Ving Rhames: Absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.
 

I agree with bluestarultor and personally I think that the traditional save point system versus an auto-save versus a quick-save argument is a moot point. It all depends on the game, and there is no mutual exclusion that says if you have one then you can't have another. A developer should do what helps the flow of their game the best.

Now, not to say that some games that had a traditional save system couldn't have benefited from a different system of saving. That is far from the case.

For example, RE4 and Silent Hill 4. Both games I think would have been ruined by a quick save function. Both had a traditional save system, and it fit the feel of the game very well. They are essentially survival games, but not overly hard ones. Worst case scenario something goes bad and you die, but realistically when something goes bad in those games you just end up using extra ammo or a health item you had in reserve. Its a good trade off for messing up, you have to use extra resources, and I think that makes for an enjoyable difficulty.

Other side of the spectrum. I can think of so many games where the ability to save anywhere have not only ruined the gameplay, but made it trivial. Knights of the Old Republic for example, there were no repercussions for anything you did. Didn't like the way that conversation turned out? Quick load. Didn't get that influence with Kreia? Quick load.

I will concede that a lack of skippable cutscenes is a crime, and that game developers still need to work on when to use what save feature. Also, many games (Most of them probably) where a quick save option is not available could greatly benefit from a suspend data option, where it makes a quick save and then goes back to the title screen, then deletes it when you start back up.

HATED Metroid. Why did they not tell you ANYTHING? But anyways, LotR: Battle for Middle-Earth is really fun for me. It's like Total Annihalation (Anyone who's ever played this game and tells me about it, gets a cookie), but with trolls and castles. I see no reason someone WOULDN'T like it.

Alright, I've commented on other people already. My most hated thing? Bad voice overs. It digs into me so much when people have too cheesy of a dialogue, or too long of one, just because they said something completely different in Japan. This is why I like the older games: NO MOVING MOUTHS.

I don't understand your "artifical limiting" argument. A video game IS artifical limiting. Every single thing in the game is an artificial limit. Otherwise I can argue things like "I'm going to destroy this Martian colony, why can't you give me a rocket launcher first level instead of a pistol?". Everything in the game is designed to provide challenge and to limit the ways you can pass the challenge. I fail to see how the save system is any different.
With checkpoint they allow the designers to string things together so you have to be able to make a series of moves without screwing up, rather than just a single move. Thus it increases the skills needed to pass a game in a way that cannot be done with quicksaves.
Checkpoint systems can do this as well, though they usually used poorly. As long as you have a checkpoint between each sort of challenge set then it's fine. They are usually terribly underplaced however.

The original Metroid was miles ahead of itself, had a great concept that became a fantastic game series for the last two decades or so...but in the beginning just giving you a huge world to explore when it all looks identical save level-to-level transition was just awful.

Grand Theft Auto couldn't pull off a no-map system and Metroid couldn't either.

Oh, you mean the ones where you only ever need to press the 1 attack button over and over and over and over and over again to kill everything? Come on, it's even more tedious than dynasty warriors.

I have never heard of this game or the movie it's based on, so neither could've been that great.

I don't think I can comment on this without it sounding flamey, so I won't.

I may have to conceed this point, but having never played it I can't really say.

Fact is most games based on films are shit; minority report, the first hulk game, transformers, die hard trilogy, jumper, fantastic four, every harry potter game ever (in fact, pretty much any game made for kids, but apparantly that's ok because their supposedly not old enough to be able to tell what's good and what isn't anyway/sarcasm), mission impossible, ironman (notice the particular trend of comic book movies yet?), superman returns (and another), batman (all of them), any star wars game that tries to follow the original plots rather than some sort of off-shoot like battlefront, and to go back some years; home alone, back to the future aannndd ... ET: The Extraterrestrial (you know, that game that nearly brought down the whole goddamn industry?).

I'm sure somebody will post up some more examples now of other games that were based on films that were quiet good, and I'm not denying there aren't some, but there's a whole lot more that were simply rushed out to coincide with the release of the movie and are crap because the licence is designed to shift the units, rather than the game being anywhere near half decent.

And I'm sure that if anybody does wish to post up a list of decent movie-game tie-ins that I could equally post up even more that were utter crap, but I think I've made my point by now.

*shoots devestator autocannon*
This weapon is horribly overpowered and ruins the entire game.
*keeps shooting autocannon*

Artificial limiting that makes the game less fun.

That's completely subjective though.
I don't find quicksaves/loads fun. I find them tedious to the extreme and render the game to a series of quickloads until the best option is found.
You could say "Well just avoid quicksaves then" which I do. But the fact remains that your statements are completely subjective.

See, here's the thing: In your complaints against quicksaves, you offer up the option of not using quicksaves, which is a way for you to work with the quicksaves and derive enjoyment. For me and DFM and every other person who wants to utilize the full power of the future we live in, there is no compromise with the backasswards save and checkpoints we're stuck with.

But should every game be targeted at every player?
In the games targeted at me the developer can spend more time developing the game more as they don't have to spend time programming saves or hardware space. By not having them, in theory the developer should have more time and more power to build a better product.