I have just completed Grand Theft Auto IV. It took me 40 hours. That's a long time. I imagine most people completed the game much quicker, but I didn't really get good at the game until three-quarters through, meaning I died a lot, and lost a lot of missions. 

In fact, on average, I failed every mission two times, meaning it took me three attempts to complete each mission. I take no issue failing missions, especially when I consider it my fault and not the AI or cheapness or whatever, but I really, really bothers me is the lack of checkpoints. Most missions in GTA IV feature two or three parts once the mission has already begun. The scenario commonly works out like follows: 1. drive to the mission, 2. kill people, 3. chase scene or escape from cops. Now, in GTA IV, when you die, you have to restart the entire mission from the very beginning. And when I've spent about fifteen minutes just getting to part three, only to die and have to start all the way from the beginning again, I get angry. I just did it. I had successfully completed parts 1 and 2, had bested the challenge. So why is it that I have to redo these parts of the mission? Particularly, when the first part, simply driving to the killing part, usually offers absolutely no challenge? Rockstar did go through the effort of recording two different conversations for every drive, so the second time around, you'll hear Niko and whoever he is with exchange completely different dialogue. While it can be nice to have this extra insight, why go through all of the trouble of recording double the voicework when you could simply restart the player at the most recent part of a mission?

Basically, each time I failed a mission, I felt like I was wasting my life away. I enjoyed GTA IV; it was a super detailed game with some great characters and an intriguing story. And the combat gameplay was amazingly fun. But with a game this long, that features over 80 missions, I do not have the patience to play every mission, all the way through, sometimes six or more times. The lack of checkpoints in GTA IV absolutely kills me; I literally would have beaten the game in half the time if they'd have been included. While that may sound like a lame excuse, I value my time, and I really don't enjoy wasting it away on things I've already completed. 

Perhaps more importantly, the fear of dying caused me to be high-stress all of the time. I really didn't want to have to restart a mission all the way from the beginning, so I would be high-strung the whole time, super focused, to ensure that I wouldn't die. Every time I found a health pack or body armor, I breathed a sigh of relief. I think that the challenge in GTA IV was spot on, neither too hard nor too difficult, except, except for the lack of checkpoints. Actually, I find it fairly elitist not to include check points. What that tells me is that the developers think my having to start their mission over again is more important than my time. What if I just want to experience the game and story without all of the stress of dying? Stress which was created very specifically by the lack of checkpoints.

This is all to say that I too find games too much like work sometimes. GTA IV has taught me this more than any other game I've ever played. I honestly couldn't wait to complete so I could move on with my life. The reason I played through it was to see the story and cool missions, plus the gameplay was a ton of fun. But because of the simple design decision of not including checkpoints, I enjoyed much of the experience far less than I would have otherwise. I think this serves as an example of how the design of games, aside from difficulty or challenge, can heavily influence the feeling of fun or work.

Originally posted as a comment on Gamasutra.