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Games Entertainment

Top Ten Game Cliches 194

Posted by Zonk from the stuff-we've-seen-before dept.
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)"
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Top Ten Game Cliches

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  • Exploding barrels is my fav (Score:3, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:22AM (#13240876)

    I remember when I got the Barrel Launcher mod for Doom II...I laughed myself sick. ^_^

  • Top Ten Gaming Website Cliches (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aix ( 218662 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:24AM (#13240910) Homepage
    And the winner is... "Making Top Ten Lists of Game Cliches"!

  • Why women only? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Linus Torvaalds ( 876626 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:28AM (#13240967)

    Ridiculous portrayals of females. Women have breasts. Get over it.

    Yeah, because game portrayals of male characters are so lifelike. It's not like their biceps are bigger than all of me curled up in a ball, with veins as thick as my fingers.

    Game characters are caricatures. It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes.

    • The day they get rid of Cliche' #4 will be a sad day for gaming indeed. Actually, I'm surprised all the G4-crowd isn't saying "but Morgan Webb looks like that, and *she* is lifelike"...
    • Yeah, because game portrayals of male characters are so lifelike.

      You're right-- that is a big game cliche, and the author should have listed it.

      It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes.

      You're not seriously implying that women are attracted to those steroid-enhanced superdudes, are you? It's not the same at all.

      Look, here's how it works:

      Big Muscle Male Heros: Attract an immature male audience.

      Big boobs: Attract an immature male audience.
      • Yes, in fact, women ARE attracted to guys with muscles [google.com]. A more legitimate complaint might be that, currently, many fewer women play games than men, and so most game content is likely geared towards men and not women. But let's not unecessarily stereotype women while we're at it.
        • You just helped to prove my point. Sure, he's fit & all, but his muscles don't exactly look like the musclebound Duke Nukem cliche.

          Show a woman a picture of Arnold Schwartzenneger when he was all pumped up on steroids in a Bodybuilding Contest-- strange bumps pumping out everywhere, big huge veins, etc. Most woman don't find that attractive-- a small percentage do find that attactive. Few would be attracted to a game because of it.

    • It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes.

      Actually, the differing charicatures of women and men - men's physique and strength and women's appearance - is itself sexist.

    • Games are for fun and entertainment.

      So, then, the look of characters are designed around entertainment. It may or may not be sexist--but that is part of the fun. We aren't allowed to blow up buildings in the real world. Video games are part of doing what you can't do -- excapism. So, if large breasts weren't a part of the mix or accurate physics on the jiggly bits incoporated into Beach Volleyball Extreme-- I would be suprised.

  • What a terrible article. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Evro ( 18923 )
    "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? Li
    • Well slashdot is a portal site, don't expect original content. It's an easy way for lazy people like me to get news without visiting a billion different sites, and then theres the comment system so I can read the trolls afterwards.

    • Re:What a terrible article. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @12:26PM (#13241801)
      And the "hero's town gets destroyed" isn't a game cliche, it's just a frequently-used plot device.

      Er, that's the definition of a cliche. It's overused.

    • 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 murdering the hero's family and friends which earns you enough xp to level up and then selling their personalobjects to a local NPC vendor and have exactly enough money to purchase that new vorpal +1 sword.
    • 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?

      Slashdot f**ing sucks nowadays. I'm gradually drifting towards sites like Kuro5hin and Ars Technica, but I'd like to see some even better alternatives than these.

  • Wasn't there a website called pushing crates at one point? My friends first opengl programming gaem was a pushing crates game with an ascii file map format, good stuff!

    Other gaming cliches of the 00's should be 'Naked Patches!'.

    Quite a few games have that 'puzzle' section that annoyed people, sometimes on the amiga this formed part of the copy protection, which I liked!

    The problem with a lot of the 'cliches' is they are just game elements... collecting things - that is a core game element - and bullet time,

  • Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Surye ( 580125 ) <surye80@NOsPaM.gmail.com> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:34AM (#13241045) Homepage
    #5 Unnecessary stealth

    If you want to make a stealth game, then make a stealth game. Don't give us guns and bombs and swords and fast cars and explosions and then tell us to be quiet, just for a bit! If we want to sneak around, then we'll play a game that's designed for doing just that. In your game, we shall blow stuff up.

