Game cliches you hate

[zehydra]

"Self destruct" sequences where everything begins to explode around you, even though this was a pre-programmed self destruct function (e.g. that ship in the first Ratchet and Clank with the big red shiny button). I'm sorry, but surely a self destruct timer would be connected to a bomb that would go off once the timer had finished counting down, not several bombs blowing up the pipes and machinery of the ship as you walk through it.

Also, computers sparking or exploding when shot or punched, fuck that nonsense

Or in Goldeneye, when you set off the C4 in the Silo mission, you see explosions everywhere until you die.

Unless you have God Mode on, which allows you to keep playing the mission while you're constantly surrounded by endless explosions. (Turns out, that there are only explosions within a certain radius of the character, so you can proceed through the level accidentally killing guards that you haven't walked past yet).

 

[hoboman29]

Gray screen of "You are about to die!" what happened to health bars you know that green/red/whatever color that told you you are going to die with out making it impossible to see the 9999999999 bullets coming at you face

 

[Distant_Twilight]

To sum up every cliche [http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html] I dislike. It's terrible because I'm only good at RPGs.

 

[Cranyx]

"we're going into an uninhabited wasteland that no one has set foot in in years"

...

"Deploy the conveniently placed chest high walls!"

 

[Disgruntled_peasant]

"yeah we DO have a huge army ready to attack, but yknow what, why dont you go on ahead and do everything singlehandedly?"

Hell, i dont mind so much if theres a REASON why your character is some kind of one-man-army (unless its some stupid 'because you are awesome' thing like Halo) but half the time you play as some random guy who barely knows which end of a gun/sword to hold at the start of the game.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

my favourite pethate: UNDERWATER LEVELS

argh

 

[GeneralSeasick]

Telling us your game has autosave. Really? It's not that new...

 

[The Cheshire]

Unskipabble scenes. I remember in FFX there is a fight against Seymour in the mountains that was quite hard, and I had to see that video like 10 times. God I hate that character...

 

[TheEndlessSleep]

The British man is the bad guy...

 

[D-Pad]

In Fable your character can get ass-ugly if you screw him over / just suck, but it also provides a reason to want to improve. You don't want your character looking like a one-eyed troll, do you?

Also in terms of trekking across scenery, I've always been one for open and massive worlds, but walking across open land may lead people to complain in a similar way they did about the Sailing in the Wind Waker, which I personally enjoyed.

Some people like the exploration aspect of games (I went for the classic explorer achievement before WoW 4.0 when it was HARD because you couldn't fly everywhere), while some people like the gameplay part of the game (my IRL friend who did nothing but raid all day, as a contrast).

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Oh, just thought of a MAJOR one. Game titles with a colon and then a randomly chosen abstract noun, very often "Redemption" or "Requiem". This is not cool. It is sh-t. Total, unadulterated, lazy, boring, meaningless sh-t.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

This one is both a game and film cliché I detest. Whenever someone has to find the "5 Mystic Gems" or the "7 Legendary Amulets" to prevent the bad guy from doing so. All the hero needs to do in this situation is collect ONE of the set and destroy or hide where it can never be found. BAM, bad guy loses. There's never an explanation why the hero has to find the whole set.

Oh and the Evil Overlord who is pure, unadulterated evil. Evil doesn't work that way. People rarely believe what they're doing is wrong, it's because they believe they are serving their good interests, despite that they are selfish, immoral or socially unnacceptable that they are evil by our (or the hero's) standards. They should have a motive, a reason.

 

[Kapri]

The damsel in distress bit. Always annoying!

 

[SpecklePattern]

Well I have to say that the number #1 for cliches is random crashing. I mean c'mon, you could make a game actually work!

But seriously, for content, I would say, as I play tons of fps games, the good old russia vs. usa conflicts. Getting laaame.

 

[Pyramid Head]

One thing i really hate are shoehorned in moral choice systems. Sometimes they work but most of the time they don't. Yahtzee said it best in his inFamous 2 review about how a real moral choice system would be the choice between the difficult but morally acceptable option or the convenient but risky option, and most games don't really reflect that and waste time with the good/evil thing. Fable games in particular are guilty of moral choices that make no fucking sense.

But the biggest thing that pisses me off is Final Fantasy style deals with long, boring character conversations, cutscenes that seem to run on for hours, and ultimately taking every possible step you can think of to prevent immersion. It isn't impossible for a JRPG to have some intrigue. You can approach it with a sense of humor, change up the gameplay, use the Mass Effect codex system responsibly, or at least make it possible to control how the character responds beyond a simple yay or nay that generally has no effect on story progression anyway. But for years Final Fantasy has done everything wrong, but for some remarkably stupid reason Square Enix is considered the authority on the genre despite the fact that better titles were being made in smaller companies.

 

[blaize2010]

hm. everyone needs to be a double crossing arsehole, just because you're in the military means you're a meathead, the dude weilding the sword has to be the finesse less tank, the criminal always has to redeem himself, and GOING TO SAVE YOUR DAUGHTER. though that last one might just be a tough guy cliche in general. oh, and for some reason, when fighting demons, swords are more effective than axes, pistols, rifles, knives, tonfa, spears, magic, grenades, rockets, and i assume ICBMs.

