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The Value of Your Saved Game
N'Gai and the LevelUp blog take on an interesting thought experiment: which is more valuable, the $60 game you bought at the store, or the save-game file sitting on your console's hard drive? The article explores the various ways save-games can be backed up, and calculates how much the average saved game is worth based on your age and income. "Our back of the envelope calculations clearly demonstrate that in all but one of the categories, the save file is more valuable than the game itself, and ought to be backed up regularly in recognition of that value. And that's without even attempting to figure out the worth of any intangibles: the frustration of having to replay familiar levels and challenges just to get back to the halfway mark; the attachment that you may have built up to the character; any customization and personalization you did the first time through; the loss of unlocks, user-generated content and other valuable elements." I have a massive save-game file for Oblivion that I would be very distraught to lose. Any saved-games you've been carting around or protecting over the months/years?
If you just don't feeling like replaying your game to get back to where you were, you can often find saved games from somewhere else. That's especially true for linear games, like FPS's. Just for example, here's a collection of Half-Life 2 saved games. With some work, you could probably also find (for example) Oblivion saved games that might at least put you near where you want to be.
The only game that's worse is Pac Man. I have played that game, in total, for hundreds of hours, but I never managed to reach the end.
You want to talk about unmemorable "endings"? Pac-Man has none. It just crashes after 255 levels (scroll down to the end of the page).
Then again, if that had happened to me back in the prime of Pac-Man, I'd have thought it a random crash rather than "the end", and probably blown an aneurysm. So I guess you could call that memorable, in its own way...
Loose (with two Os) rhymes with moose (also with two Os). You're looking for lose.