The save point is one of the great inventions of the modern game, allowing you to put down a game and come back to it later, or allow you another attempt without having to play through the entire game again (something which was all too common in the 8-bit days!). What could possibly be wrong with such a great idea?

The biggest problem with save points is when the game doesn’t allow you to save at any point you wish, but instead only allows you to save at certain points determined by the games designer. I have no problem with this idea in general, indeed as a programmer it is often very useful to limit saving or checkpointing the game to certain positions as it makes the entire job much easier. However, there is no excuse for the stupid positioning of save points that you sometimes seem to come across.

How many times have you made great progress in a game, then spend the next 15 minutes praying that there’s a save point soon so you don’t have to repeat the last half hours gameplay? Equally annoying is when you need to go and do something else, and face the agonising decision between keeping playing or switching the console off and having to play it all over again.

Another example is when you have a particularly tricky section of the game, for example a boss fight, which occurs after a whole bunch of tricky platform jumps. The game has let you save your position at the beginning of the platform section, but doesn’t let you save before the boss, so every attempt at the boss means repeating the platform jumping again before you get another attempt.

Save points which also save your current energy levels can be annoying if not handled carefully. In some cases you’ll fight your way through to a save point, losing half your energy in the process. You save, overwriting your previous save with full energy. The next section is really tough, and having to attempt it with only half energy is really annoying. Guess what! You can’t go back because you overwrote your saved game, and nowhere nearby is there any way of replenishing your energy. After 20 attempts and realising it’s just going to be too hard to get through this stage the game is rapidly heading towards the “I’m not playing that again” pile, or you’re off to try and find a cheat for the game. Ideally, all save points would allow you to replenish your energy fully before saving.

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