LAMBO said:
Quicksaves are one the freedoms we have on the PC that i hate not having. IT does 2 great things:
1. By choosing the amount of saves i do i can kind of set my own difficulty level, and also save at points that i think are really cool and want to play again.
2. I can leave the game whenever i want. I friggin hate not being able to save when i get a phonecall or have to run out of the house for something. I hope consoles start letting you save at any point next gen.
Here's how I see it:
When using checkpoints properly (as in Halo), the game design itself is radically changed. Using Halo as an example, it is clear that the areas between each checkpoint are very specific scenarios with a certain set of challenges for the player. It is never explicitly implied, but these "mini-objectives" really add a great deal of substance to the experience. Recall the infamous transport bay encountered immediately upon arriving onboard the Truth and Reconciliation. That room has several varying waves of enemies and essentially presents you with a very simple objective, but achieving victory is difficult and requires you to LEARN the room. When you finally complete it, you have really accomplished something. Throw in quicksaves, and the entire aspect of mastery is tossed out the window. You kill an enemy, you save. If you lose a bit of precious life, you reload and try that EXACT moment again. You are no longer attempting to complete the entire room...
The checkpoint system has more in common with classic action games of the olden days, and that is part of what makes it appealing to me. It is a superior game design to those who appreciate a little challenge.
Of course, this also walks hand in hand with Halo's excellent rechargable shield system. Need to quickly relocate yourself? A bullet or two isn't going to cause permanent damage, so you can cleanly transition. As I was playing Doom 3 recently, I found myself using the quicksave all the time. If I took one too many hits during a run and gun, I'd feel that it's entirely possible that it could cause problems for the next segment. In order to keep my health in prime condition, I'd have to reload my game upon taking any significant damage in order to pass the segment with minimal life lost. Due to the nature of quicksaves, a difficult situation will often find you pressing the damn quicksave key after each enemy is killed in order to prevent lost progress. You might say "why use it, then"? To you I say "The game is designed for it!". As I said earlier, you don't simply choose one type of system...you design your entire game around it. Checkpoint games that failed to realize this have, well, failed.
It's just that I enjoyed the system SO MUCH that I've been disappointed at the general lack of similar setups. For me, quicksaves are like the random battles of FPS games. I still enjoy RPGs with random battles (Shadow Hearts 2!!), but I'm sitting there the entire time wishing that they weren't there and feeling as if my experience is somehow being damaged by their existence. That's how I feel about the quicksave. I can't help but use it, but I hate the way games are designed around them.
I've been an enemy of the quicksave ever since complaints forced them to be added to Alien VS Predator. The game COULD have used a couple checkpoints rather than forcing a level restart, but the action was just SO much more intense due to the lack of a quick save. You learned the level very well and had accomplished much by the end. When you can save around every corner, something is lost. The intensity of the experience is down the drain...
I HIGHLY doubt that I'll ever be able to convince anyone here of this. Go ahead, quote this post and tell me how wrong I am. I'm not trying to convince anyone that they are wrong here, I'm simply stating how I feel. It isn't as if there is any point in making anything out of it, you already won. Quicksaves are EVERYWHERE. They DOMINATE the FPS genre...
I may as well map the damn thing to my right mouse button and be done with it.
but don't go comparing the single player games because Halo 2 just can't compete.
How incredibly unfair. So, let me guess...you didn't like the single player campaign in Halo? That certainly means little, in the grand scheme of things. Fact is, many people have enjoyed Halo's single player mode more than Half-Life's. I expect both of them to be fantastic and feel that anyone claiming that one or the other will be crap in that regard has an opinion which should be taken with a grain of salt. I mean, I HATE Super Smash Bros. Melee...but that does mean the game itself is CRAP? No way.
