How Much of a Savegame Coward Are You?

[dimensional]

I've never saved more frequently than in American McGee's Alice. It's really hard, and prone to having moments that can get so nasty that getting onto the very next platform can be a huge relief.

Man that brings back unhappy memories I played that game after madness returns and got part way through level 3 before I realised there was a quick save option, good job I discovered it when I did I was running out of expletives.

I tend to save a lot in games that are quite punishing or have a lot of branching paths that said in persona 4 fairly recently I pushed to far into a dungeon without saving and died losing 3 and a half hours of progress usually that would kill the game for me but in this instance I actually just carried on.

Other games such as Xenoblade Chronicles (playing atm) I hardly ever save because it feels so solid and there is no penalty for death except a return to a previous landmark so I only save if I am turning the console off or in the odd case I am trying to get a rare drop from a creature (save then load respawns mobs).

 

[Tyrant T100]

I generally save the game lots but rarely end up needing to load saves.
I think it comes from me expecting the game to crash at any moment rather than the fear of failing.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Funny you should mention DE:HR, OP. I've recently started my third play-through of that, trying this time to stealth my way through the game without killing anybody (Pacifist and Foxiest of the Hounds achievement run, basically) and I save the game almost every few steps.

Just about to enter a guarded room? Save. Crouched behind the desk 10 metres into the room? Save. Tucked up against a pillar about to sneak under the Securicam? Save. Behind the stack of boxes about to make a break for the exit? Save. Phew, glad that's over. Right, I'm now in a corridor. Wait, is that a guard at the far end? Save...

I would like to point out at this stage that I very, very rarely need to ever reload any of my compulsive saves; it's just that on the odd occasion that I do I don't like having to repeat the last 30-odd minutes of gameplay. Anyone who's ever spent an afternoon playing a game with a crash-heavy engine can empathise with me here *cough*Bethesda*cough*.

Spoiler: Also, minor HR gripe re stealth...

What is the point of a game 'allowing' you to 'choose' whether you're a stealth or combat character, and then forcing you into unavoidable boss fights? On my first play through I got my ass handed to me by the first boss fight because all of my Praxis points had gone into hacking and my only weapon was a silenced pistol. Ok, I now know that

Spoiler: Boss spoilers

a fully upgraded Typhoon will take care of any boss with two shots, and will only cost three Praxis points to have installed

but I shouldn't have to tank up my stealth character just because someone at Square Enix has a hard-on for boss battles. Would it have killed the dev team to come up with sneaky ways of neutralising or even evading these battles as well as including the toe-to-toe approach? Grrrr....

 

[Johnnydillinger]

Depending on the difficulty the game has, I am a save coward as well. Which is why Bioware brought me frustration a lot with its RPGs like KOTOR, Mass Effect and Jade Empire. I felt a bit too confident about this: "Oh look, this is a quiet town area, probably a lot of people to talk to here that will give you sidequests. Allright, let's talk to this guy here... The hell, NO DON'T ATTACK ME (dies)"
And then I realised my last savegame was like 2 hours before that one because either the enemies were weak or there wasn't a lot to happen in that last 2 hours. But Bioware games are still good; I wouldn't say the same about Lost Planet. That was frustrating.

 

[meselfshimself]

Im a massive save game coward for games like Deux Ex, Hitman and Silent Hill etc.
For more action focused games like C.O.D etc I dont really care/bother so much.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Not really like that but I do similar things in Half Life 1 only where I try finish a fight with the minimum amount of damage and ammo used. I find it as a challenge as anyone can run in and kill everything but try doing it without being hit. Also to be honest it is better to save often trust me on this.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Depends on the game really. If it goes really well I sometimes forget to save altogether (and then I die horribly and lose hours of gamesplay). But some games I like to complete my way with a minimum of fuss and then I'll abuse savegames on occasion. Or just on frustating occasions when everything goes against me and I want to rewind time (Total War comes to mind).

 

[TimeLord]

...yes
examples
in oblivion/fallout i saved like...every 20 feet XD
and on FFT i quicksaved like every time my guys got bashed over the head.

Yes but that's because you had to or the game would freeze up

OT: Yes I am. I did in Deus Ex too so I could replay sections right from where I wanted and not the normal auto-saves.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

I rarely save, almost to a fault. I find myself having to traipse through large chunks of games that I've already played if I died.

 

[repeating integers]

I am an absolutely massive wimp. Half-Life 2, for me, was basically "Savescumming: The Game". And I was only playing on Normal...

 

[ScorpSt]

I have a tendency to tap the quick-save button whenever there's a lull and I create new saves when I'm about to or just finished doing something big. I rarely if ever need them though.

 

[ChaoticKraus]

Depends on the game, but i hate having to replay parts i just did so i tend to save frequently.

This has been taken to new levels in The Witcher 2 where i quick-save every 5 minutes at the very least. That game is extremely brutal.

 

[Titan Buttons]

No I don't save my games very often, and so much pain it has lead me to, with games like Persona, fallout and Deus Ex.

 

[aaronobst]

I guess I am, I did pretty much the same thing when I lost my squadmates in ME2 I was like: "NOOOOOOO not on my watch"

 

[Alcamonic]

My F5 button is one of the most used buttons in RPG games.
I think the problem is the easy way of doing a quick-save, if it's not available then I don't use the save game function nearly as much.

 

[Hamish Durie]

I'm not a save game coward
it's just that my Xbox is making funny nois.....nvm it died

 

[ruben6f]

I was thinking about creating a topic like this when I was in Bed.

No I am not, in most games I have the a save that I use when my game session is over and quicksave that I use every now and then but only load that quicksave if I really need to do it.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are the games in wich I save the most, I do a save before leaving the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. base, I quicksave every 30 seconds ( now it's automatic I don't even think before hitting the F5 key and that leads to trouble sometimes).

But in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to avoid loading the game, after every quest, trade or any other action I save so if I do something wrong I will need to fix it instead of just loading the game.

I don't mind people who save a lot but I followed this Let's Play channel on youtube, the player saved every 5 seconds and I remember that 2 episodes of his S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Let's Play were in the same cave, fighting the same monster because every time he got hit he wold load the game, he wold do the same thing in fallout 3 and other games so I gave up and unsubscribed.

 

[JackWestJr]

A bit, yes. I was about to finish Just Cause 2 on the hardest difficulty, mind you, to ge the last trophy I needed for the Platinum. For some reason, I went to sleep and when I woke up the next day on the last level, my save game had been erased AND my normal save had rewound about 10 hours!!!

I had no idea HOW this had happened, everything on my PS3's save data had sort of gone back a few hours in terms of progress. It was creepy.

Ever since, I save whenever I can.

 

[Vykrel]

i saved before every time i hacked something in Deus Ex, and i saved before i moved into new areas that i didnt know anything about, and i often saved after knocking out enemies.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

I do that a lot in Splinter Cell games. It's not really cowardice, it's more of a compulsion.