The orginal Crash Bandicoot; it screwed me over SO much!
Worst save system?
" From the games I've experienced: Dead Rising 1 "THIS all the way!
Any save system that doesn't have at least 5 save slots (ideally, no limit on saves), chapter start saves (with a chapter select option), autosave checkpoints (that are placed well) and lastly a quicksave option (that I'll rarely use if all the prior stuff actually works as it should).
Situation 1:
You watch a cinematic. The level starts. (1) You fight through quite a few enemies and reach a tough platforming puzzle. (2) You die a few times but eventually figure out the puzzle (3) you get ambushed by enemies. You defeat them and reach a room with heavy enemies. (4)
There should be a save at every one of those numbers. The first is the chapter stage. The second is so you can focus on the puzzle and not fighting your way back up to it each time. The third is because you did the damn puzzle, if you get ambushed, having to redo the puzzle is a dick move. Fourth, same thing, it's highly possible that you'll die here - it should save pretty close to this point so you don't have to redo 10 minutes or more of game just to get back there and die again until you figure out what the strategy is.
Situation 2:
You fight your way through a tough stage and get up to the room where the level boss is. (1) You enter the room. The cinematic plays. (2) You fight the boss. You win. (3) You exit the game.
Again, there should be a save at every one of those numbers. It should automatically save when you reach the boss room. Saves should always happen AFTER cutscenes - or you should be given the option to skip the cutscene. If you want to see the cutscene again, load the save from outside the room. There should always be a save after you defeat a boss - In Batman Arkham Asylum, after a particular boss; the save doesn't happen until after you exit the area...so if you beat the boss, watch the cinematic, then quit, you have to redo it all. That's bad.
Lastly, there should never be any worry that you're going to lose progress because of the save system. There should never be the hesitation of, "well, I kinda want that gun, but it means I have to drop these three items that I also really need...I don't know if I'm going to need them..." Then you walk into the next room and it's a boss fight and it auto-saved over your ONLY save so you can't go back and get that gun. Or that the only option to go back is to restart the whole chapter because it autosaved WHILE you were dying or stuck in the geometry (yes, I've really had this happen).
A great one in Tomb Raider (Legend, I think) is that old checkpoints re-activate if you cross them again. I climb up the side of these ruins and activated the checkpoint at the top. I fell off by accident and when my body slammed into the ground below, I activated that checkpoint. WHAT? FFFF-. Seriously. That should never happen.
Anyways, yes, I'm passionate about save system because bad ones waste my time when I want to be enjoying the game. I want to move forward and see what's next and overcome the present challenge, not redo sections over and over.
EDIT: Obviously, there are some exceptions and I don't expect this to be some retroactive thing. I'm talking about narrative-driven single player games that have chapters and bosses and a mixture of gameplay types.
Ran into one just tonight. Playing Valkyria Chronicles Behind Her Blue Flame expansion. When you complete a stage you don't get a chance to save before starting the next level, which means you have to place your units not really knowing what the level is going to hold and it's actually pretty tough.
" @MysteriousBob said:you didnt have to start over every time. you could save in bathrooms and on the couch in the maintenance room. but still they were far apart and i only saw one every hour or so if that.It's not a broken game mechanic when the central experience is designed around it. You may disagree, and that's fine - but Dead Rising was not broken, just different. This is the same shit that got brought up with Lost Planet 2 - different doesn't mean bad, and the same as everyone else doesn't mean good. Both of these games have a learning curve, both of these games are a-typical to their genre, this is largely met with frustration and confusion - which leads to senseless bitching. These games do something different - which is why they are good, rather than another generic title that will get lost when the next Space Marine Shooter comes out. I could sit here and spend an infinite amount of time going over why these games are great in my opinion and why you're wrong for not liking something just because it's different, but there's a larger issue going on here and it just keeps nagging at me - players hate being punished for their mistakes and are no longer willing to LEARN to play a game and use a bit of trial and error. As someone who grew up with mostly Arcade games (which I will grant you are designed soley to eat money and therefore favor trial-and-error gameplay) there's something about knowing a game, about LEARNING a game, about a game without tutorials or infinite hand holding. 'Arcade' style gaming - no saves or limited saves, a lives system, trial and error - these things do not bother me, they are part of a game's style and need to be taken as such. It strikes me as beyond ironic that people will sit down and dedicate themselves to learning the endless combos of SSFIV, the maps for an FPS deathmatch, boss strategies and item recipes for RPGs without a second thought but as soon as you have to learn levels or save systems it becomes a big to-do about broken game design. I'm probably the minority here, and that's fine - just don't come me like I'm some crazy person, because I can appreciate a style of gaming you cannot. As for Fallout 3's save system - anything that takes control away from me, and has the console making choices for me, is a problem. It's my game, I'll save it when I want to. (And yes, I have auto-save turned off). Toss in a quick edit here: Tl;DR It's not broken when it's designed that way, and it's not broken just cause it's not what YOU want it to be. Even with my complaints over Fallout 3's excessive Auto-Saving, I would never call it broken. The harshest thing I can say is that it isn't ideal for me, but the game was good enough that I worked around that fact. "" @SteamPunkJin said:
Exactly. You start the story over. The story is the game. Don't try and justify broken game design. Fallout 3 saves EVERYTHING. I have every instance of my character saved automatically and use it to view the entire history. What's it like living in bizarro world? "" @MysteriousBob said:
One of the few modern games that will force you to start all of the way from the beginning! That ruined the entire game for me. "That's bullshit plain and simple - misinformation: You do NOT start all the way over. You start the story over and your character progression is saved. "
in response to the bold part: i didnt feel like i learned very much when i died over and over on the very difficult bosses.
anyways, i think the worst save system would be I Wanna Be The Guy on Impossible difficulty because it wasn't existent
I don't know if this is "better" or not (what the shit is "better" anyway?) but back in the day when you had to fight your way to the end of a game with no, or very limited saves made for some insane, epic battles. While I'm not sure I can deal with that anymore, I remember playing games that had long stretches between saves, or none at all. Your heart pounded, your adrenaline pumped.
Nowadays, I might think to myself "FUCK this game, I don't have time for this." But I remember quite a few nights of beating Dr. Wily's Castle, knowing that I can't turn the game off. I had to beat it THEN, or start at the beginning of the castle.
Sitting back, putting the controller down and taking a deep breath...those credits were magical.
Dead Risings save system didn't ever cause me any problems at all, i never understand how so many people had problems with it. considering how many games have worse save systems.
The very first Tomb Raider on the PS1 had the shittest save system ever. One-use save crystals where you would have to decide how much of the level/collection puzzle you should do before saving... and save points arent very frequent in that game. That on top of the games love of making you overstep jumps, drown or get mauled by a grizzly bear/T-Rex. Eventually you get a feel for when you should save, but save it at the wrong time and you have to do a ton of the level before you get another chance to save.
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