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I was playing Kingdom Hearts about an hour ago. Stuck on one bit for 45 minutes. And you know why I didn't clock it? Because I was all tense, cold sweats, hot flushes, all the regular hallmarks of playing a particularly tricky game...or having withdrawals from heroin. But I couldn't tear myself away, take a breather, because I'd worked my way up to the particular boss battle. My last save was about a quarter of an hour of gaming time, full of niggly little skirmishes with half a dozen creatures at once. So everytime I died I went back to the little bit before the boss, forced to watch the cut-scene like the bloke from A Clockwork Orange in the brainwashing scene. I ended up switching it off, seriously annoyed. Then, rather than examining my own game skills I attacked the disc, the coders, the controller. Why couldn't I save just before the boss? Why couldn't I save whenever I wanted?!
This isn't particularly rational thinking. A bit more practise, go up a few more 'Lvl's, and I should be able to beat that big great HP draining mess. But that 'save anywhere' must have struck a chord in my brain, and took me back to Tomb Raider 2 on the PC. Grainy graphics slowly chugging along on a 150mhz processor...those were the days. Back then I could save whenever I felt like it. Then when numero 3 arrived I had to find crystals. Well bah to crystals. I didn't play Tomb Raider 3 much. Let me think about the other games in my collection - ICO has the sofa system, GTA the hideouts...and then there's games like Ratchet and Clank where you can pretty much save whenever you want, even able to automatically do it at particular points. And you know, I think it's a pretty damn good system.
Why won't Kingdom Hearts let me save anywhere? Watching my friend Joe (torticollis on the forums) playing Max Payne on the PC prompted much name calling, him quick-saving as soon as he reaches a corner so if he dies whilst diving in slow-motion, blasting the goons, he can start that small section all again with no hassle at all. I get Max Payne on the PS2 and the controls were fiddly and the screen was too dark and I traded it in. But that's not really relevant, the point is I'm all for saving when you want to, but not really for saving ALL the time. So what about this for a system?
Maybe Kingdom Hearts would let me save whenever I wanted, PROVIDED I wasn't in battle, during a cut-scene or what have you. Kind of like how you can't check out your inventory during a fight? Heck, even being able to skip the scripted sequences would be a blessing but maybe when the next one rolls around Square will grant me my wish...after all, there must be enough Disney magic to put that feature in. If anything it's less of a headache for the coders, not having to put in save points.
In Vice City you can't save during a mission. Makes sense. But what if you do a mission, complete it and start cruising around. You see a PCJ and decide to nick it. A cop catches you but you run him over. Two stars. You're rammed by a pair of police cars and go flying. Busted. Lose a little money and all your hard earned weapons. Annoying, huh? Well if I didn't have to cross an island to save, it'd help a lot guys. And why The Getaway saves during missions but not when you decide to quit is beyond me.
It could just be me being lazy, but looking at some other games that have got the balance just right (in my opinion) suggests otherwise. Pro Evolution 2 lets you save after tinkering with your Master League tactics, but not when you've just nabbed a 1-0 lead in the Master Cup final with an hour left on the clock. Sensible, right? You can make sure you don't have to retrace your steps, but you can't wuss out and save everytime you get the ball 'just in case'.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. Perhaps a system where your game rating goes down depending on how many saves you use, like arcade games and continues. Bonuses for only saving under ten times, for example. Any system would be better than Kingdom Hearts', especially for people like me stuck at bits like this. Ah well. I've got to go and use a keyblade to kick some serious darkside *word banned by an oversensitive ukchatforums censor*. Your thoughts on save systems are welcomed in this thread.
Thanks for reading.
-El
This isn't particularly rational thinking. A bit more practise, go up a few more 'Lvl's, and I should be able to beat that big great HP draining mess. But that 'save anywhere' must have struck a chord in my brain, and took me back to Tomb Raider 2 on the PC. Grainy graphics slowly chugging along on a 150mhz processor...those were the days. Back then I could save whenever I felt like it. Then when numero 3 arrived I had to find crystals. Well bah to crystals. I didn't play Tomb Raider 3 much. Let me think about the other games in my collection - ICO has the sofa system, GTA the hideouts...and then there's games like Ratchet and Clank where you can pretty much save whenever you want, even able to automatically do it at particular points. And you know, I think it's a pretty damn good system.
