Save Scumming: Difference between revisions

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* A lot of old school [[Nintendo Hard]] games are ''much'' more pleasant using this. A perfect example is the original ''[[Castlevania 1986]]''.

** On the subject of Castlevania, in ''[[Portrait of Ruin]]'', there are specific items and skills that can only be obtained in the Nest of Evil. if the player does not receive the item, they can simply suspend the game and restart, allowing them to refight the enemy without having to go through the entire floor again.

* Averted in [[Kid Icarus: Uprising]], where your choice to take on a chapter is automatically saved, and if the game is reset/turned off for ''any'' reason (attempted [[Save Scumming]], needing to do something else, or simple power failure) the game counts it as a loss.

 

* [[Sierra]]'s classic [[Adventure Game|adventure games]] seem to have been designed with this practice in mind:

** Wandering opponents, monsters, zombies, etc. could appear in two or three set unique locations in ''[[King's Quest I]]'' (but not in any other Sierra game), requiring the player to evade them using the same keyboard controls used for normal exploration. This is trivial if you keep to the edge of the screen. On the other hand, ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' has ''actual'' wandering monsters, but allows the player to fight back.

* ''[[Ghost Trick]]'' has this as its central mechanic. The protagonist can go back four minutes before someone died and manipulate objects to prevent their death. Fail to do so, and it automatically rewinds, with commentary on how the characters failed. The player can also do it manually.

 

* While not required to complete the game, Save Scumming is a vital method of getting Pure Platinum awards in ''[[Bayonetta]]''. Since Pure Platinum requires you to never take damage, you'll be quitting and reloading a lot. And since the game auto-saves after every verse (and sometimes in the middle of a verse, or even the middle of a boss fight), it's very easy to take advantage of this feature for an easier chance at a perfect run.

 

* Some of Codemasters' latest racing games (specifically ''Race Driver: Grid'' and ''Colin McRae: DiRT 2'') feature a built-in savescumming system, where the player can pause the race at any moment to go into Instant Replay mode, pick any moment in time from the last ten or so seconds, and rewind time to that moment and keep racing from there, the limit for how many times they can do this depending on the difficulty level they're playing at.

 

* ''[[Serious Sam]]'' is the game where quicksaving and quickloading on hard, serious and mental difficulty is almost essential. Often making quicksaves even in mid-fight is a good idea.

* Another gambling example courtesy of ''[[Bioshock]]'', albeit an optional one. Players who want the achievement for hitting the jackpot on a slot machine may have to resort to this.

* ''[[Tron 2.0]]'' actually ''encourages'' this practice just before a [[Race Against the Clock]] section. A character says: "'''Quick! Save''' yourself!" and "I auto save every 30 seconds. I suggest you do the same."

 

* A lot of single-player strategy games fall into this too. About to start a war? Not sure you'll win? Just make a save, and if you don't, go back to the save! This can get to the point of saving before every single battle or combat, because of the inherent wackiness of the [[Random Number God|Random Number Generator]]. The ''[[Civilization]]'' series is a prime offender -- there are gifs abounding with [[Implacable Man|a spearman emoticon]] celebrating victories over stacks of tanks for a REASON.

** Some strategy games deliberately save the state of the RNG along with the game to prevent [[Save Scumming]]. Most of those are polite enough to allow you to turn the feature off, though.

*** ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'' is even kind enough to autosave every few minutes against the AI. In a NEW save. After a lengthy game (and the games tend to be pretty lengthy) and you notice you're done for, you can experiment with your particular save library of that skirmish to look for the one that's early enough to allow you to turn the tables.

 

* Offline players in ''[[Diablo]] II'' can save scum by manually copying the save files to other locations or just flagging them "read-only" and removing the attribute once the desired results have been achieved. Particularly useful for the otherwise expensive and unrewarding gambling.

** In the first ''Diablo'' game, you could save scum the normal way.

** In [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Hellgate:London]]'' offline scumming works the same way. There are some third-party addons that make it quicker, as much quicker as you can get with the [[Loads and Loads of Loading]].

 

* The entire ''[[Masocore]]'' genre, by definition. Save scumming is ''intended behavior'' in many of these games.

* ''[[New Super Mario Bros]]''. ... No, REALLY. If you're trying to get into World 4-7 as Mini Mario, or, well, ANY of the stages where you have to be Mini Mario from the start because they don't just give you a Mini Mushroom in the middle of the stage, you're going to do this if you have any appreciation for your sanity (or just really, really hate Level 1-4).

