Top 10 Worst Video Game Cliches

Back in February I wrote a list of what I think are the top 10 worst movie cliches. This week I've decided to list the most annoying cliches found in video games. Video games are lots of fun, but all it takes is one little thing to totally spoil each one. For this list I've included aspects of games that I feel are unoriginal and overused. If a common gaming problem you hate didn't appear here, then check out next week's list of top 10 video game trends.

10 – Your Helicopter is Shot Down

Just a minor complaint here, but you ever notice that helicopters in action games crash/get shot down a lot? And by a lot, I mean all the time. And with each instance, it becomes more and more predictable. It happened in Halo: Reach. It happened in Splinter Cells Conviction and Blacklist. The Call of Duty series especially abuses this stereotype. Your helicopter gets shot down in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, at least twice in CoD 4: Modern Warfare, and no less than three times in Black Ops. And your character always walks away without any bone fractures as if it was nothing. It's a miracle to survive one helicopter crash, let alone three! Bottom line: helicopters in action games are death traps. Don't enter one!

9 – Quicktime Events

I'm sure you've heard people complain about this one a lot, but it really is that big of a problem. It isn't so much irritating as it is disappointing. There's three reasons why. First, the demanded button presses are often counter-intuitive as to the action you're supposedly performing. For example, twirling the thumbsticks around would work if the player's character was spinning or rotating something, like the lock-picks in Splinter Cell or Skyrim. But how does alternately mashing the triggers simulate pushing things away, Ultimate Spider-Man? How is pressing three random buttons anything like using a rolling pin, Fable 3? The second problem is that the button prompts that you're supposed to be keeping an eye on usually force the player to look away from where the action is. You'll end up not even seeing the result of your button presses because you're too busy keeping alert for the next button prompt! And third, quicktime events are just boring and not fun. How many times have you made it to a final boss, excited to kick his butt, only to find out that you need only press a few buttons to win. QTE sequences take control away from the player, leaving him/her only with the ability to choose how long the sequence continues. For this reason, a failed QTE attempt feels all the more frustrating and cheap. In short, quicktime events should be relied upon far less because they take away the player's agency and reduce him/her to a passive observer of the action.

8 – Sequel-baiting

We truly live in the age of video game franchises. Hardly a any successful game goes by without being granted some sort of sequel. This isn't a bad thing, if the game has earned it. Unfortunately some games think that if they leave the game on a cliffhanger it'll have to warrant a sequel. They're wrong! Gamers want self-contained stories. It's OK to leave the door open for a followup – maybe one or two seemingly minor loose threads to be resolved later. But games like Half-Life 2, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, Halo 2, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, The Order: 1886, and Homefront end so clumsily that they really do spoil the feeling of accomplishment you should feel upon completing a game. The proper way to secure a sequel is to do the game right the first time so that we want to play more of it; not by leaving out the game's ending, that's sloppy. What a shame.

7 – Regenerating Health

It seems that nowadays it's not often that you play a game that has a health bar which does not regenerate on its own. I play a lot of shooter games and in this genre regenerating health has pretty much become commonplace – even in tactical shooters which are supposed to be rooted in reality! I mean, having your wounds fully healed by touching a first aid kit wasn't all that realistic in the first place but it made a lot more sense than simply sitting still behind a wall for a few seconds. Not only that, but a non-regenerating health system encourages the player to explore the level, thus making exploration more rewarding: I'm looking at you, Halo 2. Also, multiplayer games that use regenerating health are typically littered with useless weapons that aren't powerful enough to kill enemies quickly – i.e. pistols have gotten the shaft lately. In my opinion, regenerating health is only useful if you're playing on an extreme difficulty or if the game you're playing has a really poor checkpoint/save system.

6 – You're the only competent one around

Don't you just love games in which your AI allies are completely useless? The games that constantly and thanklessly bark orders at you to do other peoples' jobs? (Come to think of it, this is starting to sound like my job.) I know video games are supposed to make the player feel empowered, but could the NPCs please stop being so lazy? When it comes to the point where one man single-handedly turns the tide of a major battle, it gets kind of ridiculous. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 unintentionally created an internet meme with its constant “Ramirez, do this!” and “Ramirez, do that!”, expecting the poor private to do everything.