Why won't Kingdom Hearts let me save anywhere? Watching my friend Joe (torticollis on the forums) playing Max Payne on the PC prompted much name calling, him quick-saving as soon as he reaches a corner so if he dies whilst diving in slow-motion, blasting the goons, he can start that small section all again with no hassle at all. I get Max Payne on the PS2 and the controls were fiddly and the screen was too dark and I traded it in. But that's not really relevant, the point is I'm all for saving when you want to, but not really for saving ALL the time. So what about this for a system?
Maybe Kingdom Hearts would let me save whenever I wanted, PROVIDED I wasn't in battle, during a cut-scene or what have you. Kind of like how you can't check out your inventory during a fight? Heck, even being able to skip the scripted sequences would be a blessing but maybe when the next one rolls around Square will grant me my wish...after all, there must be enough Disney magic to put that feature in. If anything it's less of a headache for the coders, not having to put in save points.
In Vice City you can't save during a mission. Makes sense. But what if you do a mission, complete it and start cruising around. You see a PCJ and decide to nick it. A cop catches you but you run him over. Two stars. You're rammed by a pair of police cars and go flying. Busted. Lose a little money and all your hard earned weapons. Annoying, huh? Well if I didn't have to cross an island to save, it'd help a lot guys. And why The Getaway saves during missions but not when you decide to quit is beyond me.
It could just be me being lazy, but looking at some other games that have got the balance just right (in my opinion) suggests otherwise. Pro Evolution 2 lets you save after tinkering with your Master League tactics, but not when you've just nabbed a 1-0 lead in the Master Cup final with an hour left on the clock. Sensible, right? You can make sure you don't have to retrace your steps, but you can't wuss out and save everytime you get the ball 'just in case'.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. Perhaps a system where your game rating goes down depending on how many saves you use, like arcade games and continues. Bonuses for only saving under ten times, for example. Any system would be better than Kingdom Hearts', especially for people like me stuck at bits like this. Ah well. I've got to go and use a keyblade to kick some serious darkside *word banned by an oversensitive ukchatforums censor*. Your thoughts on save systems are welcomed in this thread.
Thanks for reading.
-El
I liked Maximo for PS2 where each continue cost more than the last, thereby weeding out the part-timers and resurrecting the hardcore difficulty of days gone by.
I was playing Kingdom Hearts about an hour ago. Stuck on one bit for 45 minutes. And you know why I didn't clock it? Because I was all tense, cold sweats, hot flushes, all the regular hallmarks of playing a particularly tricky game...or having withdrawals from heroin. But I couldn't tear myself away, take a breather, because I'd worked my way up to the particular boss battle. My last save was about a quarter of an hour of gaming time, full of niggly little skirmishes with half a dozen creatures at once. So everytime I died I went back to the little bit before the boss, forced to watch the cut-scene like the bloke from A Clockwork Orange in the brainwashing scene. I ended up switching it off, seriously annoyed. Then, rather than examining my own game skills I attacked the disc, the coders, the controller. Why couldn't I save just before the boss? Why couldn't I save whenever I wanted?!
This isn't particularly rational thinking. A bit more practise, go up a few more 'Lvl's, and I should be able to beat that big great HP draining mess. But that 'save anywhere' must have struck a chord in my brain, and took me back to Tomb Raider 2 on the PC. Grainy graphics slowly chugging along on a 150mhz processor...those were the days. Back then I could save whenever I felt like it. Then when numero 3 arrived I had to find crystals. Well bah to crystals. I didn't play Tomb Raider 3 much. Let me think about the other games in my collection - ICO has the sofa system, GTA the hideouts...and then there's games like Ratchet and Clank where you can pretty much save whenever you want, even able to automatically do it at particular points. And you know, I think it's a pretty damn good system.
Why won't Kingdom Hearts let me save anywhere? Watching my friend Joe (torticollis on the forums) playing Max Payne on the PC prompted much name calling, him quick-saving as soon as he reaches a corner so if he dies whilst diving in slow-motion, blasting the goons, he can start that small section all again with no hassle at all. I get Max Payne on the PS2 and the controls were fiddly and the screen was too dark and I traded it in. But that's not really relevant, the point is I'm all for saving when you want to, but not really for saving ALL the time. So what about this for a system?