* It is possible to complete ''[[Jumper (video game)|Jumper]] One'' with 0 death-count by quitting and reloading as soon as ([[Rage Quit|or before]]) Ogmo dies, since the game saves the progress and death-count only when the level restarts. The sequels and the remake [[Defied Trope|defy]] this by disabling the escape key when Ogmo dies (but it's still possible to avert Ogmo's cruel fate and a rise in your death-count [[Rage Quit|right before he dies]]).

 

* ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' gets its fair share of save scumming, not from the main game but in the challenge stages. Quick-Saving really becomes your friend when going for Least Portals and Least Steps.

* In the wonderful puzzle-quest game series ''[[Professor Layton]]'', the only way to get to anything in the game is to answer hundreds of sometimes brain-squelching logic puzzles. Some of which aren't exactly logical at all. Many of which are plainly confusing and just downright sneaky. The vast majority of which can be solved by a mere brute-force attack - saving and reloading to try the puzzle again and again until you choose the right multiple-choice answer. Go figure.

* The courtroom game series ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' allows the player to save the game at almost any time. Seeing that the game has a limit to wrong answers/evidence, the fandom of this game takes full advantage of this save feature, with some even saying that their tactic of playing Phoenix Wright is to save whenever dramatic music comes up, whenever Phoenix has to give critical evidence, or when Maya says something about having "their last chance".

 

* Several RTS games where you have a small amount of specialised units (e.g. ''[[Desperados]]'', ''[[Commandos]]''), save scumming is required as if anyone is killed, you lose and being seen often results in an alarm causing more enemies to spawn.

** Not to mention the Scrappy levels in ''Command&Conquer'' where you only have the secret agent/commando type characters, and a light tank just wandered off into the darkness only to brake and turn around.

* In ''[[Warcraft]]'' Nozdormu is the leader of the Bronze Dragonflight, responsible for overseeing time. Fighting him is a bit futile, since if even if you win against the titanic superpowerful dragon he'll just rewind time and fight you again, this time knowing exactly what you're going to do.

 

* [[Roguelike|Roguelikes]] will erase your save if you die. One could manually copy the saved game file to avoid this... but never, ever, claim a victory won by such trickery. Hordes will descend upon you and debone you with their teeth.

** ''[[Nethack]]'' has an 'Explore mode' (Shift-X) where you can practice the game with infinite lives. You don't get a high score that way, though.

* Also, ''Liberal Crime Squad'' deletes the save.dat file if you die, or succeed, or really anything that would permanently prevent your character from furthering the goals.

 

* Sierra/Troika's ''[[Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura]]'' made save scumming efficient, easy and your best friend when you're about to try stealing something, with no drawbacks or penalties.

* In ''[[Xenogears]]'' there's a part where you can have a doctor try to remove a bomb collar that your character has. It will either explode (or, rather, [[Fission Mailed|the main character will have a vision of the bomb exploding and call off the attempt in a panic]]), or the doctor will successfully remove part or all of it. This doesn't change the plot at all, but you can sell the removed parts. There's no way to affect what happens other than savescumming.

* The usual way to play [[H-game|H-Games]] with [[Game Over Rape]]: You save before the fight, lose intentionally to get your ero scene, then reload and beat the enemy to continue with the game.

 

* This is the only sure way to get certain rare mine items in ''[[Harvest Moon]]: Friends Of Mineral Town'' (and its distaff version, ''More Friends''), and is a feature of most HM games (due to multiple save slots and "save anywhere" capability) as each floor of the mine wasn't necessarily guaranteed to have a path to the floor below in it. Many players also use it to avoid destructive storms.

** The Harvest Moon team has been aware of this for some time, though. As early as ''Back to Nature'', one of the sins you could confess to the local priest was "I reset the game to win at a festival."

* [[The Idolmaster (video game)|The Idolmaster]] suffers poorly from save scumming because one of the stats 'personality' directly affects their tension levels. When a character uses save scumming however their tension levels are useless because you can always win Auditions and do well in Lessons. This makes characters like Chihaya look unfairly balanced compared to others like the Futami twins even though her personality stat is 0. The Japanese call it 'fair play' to play without saving and reloading for better results which is how the game originally played in the arcades.

 

* The ''six'' save slots in the original ''[[Backyard Sports|Backyard Baseball]]'' were probably meant for this, as on Hard, home runs made by the opposing team are extremely likely to occur.

