Dark Souls, you confuse me. You pride yourself on being an extremely difficult game. Requiring the player to "learn from their mistakes". I get that, I trodded my way through Demon Soul all those years ago, and was frustrated each time. The game itself is gorgeous, think of a third person Oblivion with darker, more artistic graphics and vastly different and complex character/inventory system. It's like playing a live action AD&D with just a few small constraints.
But for crying out loud... that saving system? Perfect example: The game starts you off with a basic tutorial, then a small boss battle where you have to sort of backtrack to find the way to defeat the boss. Standard Dark Soul fare. Only problem is, I have no idea where the save spots are! So I die, and I quit playing (which is obviously something they don't want you to do) I come back, and I'm directly at the starting, but at a save.... weird.
Another time, I wanted to see what would happen if I jumped off of a cliff, the game saved right before I jumped... so... wait, are you actively saving, well that can't be the case, since I put in about 45 minutes into a character just to find out it didn't save once. (RIP BAALLLLLZZAAAK).
After asking around to the other people I know who play the game, they've all told me that it saves when you go to the bonfires. Ok, makes sense, until I load up a game and I'm no where near a bonfire.
At any rate, it got me thinking about the importance of save points in a game.
In some games like Fear Effect, you were required to find a save point, then select your phone from your inventory, select save then you select the memory card, then you saved your file. Ok, that's fine.... except this was all happening during the game, and you didn't exactly have the ability to pause, so if an enemy or NPC were to stroll across you while you conducted your little save ballet... you were screwed.
My only complaint with Oblivion, and the entire Elder Scrolls series isn't so much a complaint as it is a frustration that has saved my bacon a few times. You have unlimited saves. Save as often as you'd like (except in mid-air). I ended my 100% completion Oblivion playthrough on the Xbox with about 250+ game saves. On the PC it was even worse. My complaint is that if you wanted to go back a few files, you could, but saving and playing multiple characters was practically impossible if you used auto-save. I guess that's more of a design choice than anything else, but it was fun making each character and leveling them completely different, not having to wait until you're completely done auto-saving a single playthrough.
Dark Souls allows for multiple characters to be saved, which is great, I just wish I could pause and select save. Well, for that matter, I wish I could select pause.
Which brings me to my second gripe. The lack of a pause menu. I know this is a design choice, and it's very edgy and cool, but come on... I can't pause my game? Not even for a moment? To get lunch? Personally, I think this is a dumb choice. Reason you can't pause things like WoW and other MMOs are because other people are involved and well... that'd be impossible. But not being able to pause a single player game just forces the player to find a hiding spot and hope no one finds him. OR stop playing. Well... the second option just isn't possible since... you know.... weird auto-saves.
Remember how bad Metal Gear Solid made you feel when you saved too much? LOOK PSYCHO MANTIS, I SOMETIMES HAVE OTHER THINGS TO DO WITH MY LIFE I CAN'T JUST SIT DOWN AND PLAY STRAIGHT THROUGH.
Opposite end of the spectrum though, when I first got my PS1, I didn't have a memory card, so I had to leave it running and turn the TV off if I wanted to do something else, and I still managed to finish Resident Evil 2. So what's the difference? Xbox 360s and PS3s can overheat after a few hours of playing, even if they don't overheat it isn't good for them. Let me take breaks from the game Dark Souls, even if I don't get a pause menu. Or maybe just explain the saving system.
Batman in 2 weeks!!!
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