    I call BS. First, this kind of narrowminded view of game making is why the industry is so piss poor right now. Variety in gameplay is good thing. Second, even if this was a bad idea, it's a recent trend, not a cliche. Exploding barrels, that's a cliche, or predictible boss fights. I liked a lot of those points, but #5 just didn't check out.
    • Cross-genre games can be fun, but it's also good to give the player choice in games.

      Some people don't like RPGs, so it may frustrate those people when, 70% through a single-player FPS game, they have to stop and spend an excessive amount of time leveling up their character. Same for stealth games, there's probably a contingent of people who just find them irksome, and would rather avoid those games, even if they're only 20% of an otherwise excellent game.

      • Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by skadus ( 821655 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @12:37PM (#13241973) Homepage Journal
        I was about to say the same thing when I saw your comment.

        Really, the best of both worlds is to offer a way to pick the best option that works for you, and offer rewards or challenges based on which scenario you pick. I think Fallout does this a lot. Want to try your hand at stealth? Great, you get 200 more rupees at the end. Feel more hack and slashy? Okay, but you have to fight an extra-hard guy at the end.

        I'm all for adding 'variety' to games, but when you throw a major genre-curveball, it's nicest to make the scene optional, like the fetch quests in Zelda that require split-second timing just to wind up with the best sword in the game or an extra heart container. It's fun when you finally accomplish the goals in these through determination. It's frustrating as hell when it's required and doesn't seem to do anything gameplay or plot-wise besides show that the developer is a sadistic bastard.

        I suck at stealth, I hate having to use stealth, and I especially hate it when the mission resets because somebody saw me out of the corner of their eye. When the guy is alerted, let me go on my murderous rampage and move on, m'kay?
    • It was number 8, dude. 5 was collecting.

      Second off, the problem isn't so much that the stealth is unnecessary, but that it's poorly-executed. Play Wind Waker sometime and you'll see what I mean. Trying to put variety in your gameplay is good, but putting something that your engine is not really designed for in there is not.

      • Haha, oops, I don't know how I messed that up. =P

        And I HAVE played Wind Waker. And the stealth accounts for what? Maybe 3 minutes of game play? 5 if you really suck?
        • Some of us suck even worse than that.

          Some of these puzzles and missions may be simple for people who have previously played similar games, but frustratingly difficult for those who don't know the tricks and strategies.

    • Have you never played on of those games that tries to do it all? I think this, more so than just the stealth in a non-stealth game, is what the author of the article is getting at.

      IE, driving missions in a third person action game (Enter the Matrix).

      Stealth, in a hack and slash action adventure (Wind Waker).

      Platforming, in a First Person Shooter (Turok).

      Some games manage to pull it off better than others. Metroid Prime's platforming was pretty good, as was Half Life's. But it's a very risky propo

    • The problem with this is that usually the game is designed solely around the action (swords, fast cars, explosions, etc etc.) so that when they *DO* decide to add alternate gameplay types, they aren't planned/designed well because it was a late addition or they simply weren't as interested in adding it.

      It's like wishing Pac-Man had a sex mini-game. No. When I sit down to play Pac-Man, I wanna play Pac-Man dammit.

  • Clcihes can be good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .thguorw.wodahs.> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:34AM (#13241055) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Aero ( 98829 )

      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.

    • Re:Clcihes can be good (Score:4, Insightful)

      by snorklewacker ( 836663 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @03:46PM (#13244308)

      Related to equipment, they missed my favorite cliche: "The Free Market". The world faces dire peril, you're the hero that vanquishes evil and dispatches minions by the score. The last hope for the world rests on your shoulders... yet that won't even score you a discount at the equipment retailers.

      There have been better-done lists of cliches, with color commentary that was actually, well, interesting. Might have been on OldManMurray. And yes, he covered crates.

    • Re:Clcihes can be good (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jazu ( 215175 )
      In Goldeneye, you can't recover health during a level, and most of your ammo is picked up by enemies.
    • I've always thought that games with random drops are cliche. For instance, in Guild Wars, a game I have been playing recently I have noticed this. Why was that Charr Blade Warrior carrying a magical Fire Staff? It's not like that charr was going to be doing anything with it.