* ''[[Football Manager]]'' also suffers from this. It's easy to save before an important match like the [[FA Cup]] final or the [[World Cup]] final and replay it if you lose. This is rather looked down upon by veterans of the game since it takes away the feeling of accomplisment of winning such things. Current games include an ability for people to look in the save file to discover how often people do this to cheat at community tournaments.

 

* In the ''[[In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It|Tom Clancy's]] [[Splinter Cell]]'' series, specifically the PC ports, the ability to save whenever you want was introduced. This can lead to saving right before any even slightly risky encounter, and then if you're detected, [[Save Scumming|loading until a nice golden brown.]]

 

* ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' tried fighting this by giving the player a limited amount of saves per level (both quicksaves and normal ones), making saving on appropriate locations a strategic element of the game.

* ''[[Total Overdose]]'' averts scumming with fixed save point locations, but it has a rewind feature that allows about 5 seconds of backtracking any time, even from death. Somewhat like lives in that there are a limited number but more can be accumulated through gameplay.

* Possible in ''[[Postal]] 2''; however, abuse will lead to the Postal Dude [[Lampshade Hanging|berating the player]] with lines such as "My grandmother could [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|beat the game if she saved as much as you do.]]"

 

* [[Rondo of Swords]] lets you abuse this ad nauseam. At any time during battle, provided that you haven't been defeated yet, you can restart the battle, or go back to the setup menu (from where you can save, and edit your unit's skills). ''All the items you used go back to your inventory, but your units still retain any EXP and levels they gained in the battle''. Doing this enough times can even get you through the [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] at the very beginning of the game, if only in a [[New Game+]].

* Prevented in the ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' series. You can save and continue within a chapter, but if you performed an attack, didn't like the result, and turned the game off (the game had a feature of bringing you to the last action that happened before you turned it off), the action would always have the same result.

* While researching AI in ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'', there is a random chance each turn of [[AI Is a Crapshoot|AI Rebellion]], turning some of your ships and planets into a new enemy empire and permanently disabling all AI tech in yours. Of course, the game also auto-saves at the end of each turn so if you're playing single-player, it's trivially easy to just reload every time they rebel.

 

* Patient players of ''[[Jagged Alliance]]'' could very easily win battles by abusing the save system as such: save every time you manage to hit an enemy, and load everytime an enemy hits you. This lets you get through most battles practically unscathed even with mercs of low skill, although in some cases it could take an aggravatingly long time before one of your shots would hit.

** Not as easy as it sounds, though - in the first game it was (almost) impossible to save during combat, and in ''Jagged Alliance 2'' reloading and doing the same thing again will get you exactly the same result - so if your shot missed, it'll always miss. Unless you reload and do something different.

** One of the more charming bugs makes one of your soldiers' items into an armed proximity grenade at the start of combat. This typically results in them exploding randomly.

 

* The ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games had save scumming in spades when it came to weapons. Any time you died or got busted, you lost all your guns, leading players to save after every single mission and reloading if they died or get busted on a mission. San Andreas and GTA 4 introduced ways to let the player keep their weapons after death or arrest to discourage save scumming.

** ''[[Grand Theft Auto San Andreas|San Andreas]]'' had a few missions where you would lose all your guns in the start of a mission, pissing off players who been save scumming to keep their guns and finding out they have to lose them anyway.

** This can even be done for the game's Hardcore mode where you typically lose the save file of that world if you die.

 

 

* ''[[Cave Story]]'' has a few places where you should probably save and manually backup your save (the game has one slot), most importantly the easy/hard mode choice.

 

* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis]]'' has a super obvious branching point about halfway through the story, where the game would suggest which way to proceed based on how you handled an earlier event, but you'd be free to pick any of the three options. Once you got to {{spoiler|Atlantis}} the three pathways would converge, and the rest of the game would be linear as before.

 

* All racing games with a betting system automatically saves your game the moment you put something on the line. You got one chance, mate, don't blow it.

 

* ''[[Blaz Blue Calamity Trigger]]'', which not only has multiple endings for each character's story depending on dialogue choices and certain victory conditions, but also forces you to go back and lose EVERY SINGLE MATCH to get 100% and unlock the True Ending.

** Having to lose each fight for 100% completion was removed in the sequal. This was done specifically because people complained so much about it. An egg explaining it is found if you lose a match enough times.

