Gaming’s worst clichés

There’s no intro necessary here: you know you are about to read about weapons, button bashing, and a whole lot of video game “logic”.

These are gaming’s worst clichés.

The Mashing of the Button

Almost every very zombie game has it: that moment when you need to press a button a thousand times or rattle your analogue stick when you are grabbed by a zombie.

The Mashing of the Button has saved countless lives (including Meryl’s in Metal Gear Solid), but I do not see how damaging your controller helps immerse you in a game.

This is in the same league as quick time events, which have just stooped to ridiculous levels of ridiculous. Press X to never have to deal with this again.

Fend off waves of enemies

There comes a moment in every game where you will reach a gate, a switch, or a computer that needs to be hacked, and have to defeat five waves of enemies before you can progress.

The waves of enemies normally come from the corridor you just walked down, which looked pretty empty when you were there two minutes ago.

Other clichés that typically tie in nicely with this are the “pre-battle ammo cache” and “massive boss arena” tropes, which let you know you’re in for a long fight.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

The Massive Lung Capacity

Game protagonists are usually good at many things, including holding their breath for long periods of time. Some can stay submerged for minutes, swimming furiously, without any need for oxygen.

The (Un)climbable Mountain

Most open world games suffer from this issue, where there is a large hill or mountain which is meant to restrict your movement. Either you can’t climb it at all, or you walk and jump at the same time until you reach a certain height which you were not meant to.

This is an off-shoot of the dreaded “invisible wall” and “knee-high obstruction” tropes which have littered games for eons.

The Silent Protagonist

You are the main guy in the game, the hero, the story revolves around you – but you battle to string a sentence together.

Slaying dragons, saving a princess, jumping through a portal – all of these are a walk in the park compared to having a conversation with your fellow characters.

The Stealth Bush

If you were at home and heard a bush rustling you would call Chubb security and fetch your (licensed) gun.

In games, though, players can hide and move in a bush without making a sound and hide away from enemies for as long as they please.

For an added bonus, add in the “short-term AI memory loss” trope, which means that, even when you’re detected, enemies will typically soon forget they heard anything, waving all sounds – and that arrow in their head – off as “just the wind”.

Hiding in a bush

You cannot use this weapon

You just killed a skeleton with a flaming sword using nothing but a plank of wood. Logic would dictate that you take said plank and swap it for the Blade of Eternal Fire – but that would make things too easy.

I wish developers would allow players to take weapons off enemies, it just makes sense.

No swimming for you

Contrasting the massive lung capacity trope above, sometimes characters can’t even get their toes wet without perishing faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.

You see that beautiful ocean/river/lake? You can’t swim in it – and if you try you will die. Many games suffer from this issue, including Dark Souls 2 where you sink like a rock to your death if you venture into the water.