What happened to Quick Save?

I am not sure how and when this started, but it is getting really annoying. I understand that for some people this is not a problem, but some of us care about this. It feels like my experience is more watered down without options that were available to games from 8 years ago. There is no reason why the developers are not giving players the option to quick save in 2012!

I’ve talked about this issue in the past on the forums and the responses ranged from people who absolutely wanted it, and those who said quick save removed the challenge from the game.

I understand that, however, for those who want a challenge, they can always just not save. Gamers like me would like to have the option but just can’t seem to convince people that this is an important part of their experience!

I can’t remember the number of times I played a certain section in Crysis or in Max Payne, all because I could save where I wanted to.

I remember when Crysis 2 and Max Payne 3 were first announced. I had a bad feeling that they will be a console ports.

With Crysis 2, my suspicion was well founded. At launch, the game had no DX11 support, had hardly any graphics settings except pre-set options, and it featured the irritating checkpoint feature. If that wasn’t bad enough, you had to quit the current game to be able load a checkpoint. The game itself isn’t bad at all, but the gameplay is built around the console, and without the lack of any customization, its just a big disappointment compared to the 5 year old Crysis.

Now, the release date for Max Payne 3 has been announced and PC Gamer did a preview very recently.

This is disappointing to me. The first two games let you save wherever you wanted to save, and also had a ton of graphics settings options. It seems as if Max Payne 3 is heading down the Crysis 2 path.

I am not sure what I intend to accomplish with this post. Perhaps someone in the games industry will read this and understand that not everyone will like the kind of restrictions that seem acceptable on consoles.

For example, the developers of Deus Ex Human Revolution believed that highlighting is a core part of the experience, yet they gave us the option to turn it off. I think that is commendable.

Allowing players to choose their experience is the best part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

If the fine folks at PC Gamer can convince developers in the future that curbing their enthusiasm to provide an experience is a good thing, everyone is going to be happy for it.