** That said, as long as you're willing to take a Story Points penalty at the end of the stage (which only affects the treasures you can pick up on subsequent runs and can be made up for later if you'd rather), you can also restart the battle from within the game, which is much faster.

 

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'': The choice of which of the three endings you want can be made after clearing most of the last level since you have to go there to set up the conditions for each ending to occur anyway and not only are they unrelated conditions but completing one does not exclude the others, allowing you to easily set up all three endings and just reload a few times to see all of the ending cutscenes.

** Canonically all three endings occurred, so in a way this is more accurate than only playing one of them. Not that anybody has ever played all the way through Deus Ex for the first time and not done this...

* ''[[Prey]]'' has an achievement on 360 for getting a certain amount of money on the blackjack machine at the start. The easiest way to do this is to just save and bet high until you win. Strangely, you don't have to do this for the similar achievement for Poker, since a machine later on is rigged to let you win.

 

* [[Nintendo]] avoided this with its Virtual Console service on its [[Wii]] console. Saves made by exiting a game to the Wii Menu are only temporary, and saves aren't made at all with [[Nintendo 64]] games (they were probably intended for older games that didn't originally have a way to save).

** However, the [[Nintendo 3DS]]'s Virtual Console service, in addition to making a temporary save when quitting to the system's Home Menu, allows players to make restore points, which save the current position in the game (similar to quitting a Virtual Console to the Wii Menu for the Wii's equivalent or quitting to the Home Menu on the same system) and allows them to be made at any time (ditto), with the major difference being the fact that restore points are ''permanent'' and are only deleted when making a new one. Restore points can be loaded anytime with no limit on how many times they can be used, with the only limitation being that only one per game can be stored at a time. Thus, Nintendo made [[Save Scumming]] quite easy even for games like ''[[Super Mario Land]]'' that didn't originally have a save feature. With games that ''do'' have a built-in save feature, however, such as ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening]] [[Updated Rerelease|DX]]'', this is disabled by default because with games that already have a save feature, loading a restore point resets the save data to how it was when the restore point was made, with the Virtual Console menu and the digital manuals for [[Virtual Console]] games pointing this out due to the problems this would cause if used at the wrong time.

 

* The first ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' had save crystals, so save scumming was impossible. People complained about the time between saves, so they implemented a save anywhere feature for the sequel. Unfortunately to compensate they raised the difficulty level to the point where some sections required [[Save Scumming]] to get through.

 

* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' only has three ending options {{spoiler|everyone dies, some people die or everyone lives}}. However, given the tendency of some people to become somewhat attached to specific characters (witness the [[Fan Dumb|flame]] [[Internet Backdraft|wars]]) and the real possibility [[Anyone Can Die]], there's a temptation to mess around with saves. The game's morality system also can lead to perfectionism, which reinforces the tendency to do things over.

* ''[[Might and Magic]] VII''.

* The ''[[Oblivion]]: Shivering Isles'' expansion pack has one point where you need to decide which faction to support in a power struggle. It doesn't make a lot of difference to the game (a single different mission and different-looking support troops), but it's notable because you get a separate achievement for each faction, and those are the only two incompatible achievements in the entire game. All the other achievements are relatively straightforward to get on a single playthrough. If you were trying for all achievements, and didn't save before that mission, you'd be left with a single one to get, and it could take hours of gameplay to get back to that point with a powerful enough character. Fortunately, they telegraph it well enough that (if you're paying attention) you will probably realise what's happening and save if it bothers you.

 

* ''Tachyon: The Fringe'' - you're forced to pick sides (with contrasting plot paths) round about the fourth Fringe mission. This editor copied his save just before he chose so he wouldn't have to play through the first quarter of the game again.

* Most of the ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' series had multiple paths one could take to victory (the [[Expansion Pack|addons]] for the first two "main" games were, however, completely linear), but in ''Wing Commander III'' and ''Wing Commander IV'' you got somewhat more control over responses to [[NPC|NPCs]], affecting which of the several endings you saw after winning the game.

 

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', although you're encouraged to use [[New Game+]] for this one.

 

* The second ''[[Oddworld]]'' game encourages this. Some levels require '''very''' precise timing in Abe's moves, and several times in rapid succession, or he ends up eaten, shot or otherwise killed. The game allows you to quicksave, so the normal way to play the game (i.e. the one that doesn't induce keyboard-mashing frustration) is to quicksave as soon as each jump, grab, escape or other phase of the level is complete. However, since things in Oddworld have a habit of turning nasty very, very quickly, it can easily result in quicksaving right before missing catching a wall, or something, causing every quickload to result in Abe plunging to his death and forcing the player to restore the level-start autosave.

