^ "You were given way more ink ribbons than you really needed."

You're not a save whore are you? I'm the kinda person who saves at every available oppertunity and sometimes twice just to make sure. Needless to say I was pretty bad at the first Resident Evil.

Autosaving is fine in some games, but in a Silent Hill game, it doesn't feel right to me. In games like this, I like pre existing save points. However, if they did want to somehow limit saves using that system, perhaps you could only use save point A twice before it would disappear. Something like that.

Auto-saving is fine as long as it's not every three seconds. There should be some sort of negative consequence for dying in the game, but if they're going the auto-save route, saves shouldn't be too far apart so that people can put down the game if they need to.

A combination of both would be the best, in my opinion. Allow the player to suspend their game or something at any time so they can do other things.

I'm not sure why someone would want to have to start all over again or back track every time they die. I don't think there should be an auto save but i think they shouldn't space the save points too far apart. Homecoming frustrated me no end, especially when i was in the sewer and every time i died i had to do it all over again.

The point is that you DON'T want to back track every time you die. The tension is helped by adding this negative consequence to dying.

On the other hand, if the game is too difficult, this gets tedious instead of terrifying and an auto-save is more than welcome.

It's all about how the game plays that dictates whether an auto-save or a limited save system should be incorporated.

I don't think it makes the game tense just frustrating.

I think that by 2011 we could come up with a less stupid way of penalizing a player for dying in a videogame. I should feel tension because of the struggle, not because of the consequences. It's a videogame, after all. There are no real consequences. Dying in videogames only annoys me. Replaying whole segments of the game annoys me even more. Ideally, I should never be annoyed with a videogame.

The simple solution is to let the player choose whether or not to take advantage of autosaves. That way, those who play it for challenge will have a reason to stay fit, and those who don't want the gameplay intruding on the flow of the story will be able to progress without needlessly repeating whole sections that happen to be difficult.

Do what Lego Star Wars does. Make it easier everytime you die so it's less frustration. Game getting too easy? Killing monsters one hit? Game's AI cranks up the monsters stregnth and help. Of course this should be optional though.

^ Rather than it being optional, I think that it should happen on the easier difficulties and not on the game's hard mode. That way people looking for a challange can have it.

The first few games had plenty of save points so you didn't have to start back too far if you died. Also, if you died during a boss, you could select Continue to restart, the penalty of that being a lowering of the end game score. Worked fine. Homecoming definetly didn't have enough save points, especially since the game was harder than the previous ones. A game as hard as Homecoming should have frequent save points. If it's even harder, like say Resident Evil 4 level, then autosaves are a good idea, but that's more like an action game thing.

Homecoming was way harder than Resident Evil 4.

I was able to accomplish a no-healing run in RE4. Can't say the same thing about Homecoming.

We should be able to save the game whenever we want. If I need to quit the game immediately for some reason without losing any progress, all I have to do is to go back to a previous save point, save it and quit. But there are only two things you can do when it auto-saves. You either quit it right away and lose some progress or if you think you can't afford to lose it, you proceed in a rush, probably skipping the cutscenes on the way if you can at all, making some stupid decisions that you will regret later just to get to the next save point. I'll decide when I need to save it!

I honestly wouldn't mind a save anywhere option like in the Bioshock games. I liked not having to hunt for save point when I wanted to quit the game.

RE4 at the beggining, with only one shitty handgun and a lot of ganados rushing at you was way harder than Homecoming's intro at the nightmare hospital.

. . .

And they should add a mix of auto-save and save spots.

I'd like to have a (Save anywhere,) system where you earn saves by getting so far,like leaving the other world, you get a save credit to use later, figure out a puzzle, beat a boss, boom, new save credit.

I haven't played Homecoming yet... but RE4 wasn't that hard in my opinion. Parts of it could be a bit challenging because of the amount of information to take in. And it was a tense game. But nothing was very difficult. At least on Normal difficulty.

I'm not sure how to feel about autosaves in Downpour...
I guess I'd like a mixture of autosaving & designated save points. It could autosave when entering a new area & before certain events/encounters, and the static save spots could be sprinkled throughout. They would be there for you to get to whenever you need them. I like the desperate feeling I'm given when I'm traveling to an old save point, or looking for a new one. I have no clue what will happen between here and there. I think it's a good way to keep the player on their toes.

I died a few times in Homecoming, but I usually die ten to twenty times on RE4. The first time I tried Pro mode it was more like forty. I can't imagine playing the game through without healing. Anyone that good at RE4 should be able to play Homecoming without looking at the screen.

didnt homecoming have a checkpoint system but you could only save ever so often wouldn't that work as well in this game

Well, I think there were enough ink ribbons that you'd practically *have* to be a save whore to run out.



It can potentially do either. Depends on what your threshold is for punishment. If you hate the idea of setbacks and just want to blow through a game, I can see why any type of punishment would be frustrating. But if you're enjoying the game then I think having to replay a few sections is hardly a bad thing... but even so, no matter how much you're enjoying it there's gonna be a point where you'll be frustrated. It's different for everyone of course. On the flipside, if those have no real way to threaten the player with some sort of punishment, I don't see how there can possibly be any tension... but that's just me.



Do you have any ideas for a less stupid way of penalizing the player? Because I can't really think of anything "less stupid." I suppose it could be something like the amount of deaths affects your ending, but that's all I can think of.



I'm fine with that. Or they could just try to balance the game so that difficult sections always have save points just before. I'm not necessarily looking for challenge in a horror game, I'm looking for tension.



Well like I said, what I'm looking for is tension, not challenge. But I think having more save points / continue points on easier difficulties is a great idea. I also like the idea of allowing the player to continue on a boss in return for the penalty of lowering the game score.

I think part of the problem with Resident Evil (Code Veronica in particular) is that they would only put two type writers in a fairly large area, and the limited inventory made collecting ink ribbons a real bitch. Code Veronica was especially mean about inventory managing and item conservation. You had to play through a fairly lengthy section of gameplay (at least on a first time playthrough) before you got to the first item box. It gets worse when you play through more of the game only to discover you were literally inches away from item box that you couldn't reach because the game just had to force you to go through the obnoxious metal detector hurdle. This is on top of the fact the game would spawn groups of seven zombies in areas you had already cleared- nope, I'm ending the rant here before my head explodes from the anger.

That actually would work pretty well in a series like this, which has a pretty complex mythos of death and rebirth and the effect of that cycle on certain events.

The easy answer is "anything that isn't making players repeat the last twenty minutes of puzzles and cutscenes". Or, if we can't get past that classic videogame trope, make it so that enemy placement, or even the solution of puzzles, are randomized. At least that way you're getting something new out of the experience of repeating everything and it doesn't bore you.