10 Secret Ways Video Games Totally Waste Your Time
5. Bad Checkpointing Disguised As "Difficulty"
One of the greatest things about modern gaming is that death no longer requires players to be thrown back to the very beginning - well-placed save points and checkpoints are able to minimise the frustration of repetition by ensuring the player loses only a few minutes of their time after dying.
And while there are certainly arguments for games which limit saves as part of their core design - the earlier Resident Evil games, for starters - in 2020, with each of us having so many media options available, it's tough to advocate for games which wilfully enforce relentless trial-and-error gameplay.
In recent times, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's checkpointing system was widely complained about, for featuring surprisingly sparse meditation spots where players could save their progress.
Upon dying, players are returned to this spot and forced to fight their way back through a fleet of re-spawned enemies, and worse still, deciding to rest at the meditation spot - in order to restore your vitals - will automatically respawn all the enemies you just killed in the area.
It's a frustrating loop which somewhat discourages players to explore the expansive world by punishing them so egregiously for dying, in turn wasting so much of their time.
This seems pretty counter-intuitive for a mainstream, casual-skewing Star Wars game, though for something as openly punishing as Dark Souls - which often forces players to spend many minutes returning to their death site - it's perhaps a more acceptable indulgence.