A few weeks back, I was watching a series of Developer Diaries from the folks at Codemasters about the (at the time) forthcoming Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising. While a lot of it was your run-of-the-mill “hey our graphics are great” and “hey check out our cool AI,” the one that really drew me in was their explanation of their “Hardcore” mode.

For those of you not familiar with the original Operation Flashpoint, it was a modern military FPS whose main claim to fame was a gritty sense of realism.  Flashpoint was not a run n’ gun kind of game; running and gunning, in fact, was probably the quickest way for you to lose.  Flashpoint was, in a basic way, a military “simulator.”  The player had limited information about where enemies were, getting shot once or twice would probably kill you, and an awful lot of the game was simply spent running from one waypoint to the next.

Flashpoint 2, with their hardcore mode, appeared to be trying to up the ante even further.  In this game mode, the player has no HUD at all – no radar, no ammo count, no waypoint markers – the only information they get is what they can see with their eyes.  As someone who had mostly enjoyed the original Flashpoint, despite a steep difficulty curve and some rather crucial bugs, the idea of taking the game to the next logical step in realism appealed to me.

So, intrigued, I ordered myself a copy for launch day and got down to business.  I decided that, despite my eagerness to show how hardcore I really was, I should probably learn the game in normal mode before upping the difficulty. It turns out this was a wise idea, because though the years since Flashpoint had dulled the memory, the truth is that, sometimes, realism in games makes things really damn hard.

A typical session of Flashpoint 2 tends to go something like this: Starting out on a hillside or copse of trees, I receive my orders to proceed forward and take out the anti-aircraft defenses on a nearby ridge.  My HUD tells me that the AA guns are 1.7 kilometers away, and that my closest waypoint is 350 meters away.  Ordering my squadmates to follow me, I set off through the grassy fields, trying to stay low behind the hills to avoid detection.  After moving along for a few minutes, I reach my waypoint with no problems.  As soon as that happen, a new waypoint pops up some 300 meters away.  Again, a walk or sprint across the landscape, and after a few more minutes, I’ve reached the next one.  As you might expect, this sets up the next waypoint, 275 meters away.

As we proceed to the next one, my troops report movement on a distant ridge.  Pulling out my binoculars, I spot a few Chinese soldiers creeping in our direction.  We also spot a helicopter searching for us off to the south.  Deciding discretion is the better part of valor, I decide to keep us low and try and skirt the patrol.  This works really well until we stumble into another patrol behind the next hill.  A brief flurry of gunfire later, and the screen fades red as I fall to the ground, defeated.

Now, thanks to the checkpoint system the game uses, I can only restart from the beginning of the mission again.  So, once again, we go through several minutes of quiet walking, back to the location of our previous demise.  This time, knowing what’s probably up ahead, I try taking a different route to avoid both patrols.  This works out well and good until the aforementioned chopper somehow spots us skulking around and blows us to smithereens.  Cue restart at beginning of mission.  To cut a long story short, this time we fought our way through the first patrol, but got flanked by the second.  And then the helicopter showed up.

As you might guess, this kind of thing gets pretty frustrating after a while.  Now, beyond my own skill/lack thereof, the game is pretty difficult on its own.  Realism does make things harder by its very nature; only being able to be shot once or twice at most means your standard FPS tactics are right out the window.  There is no hiding behind a rock until your shields regenerate here.  Add to that the fact that sometimes the enemies that kill you will be completely unknown to you – a sniper on a distant hill, or a patrol hiding in the trees that you never even saw (and don’t even think about trying to go toe-to-toe with a tank or a helicopter).  The thing is,  that’s not the part that frustrates me – I knew exactly what I was getting into when I chose to play a realistic game.

No, what the real problem is here is that Codemasters decided to couple gritty realism with an awful checkpoint system to handle saving.  In my experiences thus far, the checkpoints in Dragon Rising all seem designed to make the player have to replay as much walking as possible.  In a situation where a player can travel unmolested over a kilometers worth of checkpoints, only to encounter a potentially deadly situation at the last one, the game makes you repeat that kilometer trek over and over again every time you fail.

Yes, realism isn’t always exciting, and a lot of time in real life will be spent walking or running from point to point during a covert military op (well, at least I would assume it does). In a game, no matter how realistic you want it to be, there are certain steps you can take to alleviate frustration in your players.  If you are going to disallow at-will saving for whatever reason you choose (I suspect part of this is the console-centric design of the game), then at least look at the design of the levels you are creating before placing your checkpoints.  If you’ve decided to make the players have to deal with all the intermediary travel, do not place checkpoints that force them to repeat that in the event of a failure.  When you know the road ahead is rough, and the probability of player failure is high, punishing them further with tedious repetition is nothing more than unfriendly design.

It is because of this that I find myself putting the game on the back burner, having grown tired of one particularly challenging mission with an extremely large sequence of travel and battle without a checkpoint.  When I have limited time to play a game, and plenty of other games crying out for attention, this sort of system becomes a major hindrance – realism and difficulty need not be saddled with extra layers of frustration.