Sun 02 October 2016
| tags: 30 Day Challenge
Recently I've been playing through Doom 2016 again, this time on Nightmare difficulty. Perhaps I was a touch
foolish to jump into the game after a few months of not playing on the hardest sane difficult, but I have been able
to get very intimate with the checkpoint system, and thought I'd say a few things on checkpoint systems in general.
There are two main ways to save progress in a level: user controlled savestates and checkpoints. For the sake of
clarification, savestates (sometimes called quicksaves) are when the user or application quickly saves the current
state of the game at anytime or at specific points. This style is most common in open-world games, with the
quintessential example being any Bethesda RPG. You mash F5 to save at any time, and the game saves automatically at
times, usually at major load zones to minimize progress lost due to crashes. The other, and much older way, is the
checkpoint system. This is used in too many games to count, but they tend to be linear in nature. A very old
example of this is Super Mario Brothers. In every level, except for world 8, there is a half-way point where the
player can restart from if they die during the level.These two different styles serve very different purposes and
deeply influence the way the player interacts with the game.
Checkpoints force the player to play on the developers terms- they concede some freedom in order to get a more
refined experience from the game. A good checkpoint system actually decreases the difficulty of the game, but makes
it more engaging experience by constantly presenting the player with a fresh challenge. The player doesn't want to
constantly do challenges they've already completed over and over again, which they may find trivial, because they
keep failing on a later and more difficult portion of a level. This is most noticeable in linear FPS games. Go load
up any Call of Duty Campaign, and you'll see what I mean. You never restart from an area right before a long
walking section or a part with a lot of dialogue. Checkpoints always place the player right at the beginning of a
section with a lot of combat or action, letting them get back into the action while the adrenaline is still pumping
if they fail. It's a way to keep the user pumped up and motivated, because there is nothing more tortious then
being forced to re-do a long walking or talking section when the call of battle is five minutes away.
On the other end of the coin, savestates make the player nearly entirely responsible for their own progress and
experience. This puts a lot of responsibility on the player. In many games with this kind of system, the player can
easily get themselves into an unwinnable situation, or lose hours of progress if they're not careful. However, this
system works very well for non-linear or open-world games where the developer cannot control nor predict the
experience the player will have nearly as well as in a linear game. The player having this responsibility gives
them the flexibility to determine where they want to restart after they fail.
This brings me to Doom 2016. Both Doom and Doom II used the savestate system, with the player in complete control
over their restart points. This fit well with the open nature of the levels. Essentially, every Doom level was
an open world maze in which Doomguy murdered and explored his way through, encouraging the player to save
frequently and scour the level to look for secrets. Doom 2016's levels are in the same style, but feature a
checkpoint system. This works wonderfully during the initial parts of the level, and it saves before nearly every
encounter. However, once the player begins to backtrack to find secrets it begins to fall apart. Several times the
player might be presented with an encounter without a save beforehand, which can be quite annoying to keep running
towards after failing it on higher difficulties. In other cases, there are platforming sections for secrets where
the player might fall and die, resulting in a frustrating walk to get back since they couldn't simply couldn't
restart where they wanted to. This is not the end of the world, but once again, is very frustrating and can take
the player out of the game immensely.
On the whole, Doom 2016's checkpoints work pretty well, frustrations aside, though, I can't help but feel that the
savestate system from the older titles was better suited for the style of play.