Maybe Kingdom Hearts would let me save whenever I wanted, PROVIDED I wasn't in battle, during a cut-scene or what have you. Kind of like how you can't check out your inventory during a fight? Heck, even being able to skip the scripted sequences would be a blessing but maybe when the next one rolls around Square will grant me my wish...after all, there must be enough Disney magic to put that feature in. If anything it's less of a headache for the coders, not having to put in save points.
In Vice City you can't save during a mission. Makes sense. But what if you do a mission, complete it and start cruising around. You see a PCJ and decide to nick it. A cop catches you but you run him over. Two stars. You're rammed by a pair of police cars and go flying. Busted. Lose a little money and all your hard earned weapons. Annoying, huh? Well if I didn't have to cross an island to save, it'd help a lot guys. And why The Getaway saves during missions but not when you decide to quit is beyond me.
It could just be me being lazy, but looking at some other games that have got the balance just right (in my opinion) suggests otherwise. Pro Evolution 2 lets you save after tinkering with your Master League tactics, but not when you've just nabbed a 1-0 lead in the Master Cup final with an hour left on the clock. Sensible, right? You can make sure you don't have to retrace your steps, but you can't wuss out and save everytime you get the ball 'just in case'.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. Perhaps a system where your game rating goes down depending on how many saves you use, like arcade games and continues. Bonuses for only saving under ten times, for example. Any system would be better than Kingdom Hearts', especially for people like me stuck at bits like this. Ah well. I've got to go and use a keyblade to kick some serious darkside *word banned by an oversensitive ukchatforums censor*. Your thoughts on save systems are welcomed in this thread.
Thanks for reading.
-El
This isn't particularly rational thinking. A bit more practise, go up a few more 'Lvl's, and I should be able to beat that big great HP draining mess. But that 'save anywhere' must have struck a chord in my brain, and took me back to Tomb Raider 2 on the PC. Grainy graphics slowly chugging along on a 150mhz processor...those were the days. Back then I could save whenever I felt like it. Then when numero 3 arrived I had to find crystals. Well bah to crystals. I didn't play Tomb Raider 3 much. Let me think about the other games in my collection - ICO has the sofa system, GTA the hideouts...and then there's games like Ratchet and Clank where you can pretty much save whenever you want, even able to automatically do it at particular points. And you know, I think it's a pretty damn good system.
Why won't Kingdom Hearts let me save anywhere? Watching my friend Joe (torticollis on the forums) playing Max Payne on the PC prompted much name calling, him quick-saving as soon as he reaches a corner so if he dies whilst diving in slow-motion, blasting the goons, he can start that small section all again with no hassle at all. I get Max Payne on the PS2 and the controls were fiddly and the screen was too dark and I traded it in. But that's not really relevant, the point is I'm all for saving when you want to, but not really for saving ALL the time. So what about this for a system?
Maybe Kingdom Hearts would let me save whenever I wanted, PROVIDED I wasn't in battle, during a cut-scene or what have you. Kind of like how you can't check out your inventory during a fight? Heck, even being able to skip the scripted sequences would be a blessing but maybe when the next one rolls around Square will grant me my wish...after all, there must be enough Disney magic to put that feature in. If anything it's less of a headache for the coders, not having to put in save points.
In Vice City you can't save during a mission. Makes sense. But what if you do a mission, complete it and start cruising around. You see a PCJ and decide to nick it. A cop catches you but you run him over. Two stars. You're rammed by a pair of police cars and go flying. Busted. Lose a little money and all your hard earned weapons. Annoying, huh? Well if I didn't have to cross an island to save, it'd help a lot guys. And why The Getaway saves during missions but not when you decide to quit is beyond me.
It could just be me being lazy, but looking at some other games that have got the balance just right (in my opinion) suggests otherwise. Pro Evolution 2 lets you save after tinkering with your Master League tactics, but not when you've just nabbed a 1-0 lead in the Master Cup final with an hour left on the clock. Sensible, right? You can make sure you don't have to retrace your steps, but you can't wuss out and save everytime you get the ball 'just in case'.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. Perhaps a system where your game rating goes down depending on how many saves you use, like arcade games and continues. Bonuses for only saving under ten times, for example. Any system would be better than Kingdom Hearts', especially for people like me stuck at bits like this. Ah well. I've got to go and use a keyblade to kick some serious darkside *word banned by an oversensitive ukchatforums censor*. Your thoughts on save systems are welcomed in this thread.
Thanks for reading.
-El