Top Ten Game Cliches

1up.com has a piece examining game cliches that are just done. Really. From the article: "2.) Pushing crates. Note to evil masterminds everywhere: We understand that you're trying to run a business, which involves receiving equipment and food somehow. But leaving those giant crates just lying around your warehouse for any one-man army to use for supplies and climbing? It's no wonder most startup criminal organizations fail within the first five years. Even seen in: God of War (PS2) 4.) Ridiculous portrayals of females. Women have breasts. Get over it. Even seen in: Soul Calibur II (PS2/XB/GC)"

Comments

What a terrible article.

[Evro]

"Unnecessary stealth"? If you don't like stealth then you might list it as an annoyance, but it's not a cliche. That's like saying running is a cliche. And the "hero's town gets destroyed" isn't a game cliche, it's just a frequently-used plot device. For there to be drama, there needs to be conflict. In RPGs in which this conflict is between good and evil, what better way to reflect that than the villain destroying the hero's family and friends?

You know what's the #1 cliche for video game websites? Lists.

Why do I get the feeling Slashdot's main business now is funneling traffic to 5-10 sites, including that Roland guy, 1up.com, and John C. Dvorak?

Clcihes can be good

[Shadow Wrought]

The biggest cliche, and the one not mentioned, is that health, ammo, and everything else you need are all strewn about waiting for you to pick them up. I can't think of a FPS, or RPG I've played where that has not been the case. So long as a part of gaming requires you to obtain food, then crates will be there to ensure that you have to actually go to the trouble of opening them to get the goodies. Would they be happier with boxes?

As for the exploding fuel cans, 55 gallon drums which splode are just too cool knock;-)

Re:Clcihes can be good

[Aero]

Favorite bit of dialog from The Lost Vikings (character attributions may be wrong -- it's been a while since I played it):

Olaf: If Tomator is such a bad guy, then how come he left all these tools and weapons lying around for us to use?

Erik: Just don't think about it.

Prince of Persia: WW

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

I think it was pretty unfair to use this game as an example of unneccessary bullet time usage. The game is about time travel. Plus, the creators were very inventive with the concept - you have sand tanks that, when broken, reverse time temporarily. Considering much of the game consists of hard combinations of "run on wall, jump to pole, swing off pole, duck under spikes, roll to edge, jump to cloth, leap across doorway", it was a needed feature to not have every misstep result in "game over" and start and the beginning of the level again.

Re:Prince of Persia: WW

[Phisbut]

besides that bloody invisible wall... how did that make it past QA?

I worked in QA at Ubisoft Montreal (not on the PoP project, but I personally know QA people that were on that project), and I know how it happens over there...

Chances are QA saw that invisible walll, and reported it as a bug. However, the developers (or their managers) just don't care. In many Ubisoft games (and I can guess the same happens for EA and others), most of the bugs that are complained about in forums and reviews are "known issues", because QA did find them and reported them. Problem is, fixing those bugs might require delaying the release of the game, and that's something managers don't tend to like.

Part of why I left the gaming industry...

Cliche #11

[LoverOfJoy]

Disappearing platforms. You have to jump quick or it'll disappear or drop. Wait a few seconds and it reappears. Somewhere in SuperMario Heaven SuperMario God is chuckling.

Items.

[MrCopilot]

In development of a game now. Strategy FPS sort of. We specifically outlawed these Game Cliches:

#1 Weapons are not just hovering about. Easy fix, poulate the world with places that would ordinarily have guns & ammo.

#2 Coins/Health. All items have to be in context. Dead Enemies exploding into coins & health is bullshit we all know it. Sure, dead guy might have a few bucks, but they don't just fall out of his pocket.

#3 Why can't I see my feet, Damn it. Still working this one out. I do know some of the reasons now.

#4 Killing everything is not the way to win. Single player against 2000 enemies is fine, but as an objective, kill all 2000 sucks. Objectives need to be difficult without shooting anything. Enemies should impede your progress not be your progress.

#5 Realism. Why go through all the trouble to make it all look so real and then break the realism with bullshit short cuts.

Ship Date. When its done. I'll be sure to let you know. Linux & Windows.

Now I've made a list. Look Ma I'm a journalist too.

Re:Items.

[cthulhubob]

#3 Why can't I see my feet, Damn it. Still working this one out. I do know some of the reasons now.

Been there, done that.

My solution was to make a separate class of object called "camera" which can be attached to any mesh, has attributes of a quaternion that's the angle it's pointing at, a quaternion "fixed point angle" and quaternion "fixed point distance" that hold the position from the center of the mesh that it attaches to, and a GL viewport number (in case you're using multiple viewports for some reason, like split-screen multiplayer).

Then you float the camera .0001 GL units in front of the eyes of the character model (how big a unit is depends on what scale you're drawing your game to, of course) and attach your GL viewport to that camera.

Relatively simple, if you're already doing 3d engine stuff. :P

Re:Why women only?

[elrous0]

There are all kinds of male stereotypes in games: Small fat ones, tall thin ones, big fat ones, ugly ones...

Yeah, because there are a plethora of fat, balding superhero game characters out there. I can think of at least none just off the top of my head.

-Eric

Collecting?

[kabir]

So the article talks about collecting things as an overdone cliche, but while I'll admit it's done all over the place I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of people really like collecting things. I've heard all kinds of theories about why this is (some researches think it's because we used to be hunter-gatherer types, though I'm not sure if I buy that reasoning) but ultimately the why doesn't matter. Lots and lots of people like collecting things. Based on that I'm not sure that the collecting is overdone at all.

Re:Three words

[wowbagger]

Here's another three words that I think would make a good game mod:

Little Red Wagon.

Think about it - as part of your wanderings, you find a little red wagon, where you pile most of your stuff. As you need it, you need to go to the LRW and get it. Thus, you have to be a bit more picky in what you are carrying, since you can only carry a few items and the rest are on the LRW.

Also, when you go squeeze through the ventilation system, you have to leave your LRW behind - so choose your gear and choose wisely.

You could also do fun things like:

• Put the LRW in an (currently non-working) elevator, the wend your way through the ventilation system to the elevator control system, fix it, and summon your gear.
  
• Have a squeaky wheel, and have to find the WD-40 to quiet it down (else attract all the monsters around as you move).
  
• Ride it, toboggan-style, down an incline.
  
• Put an auto-sentry type gun on it, arm the sentry, and push it down an incline into a room full of bad guys.
  
• Capture the LRW. 'Nuff said.
  

You also get into the situation where you might have to drop different items at different points down the hall, to battle a Big Bad Guy on the other side of a door: "OK, drop some chain gun ammo here, some more a few feet further down, a rocket here, another here. Some plasma ammo here. OK, here at the door, I'll ready a proxy mine, open the door, step back, and start wailing on the bad guy!"

Just think of how much fun it would be to see a Manly-Man hero (Duke, Sam, Gordon, or Sarge) pulling this child's wagon behind him!