      The other end of the spectrum is Chrome, a lesser known FPS. In Chrome, dead bodies would have all of the weapons, ammo, and health packs that one would expect to find on them. This can get really wierd as the only way to get the be
    • The first half or so of Half-Life made a pretty concerted attempt to make the health/ammo/weapon drops believable (although you had to wonder why so many of the scientists were keeping shotgun shells in their desks).

  • What about ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hanji ( 626246 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:37AM (#13241099)
    Jumping Puzzles.

    Now, I'll admit that the last console I owned was the N64, so I'm behind the times, but back when I played video games regularly, there was little that pissed me off more than extended jumping puzzles, where you had to leap between 10 platforms in a row flawlessly, restarting if you failed.

    Have they wised up yet, or did these guys just miss it?
    • Jumping puzzles are especially fun when coupled with cliche # 4.
    • They're still around. I'm not a big console gamer, but the most recent example I saw was when my fiancee was playing some Harry Potter game on the PS2 last year. It was, of course, needlessly frustrating due to the required flawlessness.
    • Oh, they're still around. I stopped playing Half-Life 2 because I got sick of all the jumping. They're not the hard, moving-platforms jumping puzzles, but they're annoying nonetheless.

      Then I started playing Deus Ex again, which also has crates and several different kinds of exploding barrels, but at least the crate-stacking and jumping bits are optional. Deus Ex really needs a proper sequel.


    • *Shakes his fist at Turok* FPS games and jumping puzzles are a recipe for smashed TVs , I love jumping puzzles in games where a jumping puzzle actually makes sense given the game dynamic (mario) but otherwise they are just annoying.

      The most annoying cliché i can think of is protect missions , I think I've lost more hair due to to team mates and hostages running in front of rockets than i have due to hair dressers

    • Ahhh, I was looking for that one too. Right up there with "The Maze" (though I guess this might fall under "puzzles").

      Nothing like having all gameplay come to a halt as you go fetch some graph paper and a pen to start mapping out some maze...
      • Mapping the maze is part of the gameplay.

        At least, it used to be. What current games require leet graph map making skillz?

        Good ol' Bard's Tale. You are facing 99 barbarians, 99 barbarians, 99 barbarians, and 99 barbarians. Unleash the fire horn, or perhaps the fire horn, or maybe the wind dragon.
        • Current games? Dunno, probably none really. Been a while since I've gamed. :-)

          I just remember Zak McKracken. Great game. Wonderful puzzles, and funny as hell. If it weren't for the friggin' mazes... And those mazes weren't even logical so they couldn't be mapped! You had to guess! Grr.. Still bitter.
          • I think the mazes in Zak, while not horribly "logical", maintained the sequence of rooms you'd entered and which exits lead to which new room. I base this on the dark maze, where you could find torches and light them, letting you note which rooms you'd been in before and making it easier to wander through the maze.
    • Now, I'll admit that the last console I owned was the N64, so I'm behind the times,

      Compared to me, you're on the bleeding edge. My last console was a Magnavox Odyssey 2 [corestack.com]. No, I'm not kidding.

  • Prince of Persia: WW (Score:3, Interesting)

    by th0mas.sixbit.org ( 780570 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:50AM (#13241281)
    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.
    • I thought that at first too, but I think what they were refering to was the bullet time effect when you killed an enemy with a combo of some sort. It'll slow down and switch camera angles so you can watch an enemies head go flying off or some such. It was cool the first few times, but it got annoying fast, you'd be fighting several enemies, kill one and it would go into bullet time, which would throw your rythm off for dealing with the next one.
      I didn't look too hard for one, but I didn't see a way to tu
    • Hear hear! They also get a medal for best in game rationalization for extra lives. The game starts out as a story being told; when you die the narrator says "No no no.. that's not what happened."

      System Shock 2 had resurrection chambers. A really lame concept (on par with Star Trek physics), but at least they tried.

      The biggest cliche is extra lives.
    • 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 t

  • Cliche #11 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LoverOfJoy ( 820058 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @11:51AM (#13241312) Homepage
    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.
    • In Double Dragon 2 there is an entire level consisting of that crap and it is about the only place I ever lose a man. Stupid crappy jumping and dissappearing platforms.
  • I know they flagged Metroid Prime 2 on this, but they seem to forget that is how boss fights work in the series. Look at the 2D Metroid games. Same way. It's not cliche when it's the way boss fights have worked in every single Metroid game to date.

