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"Gaming Cliches"

You see them all the time.
The generic gaming moments/items/levels that employ the same old shoddy tactics to pad out a game.
Here are a few of mine that annoy me:

Ammo Crates:
It can be a top secret military complex, expecting your invasion and utilising all manner of hi-tech surveillance systems, but they forgot to clear up all the boxes with ammo, weapons and health kits in.
Boy, those dumb enemies eh?

Ladders:
Stupid, stupid FPS ladders. Climing up, look to the left?
Oh, sorry, what I meant to do is - hurl myself off the ladder and plummet to my doom. Or trying to get down ladders, walking slowly and turning before hero decides to step into thin air and see if Icarus was onto something.

Spiders/Bugs:
FPS aggro. Too small to see or hit, too fast to dodge.
Why? Why put those in there? It's better to have a vast expanse of nothing instead of little skittery bugs.
Damn dirty bugs

Huge empty areas:
The music drops out and you are faced with a massive room.
Hmmm, I wonder if a really big angry thing is going to come charging out at a predetermined point?

Scientists regretting things:
They spent years creating these lethal killing-machines, but as soon as they escape it's "Oh I shouldn't have done that to this animal". Fine, just don't expect me to not try and shoot you as I walk away.

Helpful Strangers on radios:
Mysterious voices cropping up on phones/video screens to guide you and tell you little bits about the plot, before a completely unsatisfactory resolution.

Keys:
Always on the other side of the level, behind a box under a shelf. So you can spend 2hrs hunting for a tiny object before you can progress.
Why not just indicate where the damn thing is? I've already wasted everyone on the level, so wandering about like a tour-guide without customers is not my idea of fun.

Paper bullets:
Enemy has an M16 and can shoot you in 2 seconds flat.
You have an M16 yet need to expend clips for the same result.
Bunch of pants

Hidden pieces of puzzles:
You have killed everyone, yet you are missing that one last bit of the puzzle pic to complete the level and escape.
So back you go, through all the old rooms searching every little thing that you can for a piece of paper.
Rubbish.

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Any others?

In FPS's:

When you look down you never see your legs.

You can carry stupid amoutns of stuff and still run at the same speed.

It only takes about 1 second to change guns. BOLLARDS IT DOES! It would ages to get the new one out, and neatly pack the old one away....

Red Faction's Geo-mod tech doesn't seem to work on doors. So you can blow everything around it to pieces and create a rather large hole up to the destruction limit (and there is one, which is another bad thing) and the door will still be fully intact, possibly with a little scorch mark decal on it. I haven't tried it with all the doors but certainly some. Of course a lot of the fully destructible walls are invincible too. Bah, Red Faction is a big disappointment, I can't believe anyone liked it. What annoyed me most was that the railgun could go through walls but never made a hole in them when doing so. The point is that it's a super accellerated slug of metal. A good representation of how annoyingly unlike it's hype Red Faction is would be a scene from within the game. One of the Red Faction members runs into a prison shouting "Red Faction" and is immediately gunned down by a bunch of guards. You wish you were those guards and that it was Red Faction itself you were gunning down. Ah well never mind.

Armatige Shanks wrote:
> How about...

Memory problems...
Characters who you have just spoken to,
> completly forget that you have just had a conversation, and tell you excatly the
> same information over and over and over again...

Toilets...
Though public
> toilets are beginning to turn up... theres only usually one mens/ladies in an
> entire office complex... Houses generally have none at all

And most of the time you can't actually use them!

I love the first toilets in Duke Nukem 3D though, you turn around and fire at the figure staring at you, only to realise that it's a mirror. D'oh!

Err, Ant, you're forgetting Red Faction! If there was a wooden door on Red Facion, then you can say goodbye to it with a bloody pistol! :D

There, Red Faction's latest technology thingy (G-con Mod thing...) in all its glory.

SHOCKY

Tiltawhirl wrote:
> Wooden doors in first person Shooters that need keys to open them, why can't you
> just pull out a rocket launcher and blow the thing up?

Humm, you can some of the time on Deus Ex, but otherwise I agree with you.

Wooden doors in first person Shooters that need keys to open them, why can't you just pull out a rocket launcher and blow the thing up?

Ice levels
jungle levels
factory levels
food levels

Another is that with games like Wolfenstein, Doom, Red Faction and most other FPS', you can apparently take many more shots than your enemies.

It still makes it fun, you know.

And what about all those doors that are locked for no reason?

Bosses for no apparent reason can take in an inhuman amount of bullets.

At one point you will hit the "Five minutes until building you are in self destructs".

You will also at one point lose everything you have collected so far, and either have to find it or rebuild your collection.

How about...

Memory problems...
Characters who you have just spoken to, completly forget that you have just had a conversation, and tell you excatly the same information over and over and over again...

Toilets...
Though public toilets are beginning to turn up... theres only usually one mens/ladies in an entire office complex... Houses generally have none at all