Upon dieing once again in the game Dead Rising I find myself staring blankly at the screen in an attempt to keep my mouth from uttering curses at the pixels which caused my frustration. Perhaps I simply suck at this title or I’m just under the expected learning curve provided to me, but I feel that this is the sort of game that’s simply in need of a quick save or some form of checkpoint system. I’ll spare you explinations of my horrific and yet pathetic deaths from unforscene boss fights and the like to begin my topic, which is modern saving in video games.

One of the first questions people ask me upon finishing a game is “How long was it?” and rightfully so. We pay upwards of $60.00 dollars a game these days, who wouldn’t want to get their moneys worth? However, the last thing we want is for the gaming experience to become long due to repedative dieing.

Most games (asside from arcades) don’t cost a quarter to play, luckily developers have realized this. Odds are most games released in the last few years have an option to save your game in it’s pause screen or at least checkpoints along the way coupled with an auto save. These ways to save have nearly become standardized due to players understanding them and of course because they work so well.

Unfortionately…some games try to hard to innovate.

Yes I’m looking at you Elika, the Prince of Persia’s companion who quite literally makes it completely impossible to die in the game. The latest Prince of Persia adventure decided to completely ditch any notion of a checkpoint/save system and simply respawn you back where you were before you last failed. Sounds good in theory, until you realize you no longer have the connection to care about your invincible character’s life.

Can one exist without the other? Is it impossible to create joy without difficulty? I don’t know. But Prince of Persia lost something significant ^{(1 Kohler)}.

Let’s stay away from the drawing board and focus on what works, save for me or let me save my own games. I’m a perfectly intelligent human being who happens to have a trigger finger for the F6 quicksave key.

Save systems need as much thought put into them as any element of a game. What each game needs as a checkpoint depends entirely on its own gameplay style. Morrowind and Oblivion had convenient quick and slow saving, however it was arguably too convenient allowing you to bypass the luck of being caught whilst pick-pocketing or in-game gambling. Dead Rising had too difficult of a save system, which tried to put the feeling of fear into the player who didn’t want to die but due to the unpredictability of the gameplay it became too tedious running from savepoint to savepoint.

Games will continue to innovate saving systems such as Resident Evil’s successful typewriter saving but generally games should stick to the tried and true checkpoint, manual save, quick save techniques that gamers love.

Citation:
Kohler, Chris Can one exist without the other…?