Gaming clichés?

[Shadelight]

Cliché added to the list: Halfway thru the game, ALL weapons, items and stuff are taken from the player (he gets captured, or such), so he has to start from the bare basics...

...this time, however, you shall need to face enemies you've already seen when you had full inventory. So you can expect that your task of getting back your armaments and inventory is gonna be much, MUCH harder...

Death exits in most of the recent megawads are a notoriously bad example of this.

[Reactor]

....????

You actually have to DIE to finish the level? Ye, I remember I had fun doing this on MAP29: The Living End,but...this is just crap.
I remember Prince of Persia 2, when you had to actually die to touch that flame, and if you've killed that birdman who guarded the flame, it was auto-gameover.

Recently I have played Stalin Subway (the first one, which is actually kinda decent, unlike the sequel), and near the end of the game, I got captured. This is when I started to think about how many games feature this "lose everything halfway thru". Let's see...Half-life? Check. Doom 3? Check. Wolfschanze? Check. Mortyr? Check. Stalin Subway? Added to the list. Up to the gaming clichés topic this goes!
Partially, I'm also guilty on this, but I had the courtesy to pepper the level with tons of secrets, where a persistent player can get back his belongings in mere minutes.

As for bats, well, even the AVGN noticed this at the "Lester the Unlikely" video, namely, why so many games have to have bats? He totally has a point. I'll also add bats to my game, however, they'll be completely harmless, and their sole purpose is to add to the scenery. After all, you can't have a dark-gothic game without bats!

[Trance]

You actually have to DIE to finish the level?

I've seen examples of levels where the exits are blocked by a sector with a really low ceiling that you can't fit under normally. A dead player has one-quarter the collision height that a living player does, and so if you die in motion, your corpse can slide under a gap of at least 14 units.

[Reactor]

I know that, and whenever I finish MAP29: The Living End, I always leave that area of Hell by this way (it matters not, since at MAP30: Icon of Sin, I get a full cache of everything regardless), I just don't see why would anyone want to utilize this as an official completion of a map...unless of course, it's some kind of jokewad or mockwad about exploiting glitches. Rocket jumps are fine, as they are, but killing yourself to finish a level is just...well...shit.

[Reactor]

Another cliché regarding female in-game characters. In 99% of the cases, they wear as little clothes as possible! Whilst male characters are fully dressed, and armored to the teeth, for some reason, female armors always expose the tits. The reasoning behind this...well...BOOBZ!!! Bloodymouth feminists, like Anita Sarkeesian love to exploit such occurrences.

A second cliché which is actually pretty hard to notice, but it's there: young or middle-aged male characters almost NEVER have facial hair (beard, mustache or both). In contrast, old characters almost ALWAYS have them! I wonder how many of you have noticed this thing.
I can name only one exception: Gordon Freeman.

[insightguy]

Another cliché regarding female in-game characters. In 99% of the cases, they wear as little clothes as possible! Whilst male characters are fully dressed, and armored to the teeth, for some reason, female armors always expose the tits. The reasoning behind this...well...BOOBZ!!! Bloodymouth feminists, like Anita Sarkeesian love to exploit such occurrences.

Something I noticed about that too is that it seems to be skewed towards certain genres, types of games and even countries. Example: (To my knowledge) Fantasy style stories tend to do this more than say, sci-fi or more modern settings. MMORPGs tend to do this more that any other genre. Hell, just compare the games made in Europe and america to Japan and do a melon count, I guarantee japan has more fan service than both of them combined. It just seems to be a "case by case" basis thing.

Honestly, I don't think it bothers many people unless it severely breaks immersion or goes completely off the rails (unless that was the point, then carry on).

Also, if you can mod it, there WILL be a mod that will make everything sexual. (and if XCOM 2 modding was any indication, not even men are safe.)

[Matt]

Honestly, I don't think it bothers many people unless it severely breaks immersion

I recall when I first played [EDIT: World Of] Warcraft as a female human paladin (because the male human paladin did not, to say the least, look like a human paladin) I spent like 10 character levels wearing the same old priest robe that was good like 3 levels under where I was originally at, because the more properly statted armour all looked like....... well, you know, that. Eventually I got a cape and could ignore it enough that I just used whatever armour was available.

[Naniyue]

The Community Expansion Pack for Neverwinter Nights has options for both sexes to look provocative.

[Reactor]

And H-Doom plays it to its extremes Sorry, I had to give it a honorable mention here.

[NeuralStunner]

I recall when I first played Warcraft as a female human paladin

Pretty impressive, the only females in the game are Garona and Griselda. Oh... OH. Damn it.

On that note: When a particular title in a series "defines" that series despite ignoring/rewriting/spaghettifying a lot of perfectly serviceable lore for no reason other than selling yet another reboot because starting a new IP is too risky.

(It's difficult for me to call myself a Halo fan, since I found Halo 4 such a disappointment that I've practically disowned all things post-Bungie. I'll probably elaborate some day...)


Dude, I grew up with Orcs and Humans and Tides of Darkness, trying to read lore (read: retcons coming out of Blizzard's collective ass) on a WOW wiki makes me almost literally cry. It's so bad.

[Reactor]

Speaking of RTS games, it is notable that clichés don't seem to affect them that much. Each strategy-based game could come up with something unique that distinguishes it from the others, and there are no common ideas which every game would contain. For instance, Westwood introduced superweapons in Dune 2, Warcraft had none. In terms of resource management, Westwood followed the Dune idea with ore and ore trucks, whilst Blizzard offered multiple resources (gold, lumber, oil). Uh, same goes for Age of Empires. At Westwood RTS games, you needed a radar. At Blizzard, you didn't need one. Defense turrets or towers are a little bit more common, but most space RTS games don't have them. Westwood has civilians and civilian buildings on several levels (and you can kill'em for bonus points and crates), instead, Blizzard uses critters and neutral monsters.

[Reactor]

Another cliché added to the list: Games concerning Nazi Germany always use medieval-gothic font types for the game. Notable examples: Wolfenstein-series, Airborne Hero, War Train Normandie, Ardennen Offensive, Mortyr series, and so on.

[Trance]

Nazi Germany itself made that a cliché first.

[NantoCodd]

Speaking about Nazi, that reminds me of another cliche : inclusion of rare guns as mook weapon. Every games and films put there ought to arm Nazi soldier with either MP40 or Stg44, and by the midgame you are absolutely swimming in MP40 because it's so common. In real life MP40 isn't a common weapon (I remember a squad only have a single MP40) while Stg44 isn't even pass the quality control. This cliche isn't limited to WW2 games though. Remember when low level mooks are armed with Desert Eagle, a 2000$ gun?

[lil'devil]

I remember Modern Warfare 2 had regular enemy snipers use WA2000, a sniper rifle so rare, that only about 80 of those were produced ever. This game also had Russian soldiers extensively use non-Russian guns like AUG or FAMAS.