10 Ways You Can Tell A Video Game Is Going To Suck

In decades past, bad checkpointing was just something players accepted - given that checkpointing was never even a guarantee in older games, the fact it was there at all was basically good enough.

In 2023, however, there's no good reason for games to not offer frequent checkpointing to ensure players don't lose much progress when they die or, say, there's a power cut in their home.

There's nothing more infuriating than a game that, upon death, throws you back five or even 10 minutes to repeat a whole bunch of busy-work, simply to get back to the point at which you fell.

Modern games are generally very good at ensuring you don't have to mindlessly repeat more than a few minutes of content - bar games where it's built into the fabric of the gameplay, like Metroidvanias or From Software's titles - but when it happens, it's about as big as turn-offs get.

Games being difficult is fine, but making the player repeat a large section of gameplay for no reason shows a patent lack of respect for their time, and smacks of a game desperately padding itself out with enforced repetition.

In an era where we have more gaming choice at our fingertips than ever before, life's too short for bulls**t like this.