    If they want non-cliche boss fights, they can take the Cyberdemon and Spider Mind from Doom 1. No weak points, just need to lay the smack down on them for a while. Oh and lets not forget the insane amount of dodging you have to do from a fast rocket launcher
    • That's not how it was in Super Metroid, IIRC. The Torizo statues were just shoot wildly until dead, Ridley was just shoot wildly until dead, the Mother Brain was just shoot wildly until dead. Kraid had to be hit in the unhighlighted mouth and there was that other one that needed to be pushed back far enough, but those were the exceptions rather than the rule, from what I can remember. Mother Brain was the only multiform boss. Compare the rock monster, fish-dragonfly thing, Metroid Prime, Emperor Ing, Careta

  • Items. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrCopilot ( 871878 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @12:14PM (#13241650) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • 1) Many games already do that. The guns just sit on the floor when dropped by an enemy or on a pedestal of sorts.

      2) Agreed.

      3) Check out Thief3:Deadly Shadows. I was really happy to finally see my body when I looked down. With today's graphic qualities, there's no need to have higher and lower detail models for stuff you see all the time (guns, your body) and enemy models and weapons.

      4) Depends on the type of game.

      5) It's just a step in that direction. Surely I love games that don't look realistic, but if pe

    • Re:Items. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cthulhubob ( 161144 )
      #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 reaso
      • I should have clarified something:

        If you're clipping the viewport through the head or torso of the character model when you rotate it, you need to lean the torso forward or back some with the angle the character's looking at.

        It's more realistic to do so anyway. When you want to look straight down in real life, you don't just turn 90 degrees at your neck; 1) it's physically impossible, and 2) attempting to do so hurts :P

        You have to lean the model's torso and head out slightly to compensate for the size of th
    • #0: BOSS FIGHTS

      Stupid, stupid cliché that has been done to death now.

  • Boss fights (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @01:09PM (#13242409) Homepage
    Bosses with obvious weak points and patterns are not avoidable in a practical game- they are essential to keeping the game fun (for most people). A boss with no obvious weak points or any way for the player to anticipate its actions- and figure out how to defeat it- is just frustrating.

  • How about "Encumbrance doesn't matter" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @01:23PM (#13242564) Homepage Journal
    How about the cliche of "encumbrance doesn't matter" a.k.a. "the walking armory".

    Listen, in real life just carrying an AR-15, a shotgun, and a single box of 20 5.56 rounds gets to be difficult - you sling the rifle, you sling the shotgun, take a step, and one or both slings will slide off your shoulders. You crouch and either the but of the weapon hits the ground or the barrel is way in the air.

    And ammunition is *heavy* in real life.

    Yet here you are, carrying a rifle w/ scope, a selective fire carbine, a rocket launcher, a minigun, three pistols, several alien lifeforms, several rockets, several clips, several HUNDRED rounds of ammunition of different types.

    Yes. right.
    • Yeah, I agree.. it is pretty comical at times. Ever wondered why the rockets in quake will knock a player back 10 feet but the recoil doesn't move the shooter one inch?? But at the same time, games that do actually account for such things seem less fun to me. Quake is all about run-and-gun action, and I think that ditching the "burden" cliche would make it less enjoyable. That's just my opinion though, tons of people like Rainbox Six so your mileage may vary.

      I tend to give the "laws of physics" clich
    • Or a similar one:

      Someone kicks/shoots/spears you until you're 90% dead. Are you:

      a) running around as fast and capably as you were when you had 100% health, or:

      b) barely moving, you want to curl up into a little ball, and hope someone takes you to a hospital so you can just lay there for a few months?

      People with almost no health move slowly, so that the body parts that are still attached stay attached. Yet very few games implement this. Why? Because reality sucks.

    • Then again, your character is an unrealistic hunk, so at least it's consistent ;)

      But I agree, having trained with one of these [rusarm.ru] babies..

