You had a limited number of entries in the root directory, but I think that there wasn't a limit for other directories. And it was Windows 95.

Probably 512 files... or as many as it takes to fill up the pre-allocated root directory.

What is wrong with question of whether your computer is capable of properly playing the game?

What is wrong with question of whether you can use your preferred input method?

What on earth is wrong with asking whether or not you can run a game on your PC configuration? Isn't that the first bloody thing you want to know when buying a new game?

What is wrong with some people enjoying other things than you do?

... Oh, and then I have taken a look at the nicname and seen "ne_zavarj". Well this post will go unreplied.

I just read the Wikipedia article about Win 95. It supported filenames up to 255 characters, but this was including the path.

This involves using a hack making use of multiple file slots in the directory structure which then expands the max length of the filename by another 10-ish per slot (unicode naturally). It's sloppy but was backwards compatible.

I agree that an autosave function would be a plus, and the lack of one might be worth mentioning as a sidenote, when reviewing a new edition of an old game that claims to make the game more accessible to today's audience.

I completely disagree with anyone critizing a manual save system as antiquated, and with anyone who thinks that you can expect all point-and-click adventures to have an autosave function nowadays, especially since this is one of the genres where I think it's least useful. Personally I'd view the absence of a manual save system in an adventure game as a much bigger flaw than the lack of an extra autosave function. I'd hate it if a game forced me to start from scratch just because I missed a punchline that I'd like to see repeated or something.

It's a bonus, and it should not replace the manual saves, just complement them. IMO about user-friendliness.

All the final fantasy games come to mind, at least FFX and before. Forgetting to hit one leads to cursing, gnashing of teeth and possible broken controller when you realize you haven't saved within the last hour or more.

I think it all depends on what you are used to. If you've are used to games being autosaved every time you walk to the next screen, then if you play a game that suddenly requires you to save can be very frustrating, especially if you keep forgetting it and have to replay large sections.

Think about it - what if there was an MMORPG that required manual saving? Everybody is used to that when they log out their progress is not lost. Nobody would even search for a save option the first time they play it and simply log out.

True, but Grim Fandango is no MMORPG, and the genre of point and click adventures has a tradition of manual saving. I don't know of many famous p&c adventures that have an autosave function.

I think it would depend a lot on what that 20 minutes is.

When I was a kid playing Mario 3 on the NES, you'd lose the entire game. Never bothered me. Modern games with checkpoints and no manual saves and craptons of non-skippable cutscenes and vomit-inducing graphics (as in they make me motion sick) tick me off. I may only lose 20 minutes, but that 20 minutes can suck.

Yeah but if you are just a general gamer that plays what's currently popular and never played a Point & Click before, you might still assume that the game auto-saves, because most modern games simply do it.

I'm a complete different generation, I'm used to save very extensively (at least every 5 minutes).


A loss of 20 minutes gameplay would be extremely frustrating for me, I often quit games just because I died and the last save point for 20 minutes away.
But I agree it depends on the genre. In arcade games it really doesn't matter so much unless you were in the top 100 high score world wide and then it fails to save.

Which is why I drew attention to the fact that this was a review by a staff member on a website devoted to adventure games, not some random user review on Steam or whatever.

Damn, and I though I was impatient. I mean, I hate doing stuff all over again, but if a game is good 20 minutes won't make me quit for good. I might take a short brake, but that's it. I did quit games over lost progrees, but that was tens of hours in games like Neverwinter Nights 2. I lost all my progress and would have to start over after spending days and days on it, and I was not quite that motivated.

Also, the genre really is key here. What is 20 minutes in an adventure game? If you've played through those twenty minutes once you already now what to do, what to pick up, where to go, how to solve the puzzle, you can skip dialogues and probably shorten it to 5 minutes of actually playtime.

Yeah I guess in that context it's quite strange.

I tried to talk a little bit more generally about it. I mean the thread title refers to "gamers today" and not just this one particular person. I guess it also depends on how much one likes a game. If I play that one RPG for 30+ hours already and am kind of tired of it by now because it just doesn't want to end, then I'm almost 100% likely to quit it if I die. But if I enjoy this game more than anything else I've played the past years, then I might even enjoy those 20 minutes extra play time. Good point I guess, though that's assuming the person actually tried to figure out what to do for a while. It's different again if you play with a walkthrough at hand for example (and then it's so boring you are even less likely to replay a part of it).

Average casual gamer is pretty stupid and that's why we have so simple games and good series go to full action because of it. I saw some comments in somewhere about witcher 3 having weapons that will go bad after period of use. Like that would be a problem it supposed to be rpg anyway.

RAGE surprised me once with the fact that it's autosaves a wide in between. But this is the kind of thing that only happens to you once. after that one time (where i had assumed the game would have saved before a boss fight, but it didn't) i coped with it by mashing F5 every time i survived something difficult. There, problem solved.