I've always liked cleaning out every area, most rpgs reward you for this. I get the idea, this is a tactical mission, get in, kill the high level targets, get out. I suppose I can eventually be forced to play this way, but it's not ever going to be really satisfying. As others have mentioned, I miss working my way through with a team. Wiping to space could be frustrating but it made the stakes high, forcing you to revive teammates caused everyone to work together in a smarter way. Those are mechanics that added to the team nature of the strike. Forcing everyone to run though at a sprint devalues the team feel. Fix ideas: Why not reset some portion of the time at checkpoints. Make each checkpoint challenging enough to make it close, but reset time so you have a reasonable amount at each stage? This could have been built into the story too - have munitions coming from space at times intervals, or rendezvous with more guardians where everyone dies if you're not there to save them. TLDR: "Running past shit with friends" is no where near as fun as "Shooting shit with friends".