You know, I'm going to agree with you on everything except one thing: Dead Rising. You obviously took your expectations of the save system and made it out to be much worse than it is. The game can be replayed from the beginning if you die, but it does not have to be. Save points are marked on your map, there’s just not that many. The first one happens before you can even “die” in game. The game is fantastic and for many more reasons than just photography. If that's really your hurdle with the game then you missed something very apparent about the save system and need to revisit it.

I restarted about half-way through my first time just to make the game a bit easier and I had missed a few events. After that I realized that it is impossible to see everything in one play through of the game. There's some really excellent commentary, situation, and satire that you’re missing by dropping the game where you did. If you follow the story you'll find that there are very few moments in the game where you're just wandering around killing time.