I Never Found Save Points Frustrating

[The Brown Hornet]

I remember early reviewers complaining that save points are manual and too far and in between. My question is have you ever played Dead Space or the early Resident Evil's... manual saves are a common thing in survival horror! Are modern gamers that spoiled to where they can't adjust beyond quick and auto saving?

Even if you don't like manual saves the pacing in Alien Isolation is so well done that nearly every time you think a save point should appear it does. Anyone other than me felt there were actually too many save points....and no I didn't play on easy!

What I most enjoyed about Alien Isolation was the fact it's old school, it didn't feel like a next gen game at all....not because of the clunky technology of the Alien Universe but because the gameplay is grounded. No jetpacks, special attacks, high powered weapons, level up, etc...they kept it plain, simple, and straight forward, cheers to the manual save!

[HunterKiller]

You forgot, no Predator type cloaks.

[BROOD-SkorpioN]

The save points are very well placed. If anything, I'd say some of the missions had too many of them (mission 7 comes to mind). The people complaining about the save points are really just venting frustration over their inability to make progress in the game.

[Tapasvi]

Today's gamers are softies. In good old times it was a synonym to geek, now it's a syninym to wuss.
They always says that there's something wrong with game, if it allowed the player to die.

[Max Headshot]

Yeah, totally well placed. Beside that reviewers missed consequentially all possibilities to move back to the last save point. A good example is the morgue in M6, there you should save a second time before leaving the section through vent (the first time is mostly senseless because it's a mission save too). This game requires some fantasy and self-responsibility.

[Red Cooter]

I liked the implementation of manual saves. I agree that in some levels the save stations were too frequent.

[Spinney]

I found them perfectly spaced. Never had an issue.

[PRAET0R1AN™]

Reviewers griped more about the autosave feature ( or lack thereof ).

I find manual save points add to the tension but hey, that's just me.

[JefferyNothing]

The game didnt cater to modern cliches of auto saving and checkpoints. Which is a good thing. The save points did indeed add alot of tension to the game. Never wanted to get to save point as much as you do in this game. Adds to the terror rather well. Reviewers evidently didnt realise this cos they expect it to be like every other game out there.

[Lupin III]

Originally posted by Hazuki:

The game didnt cater to modern cliches of auto saving and checkpoints. Which is a good thing. The save points did indeed add alot of tension to the game. Never wanted to get to save point as much as you do in this game. Adds to the terror rather well. Reviewers evidently didnt realise this cos they expect it to be like every other game out there.

Let's be honest about it, Alien Isolation's manual saves are basically a checkpoint system. If you can only save in certain places, that's a checkpoint system. The only difference is that you actually have to interact with the object for an insignificant amount of time rather than just walk past it. Very few of them are located in places of immediate danger, and in fact it's easier than a strict checkpoint system since those usually only offer a save for forward progress, while these manual saves allow you to backtrack and save.

I don't really find either system immersive and I would prefer to be able to save on my terms, rather than on the game's, especially when something comes up and I need to stop playing and either have to find a checkpoint or lose progress. I also find that, with checkpoint systems (this one included), when I have to repeat a difficult sequence over and over jsut because another difficult sequence follows it without a save point, I get burned out on the game faster and it makes me less likely to do future playthroughs. This is doubly so for games that have said systems with unskippable cutscenes mixed into the sequences (something that Isolation did not do, fortunately).

[NinthElement]

I think the save system here is pretty generous. At least they don't limit your saves and force you to backtrack to awkward locations like Resident Evil. Anyway there actually is an autosave at the start of each mission.

[Max Headshot]

I'm only missing an UI feature to archive and reload any save game, so i have to do this manually. They shouldn't be overwritten automatically. Beside that it works fine to me, adds a lot of tension, very well integrated into gameplay makes it even more immersive.
Edit: Also the annoying YES/NO dialog would have gotten completely unnecessary (i think it's useless at all to click on NO which will disable saving totally).
The hostile nearby hint is pretty useless too because any reload will spawn Alien somewhere else (so far i experienced), maybe it's about other NPCs ? Anyhow i'm ignoring that hint constantly and doing well with it so far, it's only confusing to newbies.