horror points. But the difficulty thing is where I disagree strongly. The ability to save anywhere at any time pretty much automatically removes any sort of challenge there is to a game. It removes the actual achievement of overcoming difficult levels or moments.
Obviously my argument becomes moot if you're a person that plays a game solely for the narrative at play. I imagine there are people who play on easy mode no matter what.
There's people out there who like to beat a game, even if on easy or using whatever methods possible, just for the sake of having beaten the game. Another obvious thing is that people can enjoy video games as they see fit. But I frown on that sort of person. If I had to make a guess, they're likely on board the idea that checkpoints / specific save locations are bad.
Fixed save points are not a bad thing. Open save functionality isn't a bad thing either. They have their place in games, and if a game has the one you don't like, all you can do is grit your teeth and bear it or not play at all. Neither is going away. Neither of them are a remnant of an archaic function of game design.
Understandable, 100%.
But you chose to have those things in your life. It is not a game developer's fault for failing to coddle your life style.
This is stupid and never works in practice.
Ninja Gaiden's a hard game, right? How about for the next one they let you turn on easy mode, or even a god mode whenever you want, you can't die or take any damage at all! Then the people who want to blaze through it and see the story can do so, and the people who want to play it the way it was meant to be played can go back to normal mode. The ultimate expression of a player's own tastes.
Except that doesn't happen. Everyone would complain and bitch about the dumbing down of the series, how noobs can play it now, how it's become a terrible game. Reviews would ding it on difficulty. You can never trust people not to take the path of least resistance.
There have been plenty of times when I've been happy I played through something difficult because I was forced to. I spent forever trying to beat the final challenge in God of War's Trial of the Gods, and it only sticks in my mind because if it. It was an achievement! If I could've turned on easy mode there and never had to worry about dying on that rising platform, I doubt I would remember anything about it.
In gambling games I always save, win, save, lose, reload, win, save, etc. For other randomized elements I save, open the chest, reload, open the chest again, etc. Everyone does this. You'd have to be an idiot not to do so. But when that ability is not present, the game is actually a game like it should be, and not just a matter of wasting time waiting for it to cooperate.
Now, save points? Yeah, maybe they don't belong in most games anymore. But as a mechanism for "letting the player choose their difficulty," they utterly fail, and so do arguments to that effect.
EDIT: Oh hey there Henroid.
Yeah, choice is the other major aspect...you choose not to play the yearly Madden games, you choose not to play shovelware, and you can feel free to choose not to play games with save systems you don't like. There's no reason that every developer has to bow to your interests.
What about games with hardcore modes, permanent death? Are those awful and terrible too because they didn't let you save your game and you had to start over?
Edit - Though I'll admit to ambling / mini-game abuse; but only when it comes to the ones where I have a low chance of winning to begin with. Like Pazaak in KotOR and KotOR 2. Fuck that game.
I much prefer my games to have quicksave/quickload, no matter how much they might simplify matters; it's just infinitely more convenient, and there's nothing stopping anyone from ignoring them if they think such functionality completely defeats the object for them.
Heh, I remember playing through Half-Life with the proviso that I would restart the game from scratch every time I got myself killed. I think the furthest I managed was the Lambda complex for the second time before I gave in...
Of course it is. That's why it's a better idea for them to remove that temptation, or at least make it more difficult to get to the nearest save point. It isn't my fault that I'm using the most intelligent method to win if they implemented it that way.
This is more difficult than not doing it at all. They have to save all of that data - or if nothing else, random seed data for all chests, separate from the gambling seed, etc. - and even if we have the storage space for it now you still need to test that extensively to make sure that it all behaves the way you want it to.
If I had saved beforehand I'd open the door and wouldn't bat an eye at the hundreds of zombies. I'd just run right through them... who cares? You just saved a few seconds ago.
You're assuming it's always got to be a lot more complicated than it is! I've seen NWN module-makers do it, and the scripts are utterly tiny. "All of that data" for, say, a hundred chests amounts to a few kilobytes tagged onto the save file, and for the game to retrieve data from a glorified text file... well, that's not exactly systems-intensive either.
Granted that's for pre-existing items taken from the game's lists (named items, +1s, that kind of thing). I'm sure it'd be impractical in terms of randomised (that is, generated-from-scratch) weapons or enemies or even areas!
This is so incredibly messed up.
I feel genuine pity here.
Especially your earlier line about "frowning on that sort of person" who thinks people should play games as they see fit. You take games so seriously, they're just entertainments.