5 – Intelligence-insulting Tutorials

Tutorials seem so lazy and boring nowadays. All they are are just uninteresting mini-levels that waste your time explaining how to do the most basic things. “Use right thumbstick to look. Pull right trigger to shoot. Press start to pause.” No, really!? I never would've figured that out on my own. Game developers need to realize that gamers aren't idiots and are capable of recognizing basic patterns that are found in performing actions in video games. When was the last time you played a video game that had an interesting tutorial? Most of the time games just plainly flash the instructions on screen with no creativity, not even trying to mesh the tutorial within the context of the level. More games need tutorials like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or the original Splinter Cell, whose tutorials took place at obstacle courses on military training grounds. Those were cool. Or better yet, design the tutorial in a way that subtly guides the player through the basic moves without overt instructions, making the gamers feel as if they discovered it on their own. Wouldn't that feel more satisfying? Empower the players, man!

4 – Telling You To Hurry Up

Sections that have arbitrary time limits are bad enough, but how annoying is it when you're playing a level that is not time sensitive and yet the NPCs still have the gall to tell you to hurry up. This can often happen when you're trying to explore a level – the NPCs reminding the player of the level's/game's ultimate objective – in which case the gamer's typical response is “Screw you. I'll do what I want!” But other times it can be during just one part of a level in which the game is trying to instill a sense of urgency; if that's the case, then just put a time limit on that one small part. I won't mind. I especially hate it when the game tells you over and over that you need to do something and then doesn't bother to tell you how you're supposed to do it. Do you think I'm a retard?! Do you think I'm not trying?! Just shut up already!

3 – The Silent Protagonist

A fairly common convention in video games is to never have the player's character talk. The reasoning behind this is that it is easier for the player to project their personality onto the character and relate to that him/her. Unfortunately, this pretty much always results in that character having no personality of their own. This is why I don't understand people who think that Master Chief (Halo) or Gordon Freeman (Half-Life) are some of the greatest video game characters ever. How can you call them characters when they hardly say a word? With Halo it's not so bad because at least Master Chief talks during the cutscenes, plus Cortana is there to talk to you during the gameplay. But with Half-Life it is so boring because there are no cutscenes; Gordon Freeman never says a single word. Ever. Whenever people are talking to him, he comes off as some shy, timid dweeb. And yet everyone seems to know what you're thinking and what you need. In short, playable characters who don't talk are awkward, boring, and forgettable.

2 – Hand-Holding

In response to cliche #4, sometimes the complete opposite can pose a huge problem too. Like when the player is supposed to do something and some large, obtrusive instructions flash on screen and don't go away until you finally do that thing. I hate that crap. Most video games don't need those waypoint markers telling you who to follow/where to go. Most of the time, the person/destination is straight forward and the player can easily find it himself (if the game is designed competently, that is). And just like with regenerating health, waypoint markers don't encourage the player to explore the level. It's true that video gaming has become more accessible and casual in the past couple decades, but you don't need to dumb down the way gamers are expected to think. An example of this is the Splinter Cell games. In the earlier games, you were expected to figure out how to navigate and traverse the levels on your own. But with the later Splinter Cell games, tooltip icons pop up whenever you're in a position to do something. What's more, interactable/manipulable objects are often highlighted when you use your (sigh) sonar vision. It's almost as if the games are straight up telling you exactly what to do/where to go. Instead you'll find yourself repeatedly saying, “Yeah, I get it. Thanks.”

1 – Unskippable Cutscenes

I know that the story is an important part of the game that developers work hard on, but can't they just accept that people don't always want to watch them? Moreover, did it not occur to them that people often do multiple playthroughs and have already seen the cutscene? Making cutscenes in video games unskippable is just a dick move. It makes games like Destiny, Call of Duty 3, Max Payne 3, Assassin's Creed 3, and Metal Gear Solid 4 very hard to get into – and even harder to want to make you want to replay. Is this supposed to be fun? The worst offenders are unskippable cutscenes that come directly before a boss fight or other such difficult part where you're likely to die a lot: you're screwed. The Angry Video Game Nerd said it best when he remarked, “Is this what kids do nowadays: sit around and watch video games?!”