The brilliant Dark Souls save system, and other games

I loved Dark Souls.  I'd had quite a long hiatus from games in general before I picked DS up, just because I hadn't found anything I could really get my teeth into. 

One thing I hate about most games these days (and I accept that I'm in the minority with this) is that you can *save and reload at any point*.  A case in point is The Witcher 2.  I tried this game after Dark Souls, and what I find myself doing is running up to an enemy, getting a couple of hits in, running away (it doesn't let you save in combat), saving the game, rinse and repeat.  If/when I die, I restart from the last save.  To me, this removes a lot of the challenge.  The great thing about the Dark Souls system is that it doesn't let you do this. Sure, you can save at any point, but brilliantly, it overwrites your save file as you progress.  The result is the ultimate feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment when you reach the next bonfire.  I don't care that it means I have to repeat the same bit many times, this just adds to the satisfaction.  I know that a lot of gamers today hate having to repeat sections of a game - maybe it's the fact that I grew up in the 8-bit era where you could reach the final level, run out of lives, and have to start the entire game from the beginning!

Ok, so some people would say, don't bother to manually save games, just rely on the auto-save system.  But this for me is just artificially manufacturing my own additional level of challenge.  I want the level of challenge to be enforced on me by the game itself!  Resorting to this I would liken to, in the old days, deciding that a game gives me too many lives, and quitting after I'd lost the first three.  Needless to say, I never did this and wouldn't want to have to!

So really, I was just interested in:

1) Whether others on here agree/disagree with me, and

2) Whether people know of other great games (on the Xbox 360), particularly RPGs, which enforce the checkpoint system?  I don't even need DS's ability to save at any point (though of course this does have the great advantage of effectively being able to "pause" and turn the machine off, when it gets too late at night and I still can't get past the latest challenge).

Dark Souls save system is only brilliant for the type of game it is, it's not something that works with everything else.  I get your argument about you shouldn't have to limit yourself to increase the difficulty but some games actually benefit from this and encourage re-playability.  The original Resident Evil games allowed you to save when you wanted to but they were limited and had a ranking system where you were rewarded for using few saves, no use of specific items/weapons and finish playthrough in a specific time.

(My Resident Evil 2 record around 57 minutes, pistol only, just green herbs, no save Leon A got me a rank S)

This system isn't for everyone but damn fun for those that relish this type of difficulty.

Fair enough, if the additional, optional challenge is built into the game, such as being given extra reward for beating it, I can accept that.  Hard modes are fine with me, for example.  I just don't want to have to think up the challenges myself!

I never played Resident Evil but I do like the idea of limiting saves and rewards for not using them.

Trouble is, now I've played Dark Souls and found the balance of difficulty so good, I want everything to be like that.

Well yes, Dark Souls is a good game. But if everything were like Dark Souls, what would be unique about it?

As I now find myself "old" I do not have the time/energy to play games with a limited save feature...

But Dark Souls is not so much a "limited save" as a CONSTANT save, so when something comes up I can quit and pick up later where I left off.
I cant think of another game that balances out those two completely opposite systems so well.