 

[Devin Parker]

Sexist character designs. Is it okay if the women in the game I'm playing are actually treated like human beings instead of fetish models? Visible cleavage and battle bikinis are not acceptable replacements for personality and character development, and characters who are otherwise really cool get ruined by being dressed like wank-off fantasies. Frankly, I just feel like you're trying to pander to me, which is doubly insulting since you seem to think I'm a horny douchebag.

I've finally got around to playing Dragon Age: Origins, and I'm finding Morrigan to be an interesting character...which is why it's unfortunate that her introduction may as well be "Greetings, welcome to the forest, have you met MY BOOBS?" Also, my wife would really appreciate it if her WoW character could put on a pair of armored pants without them magically transforming into lingerie.

Also on the list:

Embarking on a major quest in which time is of the essence! It's a race against time! Every second we wait is a second closer to the completion of the Dark Lord's plan! ...Oh, by the way, while we're in town, here's a laundry list of petty errands that the villagers want you to do for them. No rush. I like side-quests, but if I'm supposed to be engaged in a Time Is Of The Essence sort of megaquest, I feel guilty for every stupid penny-ante distraction I indulge in. But if I don't do those quests, I'm missing half the game.

Dialogue trees that offer "good", "neutral" and "evil" responses, except in place of evil they insert "ridiculously rude." Evil does not necessarily mean jerkass.

Turn-based combat in the style of JRPGs. Granted, this is a mechanics thing, so it might be some people's favorite aspect of these games, but it's the #1 thing that keeps me from getting into JRPGs. I hate the whole "I step forward and slash, then step back. Now Monster #1 steps forward and he claws. Then he steps back. Next goes Molly..." It's so forced and artificial, taking all of the worst aspects of tabletop RPG combat and ignoring the fact that computers can handle all of that mechanical stuff quickly and cleanly behind the scenes. The way the old Baldur's Gate games, etc., worked - using the pause button and assigning tasks by character - seems a far better solution to me.

 

[Zeitgeist1983]

But wait! You mean the people I've been fighting all this time have only been minor antagonists, and the real bad guy is my boss/mentor/father figure who has just been using me to do his dirty work? THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!

-_-

In my opinion, the only game that did this right was

Spoiler

Jade Empire.

I really didn't see it coming.

Same here.

I guess the game cliché I hate the most is "combat gaming" in general.

 

[angrykirby]

character has to slowdown or stop moving so someone can talk to them over a headset,
or
watch a cut scene. I never want to watch a cut-scene, I want to play a game, not watch a movie, it's like if in the middle of a movie they pointed the camera at a page of a book for 3 minutes so you could read it.

dieing, i like the threat of dieing or losing, actually dieing is angering and then I have to wait through a load time

mini-games that you have to beat to continue but they are super hard

escort fucking missions, especially ones where your dumb partner runs in front of your gunfire and get themselves killed

getting lost, I hate when I don't know where to go, it stops all the fun for me

room after room of generic bad guys

fetch quests that are clearly there to pad out the end of the game, like metroid prime and bioshock

when you have to search for a key for a flimsy wooden door that you could easily kick down

when my 360 3 red lights, 6/7 I've bought are broken right now

when you cant continue until you beat one dumb objective, like do this grind in a skate game or else youll get no more things to do

not being able to reassign the buttons

when the main character says the same thing over and over and over, same with people your escorting

annoying noises when your low on health, I FUCKING KNOW

the bad guys, are all mean horrible thugs who insult you, maybe they arnt and there can be some moral grey area huh?

no offline multiplayer in racing games? when there is online multiplayer, what the fuck I rally cant play a racing game offline with my friends?

terrible, terrible writing/dialog

having to run across a really long distance to get to my next location and theres nothing to do on the way, like assassins creed and fallout

when I have to drop a weapon, so i can pick up ammo for another weapon, then load my gun and pick up my old weapon again

when you cant do something that you would do in real life, like unscrew lightbulbs in splinter cell

whenever it's not obvious what to do. STAB THE GAURD. how? I've tried all the bottons but he's just dancing around like a tard

sequals that are the same game but shittier like bioshock 2

I'm also sick of first and third person shooters, let me do other things, let me throw people or something, or throw snakes

enemies that hide behind cover, its not fun to shoot at a pillar until one pixel of a guy sticks out and i shoot it, have him run at me or something

people who are super serious about call of duty, why cant we just run around shooting each other, its a game it should be fun, stop cheating and hiding

not being able to save at anytime, enough of that shit already

when you shoot someone a million times with a shotgun and then they get up again

 

[Aisaku]

I'm getting really sick of the "this is the character who will only live as long as the tutorial" shtick. It's so predictable. More often than not, when I start up a game with any kind of coherent story arc, I'm able to go, "Well, this guy talking to me will be dead in five minutes. Not forming any attachment to him."

Those characters who stick around just long enough to die are becoming a real pain in the arse.

This has happened in every BioWare game ever made, no exception. It gets incredibly annoying and predictable.

Have u played KOTOR?

I have, and this happens, to the letter.