I come to bury save points, not to praise them

Allow me this brief aside: I hope that we mark 2009 as the year the save point died. Save points are an anachronism at this point, an example of lazy game design that has needlessly perpetuated itself. They may have been necessary for technical reasons during the old cartridge-based era of console gaming (such as Nintendo, Colecovision, Super-Nintendo, etc.) where your saved game actually took up very limited space on your cartridge's RAM. But most modern consoles have no such limitations, and certainly PC and Mac-based games don't either (I suppose the Nintendo DS - which basically looks like it runs miniaturized SNES cartridges, might be an exception).

Moreover, save points create "false narrative tension" in a game. You are pushing to get to past the next obstacle - not because you are enjoying yourself, not because you are interested to see what is ahead, but because if your character "dies" before reaching the save point, you will need to start all over again. There are better ways to incentivize your players to keep playing. Plus, as a father and husband, there is no better way to get an angry wife than to explain that you cannot stop playing because "I'm looking for a place to save my game." Good luck with that one, and remember to duck when the frying pan comes at you.

Most games these days allow you to save at any time, or automatically save for your to preserve your progress. And while any game will involve some backtracking if you interrupt your session or your character "dies," as long as you are not looking at 15-20 minutes of repeating your last game session that's forgivable. After all, allowing someone to save in the middle of the big boss fight would destroy the drama and tension that the developer wants that fight to have.

Lost Odyssey was a pretty enjoyable RPG game for the XBox 360 - it had a reasonably mature storyline, some gorgeous graphics, and an interesting combat system - but its reliance on save points nearly ruined the game. You could spend an hour fighting through monsters, only to be wiped out before you could get to a save point. That is not fun. Hopefully, save points will finally be retired in this generation of games.