-- Gaming --
Infamous.... oh man Infamous. Let's just start with an assessment of various save systems.

1. Single save
   Games like Burnout Paradise, or Singstar have a single save file. Either it's there or it is not. You don't have to manage saves it just loads right up and usually they autosave.
   
2. Game specific system
   Games like the old RPGs (I'm playing Dragon Quest IV right now), House of the dead Overkill, Lit, PuzzleQuest. These games have a limited number of saves (usually 2-3) and you simply select a save slot. in the case of RPGs you can sometimes pick your name (LoZ anyone?) and it identifies it by that. Probably among the oldest systems
   
3. Console system
   I'm gonna include the PC here because that's the best example. Raise your hand if "Press F5 to quicksave" sounds familiar. It's a GREAT system. That's why it started on the PC. If you have all the space you can imagine and saves take up next to none why shouldn't you be allowed to make as many as you like whenever you want. Fallout 3 does this. Red Faction Guerilla does this. Ratchet and Clank as well as Uncharted i think do this, and by this I mean use the PS3's built in save system. It looks the same with all of them and it acts the same.

Actual recovery from save varies form game to game. Some put you in the very instance you saved. Some put you back to the nearest save exit portal (Zelda, RF:G). Some save ur progress but put you back to the start of the level.

So I decided that I need to get back into gaming and actually progress thru my backlog and not just play Fat Princess all the time. I did good beating PJ Shooter (though I have 3 trophies left to complete), but I decided I wanted to work on a disc game that wasn't SingStar. Sure I have Red Faction to play and yeah I like the game but you know what. I think i really really dislike sandbox games because aside from that RFG is a great game. Anway this is getting long enough the short version is I started to pick up Infamous again. the last time I played this game was when I rented it from the library. Until now I'd never actually broken the seal on the copy I got a few months back.

The first thing I noticed after a few days was that Infamous doesn't have a menu screen. If any of you have played this game you know how fantastic this is. Singstar makes you pick modes obviously and even Burnout makes you push Start and select the mode before you drive, but there is no multiplayer in inFamous there is only one mode of play so when you turn on the game the first thing you can interact with is the actual game. It just put me back where I left off. I have no idea how I missed this the last time but I'm ecstatic over this, any other game that does this gets high priority on my shopping list.

I'll save you the boring story how how I discovered this and simply relate how the inFamous save system works. It uses the system save method. So it looks just like Fallout 3 or Red Faction. Only as I discovered it has a limited number of slots. Less than 10.

Not a big deal on the outset but one day I decided to start up a good Cole on Hard so I could see what it looks like. I played the opening and went to save. Here's where things get crucial:

When you play Fallout 3 if you're reading this you know it's a buggy game. seriously "corrupted save file you can't progress" buggy. I was listening to an IGN podcast and Colin Moriarty had a single save that got corrupted and he lost his entire game progress. Since he's a guides man that's hundreds of hours. Others on the show criticized him citing their own practice of creating new saves every save. After all you have a whole harddrive. Upon completely one of the hosts said they had upwards of 200 save files. I decided from then on to do new saves at least every night when I was done. I played many hours of Fallout. I eventually hit sandbox tetanic paralysis (where I have so many options I can't choose and can't play). I did the same with Red Faction: Guerilla though honestly I played more multiplayer with CAGs then I have the single player.

The problem with inFamous is that it looks exactly the same as every other PS3 system save game but doesn't behave the same. I maxed out my save slots and when I played a new game I eventually went to save and just saved on the top. Normally the top slot is {Create New Save}. Too late I realized my mistake. After a few deep breaths I just started from the 2nd save which was now 3 missions behind.

In theory everything was alright. I had my top save as my current save (bad) and my 2nd save as my new game(good). Everything else below was even older saves that at this point served little to no purpose. Eight or nine days ago my friend Collins comes by and I'm demonstrating inFamous for him. I show him my Cole and how fun it is to be bad. You figure why not just show him the good side. I do that for a while. I'm pretty sure I started him off on a new save for whatever reason rather than my Good/Hard save but it doesn't matter Eventually Collins leaves and I go to load my save. You're gamers you know where this is going. For some insane* reason whenever you load a save the game prompts you so save your current save. It's really the most annoying thing ever. Especially since you only have so many slots. Instead of saying "No Don't save" and then "Yes load top save" because the text is so standard I didn't realize what was happening was instead I did "yes save" and then 'Yes overwrite top save". If the game had the normal save system at least the worst I would have done was create a new save. If the game had differentiated itself like any other self respecting slot limiting game I would have noticed. Instead I lost hours of progress and all drive to play my home console. I was so annoyed I've turned to my DS. At this point I'm now 30+ hours into Dragon Quest IV.

Screw you inFamous and your stupid limit on save slots. I was really really enjoying the game too. It's like SuckerPunch.. well sucker punched me. The only way i could feel worse is if I met Michael Jordan, and we got to hang out, shoot some hoops real casual style and when I took him home my girlfriend tells me that was the man who raped her**. Redoing the 4-5 missions when I first erased my save was an annoyance but 10+ missions, bunches of shards, and not a few audio drops. Plus I had JUST hit inFamous status. I'm sure part of that was the time I would spend just beating people up for fun. I'm not gonna do that again so it's gonna mean even longer for me to his inF status.

* and by insane I guess I sorta mean well-reasoned
** for this record this didn't happen. with any current or past girlfriend.

tl;dr
I erased my inFamous save. Went from Mission 28 to 17 plus a TON of collectibles. All of which would have been prevented by having the system normal save system.

I was going to put illustrative pictures in this but good grief man this computer is slow. Someone gave me a *in theory* faster one but it won't turn on. That's a whole nother blog post.. actually that's the one I was supposed to post now but instead this accidentally happened.

-- Non-Gaming --
So my ultrasound revealed that I got lesions on my thyroid. I'm not particularly surprised. Not because I particularly felt it (Doc asked) but because every time I see a doctor they give me a net increase in my dying speed. Whatever man. They don't call it beating the odds if the odds are in your favor. Worst case-scenario I have to go under the knife again and lose a major gland, but honestly my blood tests are all normal so in all likelyhood this is nothing to worry about. Still I find this all rather humorous.

TMI: In college when someone's roommate left it was 'naked time' this was pretty widely announced so that we would all knock before entering. I never really got it and my roommate never really left for the weekend all that often. When I moved out by myself I would occasionally try it out. See how many days I could go without wearing clothes. Sleeping was the easiest, cooking was the most hilarious. It always occurred to me afterwards that if oil had spashed up on me or if I wasn't careful with the oven door I could have some pretty embarrassing to explain scars.