By Jamaal Ryan
I heard a rather silly complaint from the community manager
of a site that I won’t name about Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze’s boss
fights, “Why didn’t they just put in checkpoints during boss battles so that I don’t
have to do the whole thing over again?”
Well, I thought it was rather silly; but my simple answer to
such a simple complaint was, “Because it’s a boss fight.”
Implementing checkpoints is both a technical and creative decision
to make. Have the developers figured out how the system would be able to handle
remembering where your character is, how much health they have, how much – if any
– damage was done to your enemy, and how many – if any – of your foes have been
defeated? Or, what is it that they’re demanding from the player’s skill?
The boss fights in Tropical Freeze weren’t the greatest,
certainly less memorable than what was seen in Wii’s Donkey Kong Country:
Returns; but much like Retro’s predecessor, it’s still a tough game. This new
age of Donkey Kong Country titles, much like Rare’s originals, withholds a design
with a certain expectation. Don’t know how to duck, or jump at the right
moment? Come back, or die a few more times until you figure it out.
Part of challenge is knowing what’s at stake. If I fuck this
up, I loose time and progression. That’s what makes genres like rogue-likes and
titles like DayZ and RUST so popular. Tropical Freeze isn’t even within the
same hemisphere as the aforementioned genre and titles, it’s just a challenging
platformer. But even in such types of games, which also include titles
everywhere from Super Meat Boy to the later levels in Super Mario 3D World (20
star challenge level anyone?), while the stakes are much lower, they still
hurt.
My biggest complaint about Tropical Freeze is that a
straight shot from level 1-1 to the final boss was easier than its predecessor.
The stages were less demanding of advance moves, and they attacked me, the
player, with less ferocity.
After digging up some of the bonus stages, the game began to
hold back less, offering levels that had no checkpoints at all. Inserting
checkpoints would defeat the point of their challenge as trials that are meant
to be attempted in short bursts. The game is also sure to broadcast examples of
what to expect ahead at the beginning of each stage which is designed around
its no checkpoint formula. It ultimately comes down to self-fulfilling bragging
rights that you’ve defeated this challenge from start to finish without dying. Checkpoints
aren’t for every situation in every game, certainly not this one.
Checkpoints have their appropriate place in different types
of experiences. One of the most common examples are games that fail to autosave
or offer a period of a save state before a long unskippable cutscenes. But some
games intentionally keep them out, refusing to budge on their difficulty until
you meet its expectations.
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