What is the dumbest most overused video game cliche?

Another one I can think of is the ever-popular, "Get 5 meters from your objective only to have a floor drop out and fall down into some pit where it takes you an additional 2 hours to get back to where you were before". That one doesn't annoy me as much as the "lose your stuff" one but it's still kind of overused.
 
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
Click to expand...

DeathPrincess said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

Well put. Aside from the Asari they really do. And the Asari are clearly designed with sex appeal in mind. Again this means making them close to humans while still being exotic. It's exactly like Orion slave girls and Twi-Leks.
 
Many of these aren't cliches as much as standard plot elements in every book, movie, and video game.

At the end of the day you have to string a narrative along somehow. There are next to no original ideas in gaming, it has almost all been done before. The only question is how effectively you as a dev distract the audience from familiar ideas.

Remove the Portal gun from the Portal games and what do you have? A 3-dimensional Chips Challenge.

There's always a bad guy that needs his head popped, there's usually an at least slightly distopian setting, there's usually a world or universe that needs saving....and it needs saving because someone somehow somewhere sometime woke something up. Is all of this cliche? They're certainly standard plot elements.
 
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".
Click to expand...
Another cliche that DX:HR is guilty of violating. It was for a good cause though (a decently meaty, stealth-focused DLC).
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Level scaling and "chosen one" storylines.
Click to expand...

Definitely spot on the chosen one crap. Sorry, not all of us adults with working genitalia feel compelled to live out some 12 year old comic readers fantasy. That's what I loved about SWG and hated about the "heroic" TOR: I could be whoever the fuck I wanted to be, I didn't need to be Han Solo, I wanted to be Buxaroo, your friendly Starship engineer who moonlights as a bounty hunter by killing the self important Jedi limp dicks occasionally.
 
chockomonkey said:
Ah indeed this is used often... and for some reason you always get all your stuff back
Click to expand...

For some reason? It's in the chest at the end of of the dungeon, last room before the exit.

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
Click to expand...

I used to tease my wife (used to be a Trekkie) about that. This isn't necessarily a cliché but something I find odd about the alien races in ME is their universally perfect diction. In dialogue sequences with, say, Garrus I'll be looking at his mouth and wondering how he's making labial and percussive consonant sounds. Well maybe not all races, Quarians sound slavic, Vorcha sound .... reptilian? Keepers don't vocalize and Rachni use other species to talk but everyone else pretty much nails it.

LeninGHOLA said:
Level scaling and "chosen one" storylines.
Click to expand...

This bugs me in games and books, saving America/the world/humanity/all organic life in the galaxy has become rather passé.
 
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.
Click to expand...
I hate that aswell. 99% of shooters that use modern guns get this simple logic wrong. I have no idea why.
I think the only game that got it mostly right was BF2.

(With a 30 round mag)
You pop off 2 rounds and reload = you still have 1 chambered round and now a full mag (31 rounds)
You then unload all rounds, reload and cycle/rack = you now have 1 chambered and 29 rounds in the mag (30 rounds)

Also I think BF2 counted the mags as mags and didn't count individual bullets. Like say you had a full 30rnd mag, shot 8 rounds and then reloaded. The remaining 22rounds in that mag were no gone. They werent magically recycled into new magazines.
 
DeathPrincess said:
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
Click to expand...

I did think of this but I didn't mention it because fixing it is annoying: BF2142 actually worked that way - you had 3 full mags and when you reloaded, you lost your partial mag.

It's realistic to an extent, except that you wouldn't really discard a half full mag. If you're going to model that sort of thing, you need to let me at least consolidate ammo/mags if I can find a secure location.

But it's certainly a common trope...
 
DeathPrincess said:
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
Click to expand...
Star Trek The Next Generation had an episode where all of the humanoid races were in a race to collect samples of all of the humanoid races for non functioning DNA segments that when combined had a holographic message of the protohumanoid race. The protohumanoids spread their dna throughout the universe and all of the humanoids evolved from it. The only non humanoid aliens I remember in Star Trek were the Insectoid race, the Q, and some inorganic metal sphere type race
 
Finding a pass key or whatever in order to access a door/room. This has been in every game since the original Doom.
 
Crates. Everywhere you go there are crates. Seriously, who orders this much stuff and never unpacks any of it?
 
DeathPrincess said:
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
Click to expand...

In the original Star Trek series, many episodes were about contact the Enterprise had with human colonies. In some episodes, very non-human aliens chose to take human form to interact with the Enterprise crew. In The Next Generation series, they introduced the idea of a common designer, an alien race that seeded various planets, including Earth, with DNA. But, in reality, aliens look like humans because humans play actors play them.

The public accepts human-like aliens, so game designers don't have much incentive to be creative with aliens. In the Mass Effect series, the nearly two-dozen aliens that can accompany the player are functionally 100% the same as a human character. That strikes me as just plain lazy. Compare to Starcraft which actually made the aliens to be somewhat different than the humans.
 
