What is the dumbest most overused video game cliche?

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tzhu07

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Exploding red barrels. Oh please game designers come up with some new destruction mechanics!

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I'll tell you what the worst one is. Ventilation shafts. Who ever thought that this would be a good way to sneak around in games. I mean when was the last time you ever saw a vent big enough for someone to crouch and crawl around in. And even if you did find one big enough, it would make so much noise as to completely defeat the purpose of using one to sneak around.

I think this was a big part of why I could never get into Deus Ex HR. Or how about Mirror's Edge. A game about running and jumping on top of buildings, and they continually make us crawl around in vents. Or the seemingly random, gigantic vents in the Batman games; the list goes on and on...
 
Mounted turret sequences. I remember last E3 every single shooter had at least one.
 
Protaganist/enemy landing from a long jump/fall with one knee on the ground and one hand on the ground with his head bowed and turning his head up to see slowly as if he's the baddest thing in the whole world. I am soooo sick and tired of that being used in all of these fucking games and movies. This all stems from anime, and as usual, it gets over used like a condom in a whorehouse. It's BORING. And it reeks of poseur. And I fucking hate poseurs in the same way I hate the emo haircut: it reeks of self importance when there isn't any.

And what AceCR42 said, I hate mounted turrets, even in Mass Effect I hated it.

STOP
IT
We don't CARE. Maybe 12 year old console buttbois do, but not anyone who matters.

Oh, and the "I've fallen and now the character on the cliff above will throw his hand out to lift me up in a quicktime event". Even my beloved BF3 has this. Ewww. I hate quicktime events anyways, but this is in about every god damn FPS I have played in the last few years. If ARMA 3 has it when it comes out, I am officially going to go nuke their HQ with a bomb made out of fucking dvd's made by Michael Bay.
 
MOVE MOVE MOVE GO GO GO MOVE MOVE GO.

I'm not a marine so I may be talking out of my ass but I've watched live combat scenarios and I've yet to see this outside of movies and games and drills. Rifftrax makes fun of it constantly in bad war movies. Call the objective, signal, move. If I had to constantly tell someone to MOVE MOVE MOVE GO GO GO I'd send their retarded ass back home. When I'm playing a game and I hear an officer yell that over and over I just want to throw a grenade at them.
 
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Explosions never really sound like explosions... low dynamic range makes the sound impression dull in action games when more realistic dynamic range could add a lot to immersion.
 
braamer said:
World War 2.
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I'd still take WW2 games any day, over modern shooters. That shit usually boils down to shooting mindless ragheads with the latest and greatest guns (and turrets, and air-bombing, and etc), to find out where the russian baddie has hidden the nuke this time - usually done in an over the top, corny, super-trooper way.
At least WW2 had two equally skilled and equipped sides battling it out in various theaters of war, and the war always feels larger than you because you're just another soldier trying to do your duty.
 
Weapons. Every game seems to have weapons in. But they are totally unrealistically.

I mean, if you walked around anywhere in a real world setting how many guns would you find lying around? Then how many boxes of corresponding ammo would you find? Then random health packs and stupid crap like that?

If I injured myself I could walk for miles and miles without ever coming across any kind of aid in any way. Yet in video games help is always at hand. Also weapons are too. In these game worlds does nobody think of the children!?! I mean on stroggos.how many children do you see? None! Why? Because theres like a gazillion shotguns lying around in the open. Thats bad parenting! Thats why the children all got taken away.

Also floaty crystal shit/rings/whatever in lines. You can pick these items by running into them, but why has nobody done that? Why are there all these untouched items and stuff?

Why in skyrim are there piles of gold and nobody locks their doors during the day when they are out?!! Thats just bad security. Oh you could rely on the guards I suppose, but they are waay too easy to bribe.

Pretty much stupid nonsense is a game stereotype. Oh and post apocalypse settings when you buy crap with money. Like you are in the middle of a zombie onslaught but someone wants $5000 for a gun and ammo, even though they aren't going anywhere. Or "you must save the town, let me sell you 99 potions and new swords and stuff, because we are all screwed and the world ends if you don't do it but I'm a hard line capitalist and if I can't screw you over for some fucking profit it's the end of the world anyway motherfucker!". Also stupid gun vending machines. If I was armed with a rocket launcher and there was a cabinet that had a load more powerful weapons in, I would not be going around picking up gold or something. I'd be pumping rockets in the front and cracking that open and taking all the stuff inside and the money from all the other stupids that had invested in it. I especially hate traders that are there when you get to the next place. It's like the whole game is like some stupid conspiracy so they can sell you shit.

