This, oh ye gods, this.

As to the save games issue, when I installed my OS, I immediately moved the entire Users folder to a separate drive. So no issues with space on OS drive.

Good Move! ...and after you install the OS, you can join the folder to a new place on a different drive. I did that so I didn't have to have my SSD get overused.

I suppose I could mention games that are outright broken (Gothic 2 is just outright black screening me too), but the real problems are with games that mostly broken but just functional enough to lure me into playing them.

That's why I hate KOTOR 2 for instance. Even with the big user patch there are some completely game breaking moments in there and some of the most boring, pointless time wasting shit going on too. People keep on banging on about how much better the writing is than your average Star Wars title, but it's crap. Boring. Tedious. Fucking coma-inducing.

I really enjoyed the first one and I love a lot of what Obsidian have done since. But KOTOR 2 is broken and not worth fixing. Even if you somehow imagine the game it could have been if it was finished it would still be a monotonous, outdated, lore-breaking exercise in banality.

Edit: I think I lost track a bit there and forgot to state some actual problems.

One of the biggest problems for me was a quest that epitomised just how boring and broken the game really is. You had 2 rooms full of identical characters with identical dialogue and you're supposed to figure out which one of them is a bit different to the rest. Which means talking to all of them. The same character. The same dialogue over and over. Two rooms. Full of them.

There was no one of them that was different. I looked it up online and apparently the programmer responsible for that mission fell into a coma halfway through creating it and died. So there was no way of completing that mission.

Another thing was seeing my blaster wielding Han Solo wannabe wilfully get himself cornered at a bar by two sword wielding tentacle bitches. He had no hope at all. But that was the way it was scripted and he had to survive... apparently. Personally I thought he was better off dead. Idiot.

The year now is 2015, when was it these games were pushed to everyone, ready or not?

I don't fault *any* of those good old games.

Like we say in gaming business.. "I am Error."

In the programming arena it's equivalent to, "We are Learned".

This for sure.

And also linear scenarios in the campaign so if you can't win a particular scenario then you're simply done with the game. This is especially crappy in games where each scenario is a set-piece battle where you can't really change your starting setup, or those where units carry-over from the previous scenario and if you don't happen to have the correct surviving unit or unit combo at the end of scenario G then you're completely screwed for scenario H.

I wouldn't normally gripe about checkpoint saves but on reflection I see that they are related to the second gripe above. The problem is that both of these put limitations on how you play a game, and if your play style doesn't fit the designers' intended mold then you might be able to access only part of the complete game that you purchased.

I think at least a hotkey or a "three finger salute" is enough to save someone's game. As you put it in your previous paragraph, maybe you dropped an important item and thanks to an auto-save, you can't easily get it back. If you make a game easy to save, easy to save often and easy to restore from any save point in time, then you have I love to play. Simple as that.

Now, not all games necessarily need this level of attention. I don't think games like Asteroids or Pac-man need the extra overhead, but Super Mario 3 could have used a better game-save system.

RPG's, on the other hand, really need a "save game" feature and the ability to put in a lot of mental notes. I've gone not playing a game for several months (I do have to work) and when I load up a saved game, don't really know what I have to do next if there wasn't a journal to consult.

What would be totally awesome (and achievable) is to watch "instant replay" of your game up to where you last left it, just to get up to speed (RPG games specifically). If someone did an add-in that did that for existing games and those forthcoming, I'd be showering it with green-backed dollars.

I strongly agree with savegame directories.

For me it is also Unexpected Gameplay Change. Also known as mandatory mini-games in the genres, where they don't really fit that good. Examples:
- Blitzball in Final Fantasy X.
- Chocobo Racing and similar stuff in Final Fantasy VII.
- All those Stealth Based Missions in non-stealth games. I seriously had to use cheats in Evil Islands, when you got stripped of your stuff and had to slowly crawl around enemies who 1-hit kill you. Those enemies patrol around, making it easy to save in unwinnable situation.

I hear a cry out for SOS, Save our Selves!