The disembodied "Good job, now do this. Okay, now this" voice guiding you via your radio earpiece is starting to get on my nerves after all these years. It's okay when they subvert the cliche like in System Shock 2/Bioshock or Doom 3, but everywhere else it's just annoying.
 
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
Click to expand...

I can't believe I'm going to Trek-out here, but:

They actually explained that in an episode of TNG. The Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons, Humans, and whoever else was involved were going after some artifact or whatever warp-capable species are interested in. A hologram or something of a weird alien explained that life in our galaxy evolved from them, and that all the humanoid races were related due to that. It has been a long time since I've seen the episode, obviously.

And yes, they had human actors. That might also be a limiting factor.

edit: well, shit, MarylandMan explained it far better with larger words on the previous page.
 
Stone Cold said:
Aliens that look like humans with bumps and spots.
Click to expand...
I had my own answer to this thread, but I like yours better!

Video games do not have the limitations of film. Given the diversity we see in life on just our own planet (and how few species look like us, even with a common ancestor), the chances of running into a sapient being that looks even remotely like humans is pretty small.
 
Ron FTL said:
I hate that aswell. 99% of shooters that use modern guns get this simple logic wrong. I have no idea why.
I think the only game that got it mostly right was BF2.

(With a 30 round mag)
You pop off 2 rounds and reload = you still have 1 chambered round and now a full mag (31 rounds)
You then unload all rounds, reload and cycle/rack = you now have 1 chambered and 29 rounds in the mag (30 rounds)

Also I think BF2 counted the mags as mags and didn't count individual bullets. Like say you had a full 30rnd mag, shot 8 rounds and then reloaded. The remaining 22rounds in that mag were no gone. They werent magically recycled into new magazines.
Click to expand...

Plenty of games get it right. RO1/2, Insurgency, Raven Shield, ect.

Though most mainstream games don't.
 
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
Click to expand...

Mass Effect does have the Elcor and Hanar. Would have been nice to see them as squad members. The Elcor would easily serve as a mobile heavy-weapons platform, if nothing else.
 
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
Click to expand...

3 words

Hanar Elcor Volus
 
Party size limits.

You've got like a dozen people sitting in a base/on a ship/back at camp/at the inn/etc. that are willing to join you to rid the world of evil, but you can only take 1-4 of them with you at a time. What the fuck is that about? Is the main character just that crappy a manager that he can't handle more than a few people at once? Well, then maybe he shouldn't be the leader guy any more. Or hell, send another squad off in another direction. There's no good reason for all of these people to just be sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
 
- Valuable goods/gold/food laying around for anyone to find (and by laying around--it's in a barrel or box.)

- Umber Hulks - Ok, not really cliche and it's been awhile since I've seen one (or a kobold for that matter) but they can all DIAF. I got pretty burned out on all the stereotypical D&D monsters over the years and it was refreshing to see them go.

- Random encounters. Thank god those are gone from most RPGs.

Parja said:
Party size limits.

You've got like a dozen people sitting in a base/on a ship/back at camp/at the inn/etc. that are willing to join you to rid the world of evil, but you can only take 1-4 of them with you at a time. What the fuck is that about? Is the main character just that crappy a manager that he can't handle more than a few people at once? Well, then maybe he shouldn't be the leader guy any more. Or hell, send another squad off in another direction. There's no good reason for all of these people to just be sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
Click to expand...

That's the point when you put the RPG down and go play a RTS.
 
I really dislike the oversized cartoony armor & weapons like what you see in WoW, Kingdoms of Amalur, etc. I realize it tends to go with the cartoony art style in general, but it's annoying.
 
djsb said:
The disembodied "Good job, now do this. Okay, now this" voice guiding you via your radio earpiece is starting to get on my nerves after all these years. It's okay when they subvert the cliche like in System Shock 2/Bioshock or Doom 3, but everywhere else it's just annoying.
Click to expand...

Oh gawd yes. I was going to mention this as well. I mean literally every single FPS game has it. There is always some old mentor/flirtatious girl/nerd on a personal frequency always giving you heads up. There has to be a better way around for the direction of a game than the voice comms from some prick setting in an office somewhere yanking his doddle while you do all of the work. Half Life 2 got it right in that regard. And STALKER as well, although occasionally you get the intermittent blabber from some announcer over the radio to "take cover, an emission is coming!". But that's ok, he's not giving you a fucking step by step process of finding cover, it's just "get your ass safe you retards!" kind of advice. I can handle that :D
 
DeathPrincess said:
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?!
Click to expand...

I like to think that the real-life world was once covered with floaty coins and things, but they were all snatched out of the air by prehistoric Marios. I always wanted to visit a place nobody has ever been and find lots of those coins. With my luck, though, it would instead be more like Civilization and I'd discover a barbarian camp instead.
 
PTSMC said:
I like to think that the real-life world was once covered with floaty coins and things, but they were all snatched out of the air by prehistoric Marios. I always wanted to visit a place nobody has ever been and find lots of those coins. With my luck, though, it would instead be more like Civilization and I'd discover a barbarian camp instead.
Click to expand...

This is just awesome. Oh to live in a world with coins floating everywhere to be picked up!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top