Also stupid wooden doors you have to find keys for. You can't just punch your way in, or break a window, or slide the stupid box of shoes away from the door.

Games are silly!
 
Princesses that keep getting kidnapped and are NEVER IN THE CASTLE I GO TO EXCEPT FOR THE LAST ONE EVERY TIME arrgh!!
 
DeathPrincess said:
Weapons. Every game seems to have weapons in. But they are totally unrealistically.

I mean, if you walked around anywhere in a real world setting how many guns would you find lying around? Then how many boxes of corresponding ammo would you find? Then random health packs and stupid crap like that?
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^ It's just as bad though, when a game like those old-old-school Tom Clancy tactical shooters try to be overly anal, and you can't pick up weapons from dead Russian soldiers and use them even if you run out of ammo. Do you mean to tell me that American special ops commandos are incapable of figuring out how to fire an AK-47? Or that they're so principled to the point where even using a weapon manufactured in Russia is considered tantamount to treason? If there was one improvement that GRAW made over GR, it's in this area.

Come to think of it, there are a lot of games where you can see armor, weapons, grenades, etc on an enemy's corpse, but you can't pick up and use them for some inexplicable reason.

Btw, no mention of barrels is complete with a mention of crates as well.


Buxaroo said:
Protaganist/enemy landing from a long jump/fall with one knee on the ground and one hand on the ground with his head bowed and turning his head up to see slowly as if he's the baddest thing in the whole world. I am soooo sick and tired of that being used in all of these fucking games and movies. This all stems from anime, and as usual, it gets over used like a condom in a whorehouse. It's BORING. And it reeks of poseur. And I fucking hate poseurs in the same way I hate the emo haircut: it reeks of self importance when there isn't any.
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Is this referring to the Icarus jump in DX:HR?
 
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Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots. The Star Trek TV series had a practical reason to make multitudes of aliens that look like humans, they had to use human actors. What's the excuse for video games like Mass Effect?
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I remember playing a game (I think it was on of the FEAR games) that had magazines littered all over the place as debris. Upon closer inspection, some of the magazines were titled "Crate Enthusiast". I thought that was funny...

AmberClad said:
Btw, no mention of barrels is complete with a mention of crates as well.
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Stone Cold said:
Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots. The Star Trek TV series had a practical reason to make multitudes of aliens that look like humans, they had to use human actors. What's the excuse for video games like Mass Effect?
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People feel more attachment to "human" shaped things! If it was a jelly blob or something without a face, you'd feel different emotions to it than if it was a face you could read the expressions of and better empathize with.

In the star trek universe I'm sure there was some kind of back story explanation at some point why everyone looked human shaped... Something to do with some ancient alien race spreading humanoids everywhere so all the humanoids evolved from a single starting point or something. :D
 
Stone Cold said:
Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots. The Star Trek TV series had a practical reason to make multitudes of aliens that look like humans, they had to use human actors. What's the excuse for video games like Mass Effect?
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Um...Most of the races in Mass Effect avoid the "Human with bumps" stereotype. At least it is nowehere near as bad as that one photo would imply.
 
Stone Cold said:
Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots. The Star Trek TV series had a practical reason to make multitudes of aliens that look like humans, they had to use human actors. What's the excuse for video games like Mass Effect?
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What about the Hanar?

Also, showing a picture where 3/5 are actually human doesn't help the point too much. But I do understand your point. A LOT of humanoid races in the galaxy apparently. :p
 
Firing part of a magazine, changing magazines and still my character has to cycle the action (you would not need to do this because there is still a round in the chamber)

Also, my gun always holds 30 rounds - never 30 rounds plus one in the chamber.

BF3 actually got these nearly right for the most part. I think you still cycle the USAS regardless but I can't remember.
 
Stone Cold said:
Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots. The Star Trek TV series had a practical reason to make multitudes of aliens that look like humans, they had to use human actors. What's the excuse for video games like Mass Effect?
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My dad has this complaint about Sci-fi in general. You would think there would be other non-humanoid races out there. In ME's defense though, there were the Rachni and the Elcor.
 