All valid reasons for a save, the chicobo racing, that was a real grind. The night the computer died , I could't get it back, I had to start from Square 1. I never picked the game up again, until steam made it available -- I wish GOG had it.

I'm 100% a PC gamer with less than zero interest in consoles and so my primary gaming input devices are a keyboard and mouse. I have a variety of other special purpose input hardware such as a flight stick/throttle/rudder system, head tracker, racing wheel/shifter/pedals, and finally I own 2 Logitech gamepad controllers. 99% of my games I use the keyboard and mouse.

Out of all of the above controllers, the keyboard and mouse and gamepads are connected to the computer all of the time for convenience but the other hardware is only hooked up when I plan on using it. One of the worst annoyances I've come across in the last year is video games which scan to see what hardware you have plugged in and when they see you have gamepads connected they turn transform into a damned Xbox or whatever and lock out the keyboard and mouse with no way around it other than exiting them and unplugging the gamepads then starting them back up again.

As a software developer myself I think this is incredibly short sighted consumer non-friendly "I only know how to program for a console, then do a half assed PC port" line of thinking. There are much better ways of doing it such as:

1) Accept input from all potentially relevant devices, if someone hits a key on the keyboard then use that, if they use the joypad then use that, detect input from both, not just hard coded to one or the other.

2) Wait until you get input from /something/ and if it is a keyboard or mouse then default to that, or if it is a gamepad then default to that. Continue to allow input from the keyboard preferrably also, but at least let the ESC key and other meta keys allow exiting the game and other such functionality instead of forcing the person to CTRL+ALT+DEL to get out of the game. A PC is not an Xbox!

:)

Wait a moment, you just reminded me of me! BTW, I''m so outdated that my fingers used to use manual keys on a type-writer my father owned. If it weren't for IBM, I wouldn't have had the problem of "sticky keys" when I typed too fast. (Which is why they re-arranged them in the first place, never used DVORAK).

However, "stickey keys" came later when my daughter spilled juice on my IBM tactile keyboard which I heard from another smart old programmer worked, and put it in the dishwasher and let it air dry for three days. You know what, it worked!!

I had to put some skepticism aside and trust that what others handed down as pure gems of wisdom actually worked.

As a software developer (like yourself) I don't know how I could ever survive without a keyboard. It is one of the best ways I could ever express myself (through code) however, having a graphics tablet (like Wacom) is probably the closest I could get to drawing it out.

BTW, I don't have a mouse, I use trackball as a mouse, it has some gaming advantage, but it takes up much less desk space.

If you're an avid gamer you may like to 'position' your input devices. I think most others' do.

Currently for me the most annoying thing is that my Galaxy Tab S, a very popular device, is not supported by a lot of games. Broken Age and Grim Fandango don't support it outright, but it looks like the Lollipop update (which I don't have access to yet) breaks down other games, such as Icewind Dale EE and Shadowrun Returns.

My biggest spot of trouble has to be dumbing down in games. I mainly play strategy games, and to give just a few recent examples: the Supreme Commander->supcom 2 evolution, or Empire earth II-> Empire earth III (even if Empire earth III would run without issues it'd still be vastly inferior).

In strategy, gameplay should be about strategy.

In kohan you control bundled groups of troops. Once they enter battle, thes groups manage themselves as efficiently as possible, and except for being able to retreat, you cannot control them.

That mechanic, practicly eliminating the need for twitch reflexes, bundled with terrain effects on different unit abilites, a huge amount of versatility where the composition of your "companies" is concerned, a grand economy system and a truly bestial AI (leaving the community made ones out of the equation), makes for a really deep experience. Since you won't be able to employ clicking skills to your advantage (at least not in any sizeable degree), you have to use your BRAIN instead if you want to win.

today it all seems to be about simply memorizing build orders and counters, and then click spamming to get it right.

And checkpoint saves...oh god. Not just checkpoint saves mind you, but those games in which checkpoints are the only save option.

Regenerating health really breaks games for me.

"Jump" and "up" as separate keys.