    • Bag of Holding

      (Hey, it's as good an explanation as being able to just run over a med kit and be healed)

      • Re:Three words (Score:3, Interesting)

        by wowbagger ( 69688 )
        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
        • I just want to say, some of those ideas sound really damn cool. :) I'd love to see that incorporated into a game.
        • As soon as I read "Little Red Wagon" I imagined the marine from Doom running through the station pulling his little wagon. When the lights are all off, all you hear is the little 'squeak squeak' from the wheels, then, when the imps attack, turning and pulling out the gun he wants to use from the bottom of the wagon and all the other weapons fall out and one of the zombies stealing his wagon.

          Then imagine that *every* marine is issued a LRW (always refered to as "LRW") and when they become zombies, they are a
        • In the game _Discworld_, based on Terry Pratchett's hilarious fantasy series, the main character is followed about by an indestructible, infinite-capacity chest w/ legs.

          Well worth running down a copy of the game (_and_ the hint book --- the game is almost unsolvable w/o it) 'cause it's delightful for those who enjoy this sort of thing.

          William
  • The writer of this article seems to have lost sight of the fact that games should be first and foremost fun. Who cares if the characters have big heads as long as it's a good game? Why do games always have to be super-realistic? So what if their are stealth moments as long as they are a fun break from the norm?

    I don't mean to be so harsh, but it sounds like another wannabe game designer who couldn't quite cut the mustard in the real world, probably from getting the priorities wrong in their designs.

  • Gaming Sense (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aNonniMouse ( 901548 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @02:37PM (#13243387)
    All these things are only clich(where's that stupid fancy e-thing... ah)é because most of us have spent years playing video games. I don't know how often I've had this happen, but I'll be watching my girlfriend or sister play a game and she'll get completely lost and frustrated because she doesn't know what to do while I'm struggling to keep my mouth shut because it's completely obvious to me. There's always some kind of crate to move or person to sneak by or objects to collect. It's just become part of the rules of video games. This is not to say that there isn't room for revolution. There are always more and more clever ways to disguise or warp these elements to make them less repetitive. I, for one, enjoy going through a game and once in awhile having to complete one of these stapes of gaming. They're like dribbling a basketball or touching all the bases before heading home. Bad analogy, I know, but you get the meaning.

  • Collecting? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kabir ( 35200 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @03:52PM (#13244364)
    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.
  • I liked the idea of the article better than the article itself, but it's worth a read. I thought they were overly-harsh (or at least lacked a sense of nostalgia) for criticizing Doom 3's use of exploding barrels, since they were as distinctive adn well-remembered a feature of Doom 1 & 2 as were the zombies, imps, and (dare I say it?) BFG. They definitely didn't deserve the #1 spot, either, as they're not as common a cliche as some of the others.

    My personal #1 choice from those on the list would probably
    • Even adventure games have been ruined by Box pushing puzzles.

      The latest Broken Sword game was a brilliant adventure, but it had annoying box pushing puzzles interspersed thoughout it.
  • I have found that in games with spells (particularly ones based on D&D) that invariably you will have a wide variety of spells with all kinds of neat effects, and just as invariably, the only ones that you will ever have a use for are the single best offensive spell and the healing spell.

    I've seen this in more games than I can count. Although the latest game I've been playing is Warlords Battlecry III and in it, the balance of spells are a bit more useful than usual.

  • Gameplay doesn't have to be realistic or original to be fun. There is nothing wrong with reusing game mechanics over and over again until the end of time as long as the content is updated.

    Articles like this fuel the tinkering that wrecks good games in future iterations. "Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within" is a perfect example of that. Saying you shouldn't make another game with 'cliche' mechanics and a new plot is like saying they shouldn't come out with any new books unless they have an updated page tur

  • #6 Out-of-Place Puzzles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Thursday August 04, 2005 @06:07PM (#13245597) Homepage Journal
    This one reminds be of The 7th Guest. That game was made up entirely of puzzles that you had to solve to get into the basement, learn information, etc. The 3-D haunted mansion might have been the framework, but as far as gameplay went it was secondary to the puzzles.
  • And I quote...

    "Games can be rated and compared based on the shortest amount of time it takes a player to reach the first crate, which represents the point where the developers ran out of ideas."

    Create Review System [oldmanmurray.com]

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