10 Modern Video Game Tropes We're Totally Sick Of

3. Bad Checkpointing

My all-time pet peeve in gaming is bad checkpointing.

I honestly cannot stand when a developer throws you back before an un-skippable cutscene, only to provide a challenge that clearly requires trial and error or considerable amounts of time to surmount.

Pretty much the only exception is Dark Souls as you can usually find an alternate path or some enemies to grind for a bit, and even that wore very thin when tackling Ornstein & Smough.

Regardless, in 2D platformers especially, just make like Celeste and restart us right where the obstacle that killed us was. If the challenge is overcoming that particular gauntlet of platforms or enemies, that should be the focus. Challenge is not "How much time-wasting will you put up with?"

Please, all game devs, take 15 seconds off the last time we died and just put us back in. It'll be received with open arms, 99% of the time.