 

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]] Original Generation 2'' has different plot paths rather than [[Multiple Endings]], but the principle is the same.

* ''[[Disgaea]]'', and its [[Nippon Ichi|sequels and cousins]]. Though it still takes a bit of grinding to qualify.

*** The CHARIOT system (the in-battle one) subverts the main concept of save scumming, however. If you undo an action and then redo it exactly (ie. same order of move, skill, action; same location; same skill; same action, same target), the same outcome will result no matter how many times you retry.

 

* The ''[[Fate/stay night|Fate Stay Night]]'' visual novel has the route you will take determined in the first part of the game, with one choice being able to completely alter to a different route. Also notable that one wrong choice (no matter how correct it may seem) can lead to a violent death.

** The Tiger Dojo exists to Lampshade and excuse it with a wink.

* [[Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors]] has this {{spoiler|''in universe.'' The player's ability to restart after obtaining a bad ending, while retaining information obtained in said ending, is an early indicator that young Akane (the true player character) is doing this with Junpei.}}

 

* Not quite conventional Save Scumming, but ''[[Saints Row|Saint's Row 2]]'' lets you keep all your gear and ammo at the time of when you saved, but if it was during a mission, you start at the beginning of said mission. This can actually be abused, as during the Veteran Child mission there's ''always'' one of the Sons of Samedi in the same location wielding a [[AKA-47|K6 Krukov]]; Assault Rifle ammo is shared between weapons, even if they don't even use the same caliber, much less magazines. Kill, save, load, repeat until you have all the Assault Rifle ammo you want.

* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto San Andreas|Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' you can save scum to build up all the money you'll ever need by gambling, if you're willing to spend several hours. This is most easily accomplished after you purchase the casino in Los Venturas (to have a nearby save point). Simply gamble at your choice of game (video poker is a popular one) and save when you win big, or quit/reset when you lose all your money (though leave the sound off unless you want to hear the same two songs on an ENDLESS LOOP. Tell 'em, Godfather...).

** Another method of doing this which can be accessed earlier in the game is to use the betting shop in Blueberry. Catalina's house on Fern Ridge has a save spot and a fast car that spawns on every load. The road down the ridge leads directly to the Shop, and only takes about 30 seconds. Betting on the longshot has a massive payout and can net you a huge income very quickly.

 

 

* In the [[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]] Novel ''The Escape,'' Torres, Kim, and Neelix are searching a seemingly deserted planet when they accidentally activate a [[Time Travel]] device, violating the laws of the aliens who inhabit the various timelines on the planet. All attempts to escape by the trio are thwarted by the [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|seemingly omniscient aliens,]] who are really just [[Save Scumming|rewinding the timeline]] to before the team makes their attempts, sometimes requiring several iterations before the aliens found a favorable outcome.

* In the ''[[Discworld]]'' book ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', Yetis have learned to do this, and will periodically save their lives, and if they get killed, they'll go back and not be such a fool this time. It's mentioned that the whole species has gone extinct on three separate occasions.

 

* In an episode of ''[[Being Erica]]'', Erica is given the power to manipulate time within a single day and uses it to repeatedly hit the reset button on events that don't go her way, including a huge fight with her boyfriend: unfortunately, the boyfriend realises what she's up to and is horrified at what he sees as a violation of his free will.

 

* The movie ''Next'' essentially featured a character capable of doing this in real life. Being able to see two minutes into your future has its perks...

 

* Wyoming does something like this in [[Red vs. Blue]] by rewinding time every time he dies so he can carry out his evil scheme properly. Unfortunately for him, Tucker is aware of these resets and uses his knowledge of what will happen to defeat Wyoming.

* Qin Xu of ''[[Last Res0rt]]'' can rewind time short distances, represented by a row of panels to the side of the comic displaying whatever he just averted.

* ...Or something like it: anyone used to working on memory-heavy programs, such as the Adobe Creative Suite, will soon develop the nervous tic of using the 'save' keyboard shortcut every couple of minutes, or face the possibility of losing a huge amount of work the next time Flash or Premiere crashes. And more to the point, will equally find their fingers hovering constantly over the 'undo' shortcut keys. Bonus points if this becomes so internalised you find yourself twitching to 'undo' real, non-computer errors.