I seriously dislike this kind of attitude. It's very elitist and unnecessarily drawing a line in the sand between people for no good reason.
@Sporky: Your analogies aren't very convincing. DMC3 had an easy mode you had to unlock after dying. It was pretty damn easy too, you could mash your way through the mode. None of the enemies even have enough life to combo worth a damn. Nobody marked it down for having it. Now lets compare this real example where a game with an easy mode was not marked down to your examples, where you exaggerated and carefully constructed fake examples in an attempt to falsely strengthen your point.
Perhaps you should look at real games that exist that have easy modes and are marked down on difficulty despite the normal and higher being very difficult. This way you might have some evidence behind the broad claims you are making about human nature.
There's no excuse, at all, for not having at the very least a quick save and exit game function.
Urgh personaly I hated it when people used that plugin in their modules. Reloading until yuo get decent magical crap out of a box is one of the best parts
Also the HalfLife thing? thats just plain masochistic D:
I wasn't frowning at people who think people should play games as they see fit, I was saying that's the position everyone should have - let everyone be. I was frowning at the kind of people who wants to beat games for the sake of beating them using any means necessary and complaining when the ones they use most aren't present (save anywhere). I wrote the sentence in the wrong place, my bad on that.
I do not think it's "messed up" that people have to tough up if they chose to have a family or have lots of work obligations and not have a lot of time for video games. We're talking about choices, mind you, not "I have to work two jobs to get by" - obviously that's a fucked up position to be in in life and people shouldn't be in it. I'm not going to fault people for that.
But people have a measure of control over their lives. If they use that control to have more of this, that, or the other, which will take away from playing video games, they don't really get to hold game makers at fault for not having time. Is that really a bad thing to point out?
Well that's a lot less horrible that what I thought you were saying. Glad that's sorted out.
In that case, just include a quick save and exit that deletes itself on load. It sidesteps every argument for quicksaving ruining difficulty because it deletes itself on load. It doesn't interfer with playing the game. You can't use it to save before the zombies or whatnot. It's the perfect solution for those who want to be able to save anywhere for life reasons.
There isn't a good argument against that. If you can have a checkpoint save system, then you've already coded in saving game data. This is just another way of activating it. It's not any extra work and I don't see why it's unreasonable to call out developers for not including it.
Even though I don't think you were saying something totally messed up anymore now that you've explained it, I do still think you are assuming too much personal control over life circumstances and assuming that game playing is important enough that people should prioritise it rather than having their entertainment be molded around their life. I don't think that's a good way to think about gaming.
I'm actually going to sort of side with you on this, in a way.
I found after taking on the mantle of "family man" I no longer had the time to devote to the types of games I enjoyed. Trying to play became incredibly inconvenient, if not impossible.
Case in point: WoW guild with coworkers, which became totally pointless when they could all hop on at 5:30pm upon getting home and I had to wait ~4 hours to get my kid to bed first. By the time I log in, they're all tired and logging out, not to mention that by the time I reached level 20 they were all 45-50 so I was essentially solo. So why even bother?
My choice was to move on and start looking for games that would fit my schedule. I still miss some of the old game types I used to be into...but rather than sit around being miserable because I can't play them, I play something else.
So I can identify with the OP here - it's an adjustment in more ways than one.
Work and other life choices aren't anywhere near as accomodating as that.
It's kind of like defending shitty waiters who aren't serving you like they should by saying you can go to other restaurants. It sort of misses the point. What if you like the food at the restaurant with the shitty waiter? Should you be putting up with it? I don't think so. You'd complain about the waiter. This is not much different.
But as I mentioned, the Castlevania games for the DS (if you have one) have a suspend function. Etrian Odyssey 2 (DS as well) as has a function like this, but it comes with a drawback (there's a special power meter your characters get as they do shit in battle; using the save-anywhere feature will sap out 20 points of that). The Ace Attorney games also allow save anywhere, something deeply appreciated since the games are all text / story (BUT SO GOOD).
Basically, I'm advocating buying a DS. Perhaps a DSi XL. <_<
If I had way less time than I currently did I would be buying a lot more games for my DS & PSP.
But some people like shitty waiters.
Haha I was just thinking that myself but I thought "That's taking the analogy too far" and then well here you are...
I did actually think of a shitty justification for it (though, not in terms of the analogy); There has to be some breed of people out there who like bad waiters because it means not having to tip a lot or at all.