Ah, my bad. I’ll second that suggestion too, especially when after loading the game stutters for the first 20 seconds because it’s still loading textures and whatnot.
And since you weren’t complaining about it, I’ll take this opportunity to complain about games that have a dozen intro screens. I don’t mind seeing them the first time I run the game, but don’t make me hit esc 12 times when I fire the game up (or worse yet force me to sit through them).
Yes. Yes. eh you get the idea. I like a great checkpoint system too, but are you going to count on the developer doing a good job of this? I know I sure as hell won’t, so give me the damn quick save. Crutch or not it should just be in the game. With rotating save slots too please, the random brain farts where you hit save when you ment load are just too painful otherwise.
I’d like a skip-the-forced-storyline-on-rail-game-play-and-just-show-me-the-cut-scenes option. But that might just be me.
Doug Church used to have a presentation saying that in the late 90s. I tend to agree with it, but the deafening hordes won’t listen.
Man o’ man nothing drives me up the wall more than un skippable intros/cut scenes/animated company logos (UBI I’m looking at you). That and the lack of quick saves and quick loads seems to be endemic to consoles of which I’m slowly getting reacquainted with via my 1 month old 360.
RB6 Vegas drove me up the wall with it’s hellaciously difficult parts that took multiple reloads. What made it worse though was not being able to shut that bitch up in the chopper who insisted on shoving news feed of the chaos in Vegas. Look, I’m a special forces dude, I don’t want to be bothered with clips from CNN, dammit.
Let the player bypass cutscenes under any circumstance for fucks sake.
If you could guarantee that games using checkpoint saves would all be properly paced, and playable by people of varying degrees of skill, I’d say sure, that would be great.
But you can’t. Because it can’t be done.
f) Unlimited save slots. Pretty rare not to, nowadays, but I think I still see it occasionally.
This reminds me of the neat trick they pull at Disneyland (especially with the newer rides) of making sure the entire line is never visible from one angle. “Hey, look at the short lineup for Star Tours! After less than 15 minutes, we’ve made it inside, and… OH GOD, WHY!!!”
I can understand the point made by people who believe save-anywhere is a crutch. I’ve had a lot of gaming moments made memorable by my being so near death, yet pulling through. That said, I think it’s up to the hardcore players to have the discipline not to quicksave, and up to the quicksavers to complain less about any lack of difficulty.
My beef? Unskippable cutscenes. Hate hate hate hate hate.
Give Shatner the Lifetime Achievement Oscar, you Academy snobs.
Inspired by another thread, I just finished installing Baldur’s Gate II. After inserting disks 1-4 in order, it asked for disk 1 again. Wee. Todd. Ed.
Oh, we are talking about stuff we hate other than lack of quicksaves? Then sign me up for the RPG staple, the slow scrolling text. I…d.o…n.o.t…r.e.a.d…t.e.x.t…a…c.h.a.r.a.c.t.e.r…a.t…a…t.i.m.e. I read entire sentences or at least blocks of words all at once. It’s absolutely excruciating to watch text slowly appear one character a time. I really, really love it when they make you watch it for a second, then let you skip the character at a time crap by hitting a button. Then you get over zealous with hitting the button and end up missing something. Grrrr.
Dear god, to actually play the game it’s asking for disk 2. And there doesn’t seem to be a nocd crack on Gamecopyworld.
no save anywhere games where you die repeatedly because the damn game designers put the save points two hundred feet and 15 enemies too far from your playing skill…on the fucking easy level.
or they insist on jumping levels where if you miss you die instantly and have to go through an excruciatingly load just to play two seconds and die again.
I can’t think of many that have done it, but I like games that let you access cutscenes that you’ve already seen from the main menu.
Oh man, I’m still bitter about the cool Prince of Persia: Sands of Time cutscene with major plot points I got to when the doorbell rang because the pizza arrived. Too bad!
And yes, I’ve had more than one Khan moment with hitting Quick Save instead of Quick Load. Usually followed by 15 seconds of staring at the keyboard in disbelief and trying to believe it didn’t really happen.
I’d also like to avoid this being a “save philosophy” thread, but I can’t resist saying that while I understand the “savepoint only” idea, there’s also this thing called reality. I’ve just played through this sector of Jagged Alliance for an hour, for the third time, and I’m finally succeeding but a household emergency occurs and I have to shut down the game and the game is saying “Fuck you, you get to play that hour AGAIN and maybe AGAIN, asshole!”
Screw that. And the game got much more fun and strategic when I realized how to save at any time, too – it’s not necessarily strategic if you are too scared to move or try anything different for fear of losing a big chunk of playing time. As it is, I actually happen to be very conservative about saves and usually only allow myself one save unless it’s a game that just demands more – but that’s my choice.
Finally I’m still scarred by that damn Halo PC port that would fail to register me passing a savepoint with 1 HP left, and make me play through the impossible section over and over again. Thanks a lot.
Now back to constructive suggestions for easy ways to improve the gaming experience!
-In game screen capture to go along with the save file. Props to games that have this.
-Infinite queue for every input in the game (oh snap!)
From what I remember, if you did a ‘full install’ with bg2, you’ll only ever need disc 2.
I hate the games that tell me I have to restart the game for changes I made in the settings to take effect. I like the ones that have an Apply button where they automatically restart whatever it is they have to restart to get the changes changed.
I’d also like the option, when creating a new profile in a game, to grab all the settings from an existing profile. I hate when I have to go around resetting all the graphic and control options just because I want a separate batch of savegames. I mean, I want to be able to change the settings once I’ve created the profile… I just want to start from where I left off in my other profile.
I hate all devs for not agreeing where to put all my saves. I find savegames one
place and settings another for some games, other games collect them, but not in
either of the folders the first game put their separated data in. Then some games
have the nerve to save in the install directory. Fuckers.
Games that have settings and save games in the my documents folder. That’s where things like documents, pictures, and pr0n go. I fucking hate it when some crappy game has the nerve to mess up my OCD-organized folder with its ugly files. I realise it’s so multiple Windows users can have their own savegames and settings, but that’s what %appdata% is for.