Ok, so I was going to do some writing tonight, but I'm too knackered after an excellent Flogging Molly gig in Manchester last night (6th Nov as we're past midnight now). Anyway, instead of me working I'm going to get something off my chest instead.
Tonight I started playing Dead Rising. Now I like to keep on top of the games I play, and I'm currently playing Halo 3 co-op with Brother Tim. However, he's gone a visiting this weekend so I'm left without a co-op partner and want to play a game. The problem is all I've got are beat em ups and skateboarding games that I'm part way through and I needed something with a little more substance. So I began Dead Rising.
And now I've developed a love/hate relationship with this game. On the one hand it captures the essence of Dawn of the Dead with a little of the survival of Resident Evil thrown in. It is Capcom after all. And there are vast amounts of zombies, and you can pretty much use anything as a weapon. So fun times.
Then there's the saving. You can only save in the security office, of toilets, and as with many malls these are spread around, only thinly. So I'm running between missions and get drawn up in the experience so I decide to help out a few locals. Now these locals are idiots an despite my best efforts die pretty quickly. I'm only one man remember, taking down an army of undead. So I figure I'll head to the next save point. This is when we get a story point, nothing spoilery, and a bloody escape convict driven jeep appears and mows me down killing my. Now I realise I've yet to save the bloody game and have to start from the beginning. Now come on... would it have been so hard to alter the save points Or at least introduce a save option after each story point. I'm even considering shelving it for a while longer until I've forgotten how much I've played.
This brings me neatly onto another good point though. In the game the main goal is to survive 3 days. That's it. If you play the story you get an idea of why this is happening. If you help people, I guess you get achievements and feeling you've done a bit of good. But then, due to the aforementioned saving problem, I'm now tempted to hide in a cupboard for the three days, reveal myself at the end in time to take my helicopter home. Game Completed.
Saying all this, I will play it again, and I will play the story. I just think developers need to work out what kind of game they're making. The fact you can use almost everything as a weapon means to me this game is to be played for fun, and therefore saving should not be so difficult. Let me save from the menu. Let me enjoy the destruction. If I'm playing a Dawn of the Dead simulator, let me have as much fun as Ken Foree and Scott H. Reiniger, before the latter became a zombie that is.
And why does doing a wee relate to saving anyway. Just because its called a restroom doesn't mean you go to sleep in there. You'll probably be sleeping in wee if you did.
And with that image, I'll stop.
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