Skripka said:
Um...Most of the races in Mass Effect avoid the "Human with bumps" stereotype. At least it is nowehere near as bad as that one photo would imply.
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Actually I'd say the ratio of creative to not creative races in ME is probably well represented by that photo, despite containing a bunch of humans, as the Asari are just blue humans with bike helmet heads and apparently the Quarians are humans with lines on their necks.
 
DoubleTap said:
Firing part of a magazine, changing magazines and still my character has to cycle the action (you would not need to do this because there is still a round in the chamber)

Also, my gun always holds 30 rounds - never 30 rounds plus one in the chamber.

BF3 actually got these nearly right for the most part. I think you still cycle the USAS regardless but I can't remember.
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Also you change magazines like a gazzilion times. Say you have 45 rounds total ammo. Say 9 per magazine, so logically you have 5 magazines total or something. You reload by changing magazines after a gunfight with 3 left in. Or after firing 3 rounds or something.

But rarely when you get to the end of your 45 rounds and your 6th reload do you suddenly have magazines with 3 rounds in. Or lose total rounds when you dump half full clips (apart from in alien swarm) you just have an endless supply of magically refilled magazines! They must be able to predict the future or something! :D
 
AmberClad said:
Is this referring to the Icarus jump in DX:HR?
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And Matrix.
And Spiderman.
And Assassins Creed.
And Blade.
And even Dust 514 has a cutscene with it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfN3GsGl3zI&t=1m44s. I know it was cool when people first starting doing this (with obvious anime influences), but people have been putting this into movies since the first Matrix and it's been in so many damn games and movies to make me want to punch the creators in the crotch.

It's akin to the poseurs who blow something up while walking away from the explosion in slow motion to make it seem like they are too cool. Mainly in movies, but lots of games have these same "i'm too cool to care" bullshit moments in games. And I fucking hate them.

Will Ferrel did a parody song of the walking away from explosions shit we see in movies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqz5dbs5zmo
 
One that I would say is annoying but not super overused is the "get captured and lose all your stuff halfway through the game".
 
Stone Cold said:
Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots. The Star Trek TV series had a practical reason to make multitudes of aliens that look like humans, they had to use human actors. What's the excuse for video games like Mass Effect?
mass_effect2-300x225.jpg
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the worst offender of this recently, is SW:TOR. Star Wars is kinda built on humanoid aliens already, but TOR literally only has you playing human, red human with spiky head, blue human with tentacle hair, human with visor, etc - everyone use the exact same body models and facial animations - "no rodian bountyhunter, no ithorian jedi knight, no mon calamari trooper, etc for you!!!"
 
First store you find: only sells wood equipment.

Fallout 3 did a good job finding a more nuanced way to deal with this.
 
Boring sidequests..*cough* Mass Effect 1 *cough*.
 
I've been asked to go in and kill rats [in every RPG] for 20 years now - Brian fargo
 
MavericK96 said:
I guess I don't play very many JRPGs, heh. Mostly I was thinking of semi-recent FPS games.
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Yea even the original deus ex was guilty of it. Zelda twilight princes did it too just to piss you off.

For me new cliche is regerative health constantly through the whole game for no reason. No powered suits or armor but the character gets horibbly wounded if injured in the same manner during a cutscene. Cod Uncharted ect.
 
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Female NPCs with huge tits. Don't get me wrong; I like huge tits. But it can be pretty corny in some settings, like a warrior chick with barely any armor jumping around with tits bouncing about. Completely impractical and immersion-killing.
 
MavericK96 said:
One that I would say is annoying but not super overused is the "get captured and lose all your stuff halfway through the game".
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Ah indeed this is used often... and for some reason you always get all your stuff back

yourgrandma said:
Yea even the original deus ex was guilty of it. Zelda twilight princes did it too just to piss you off.

For me new cliche is regerative health constantly through the whole game for no reason. No powered suits or armor but the character gets horibbly wounded if injured in the same manner during a cutscene. Cod Uncharted ect.
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Yea I really missed managing my health in DX:HR. Now that i've finally beaten it though, I think it's time to do DX again!
 
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