Saving and Checkpoints

Checkpointing can polarize players' opinions, when points are spread further apart as a measure of difficulty. Some feel that it's more "hardcore" to play through a large number of acts, for a longer period of time than normal, and eventually succeed. Others feel that save and checkpointing should remain a convenience mechanic and be offered generously, with an "every 5-10 minutes" philosophy at the core.

The truth is, wider checkpointing tests patience and memory as much as it does skill, which can frustrate and put off players. Call of Duty 2 had the best checkpointing implementation I experienced in the new generation, which was expanded even further with Call of Duty 4. Not only was each intensely exhilarating section in veteran mode beatable within 5-10 minutes (in Call of Duty 2, specifically), players would also get save-able checkpoints which appear before and after a cut-scene, saving players from classic tedium moments such as the "Look at all dat juice" scene from Gears of War.

This infamous portion of Gears of War placed players against a group of the tough Theron Guard enemies as they laid siege to a pumping station. Dying in battle restarted the player a long walk back before the action began, replaying a verbal scene in which one of the characters utters the immortal line, "Look at all dat juice." Repeating this became annoying after a while.

Optional quests are quite a common design choice when providing for hardcore players, as are special missions, or optional pick-ups in the environment. Younger-skewed games, like Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Lego Star Wars tend to reward players with an auto-save when finding optional pick-ups. Gears of War also does this with its COG Tag bonus system.

The great thing about doing this is that players are still rewarded for the task they performed, but if they die, they don't need to do it again-they only need focus on the challenge of core play.

Some games, including many PC FPS, rely on players to use the game's save-anywhere feature, and skimp on checkpoints. Others choose to space checkpoints far apart, also forcing players to redo all the sub-tasks in between, meaning maximum frustration for completists who wish to challenge their skills more than their patience. Black by EA Criterion is one of my most remembered offenders in this respect.

In that game, upon walking down a hill, shooting across a field, entering a compound, killing everyone and destroying the place, only to be shot and killed on my way out, I would have to not only restart the whole sequence (20 minutes of play), but also collect all the optional objective items again, costing me that same large chunk of time each and every try. Eventually I found an optimal route and a superhuman level of patience, but until that point, I utterly hated the experience for one section of what is otherwise a very well-crafted game.

The common rationalization designers give when confronted with these criticisms is usually, "the player doesn't have to do all that. It's their fault because we made that optional," but what they forget is that the players most likely to undertake harder skill modes are precisely the ones most likely to force themselves to get all these things and perform all these acts. In essence, the designer is trying to justify these choices with semantics, when what they're really doing is forgetting the truth about their audience. It's a key part of understanding the whole point behind these modes.

Enemy Count

This can also be regarded as bullet count in top-down shooters, or basically any increase in kinetic or AI-driven hazards. Obviously, the more of any of these elements a player has to deal with, the quicker they have to think, and the greater the sense of pressure and stress, thus the more satisfying it feels when success is earned. But balancing the pressure with actual achievability is quite difficult.

Treasure’s Ikaruga challenges players to navigate dense curtains of fire while maintaining awareness of their ship’s polarity.

Ikaruga has arguably done this well. Ikaruga is a top-down 2D shooter with a simple mechanic that also made it equal parts puzzle game. The ship has black and white sides, switchable with a button press. White can absorb white bullets and do double damage to black ships. Black can absorb black bullets and do double damage to white ships.

In easy mode, when a player shoots an enemy, it dies and that's it. In normal mode, enemies you kill with the same color bullet as your ship explode in a hail of bullets. In hard mode, all enemies explode in a hail of bullets. At each stage of difficulty, the puzzle element is changed slightly so that players have to alter their memorized plans of action and possibly adapt their reflexes to be a little quicker. This also adds to the overall stress aspect.

Gradius, R-Type, and other scrolling shooters have a memory-play aspect in terms of knowing the level's shapes and movements, coupled with testing of reflexes at great speeds. This is the simplest level of difficulty adjustment, as mentioned at the start of the article. The odd additional turret or enemy in a PC FPS can yield somewhat similar results, while tweaking the player's existing memory map of a level.

Scrolling shooters tend to be perfect for this feature, as their levels are small and the bullets can behave somewhat organically within a fixed environment, blending memory play with reflex play, though players do tend to share optimal solutions for playing through these games.