Gaming clichés?

[Reactor]

It is interesting to note that very few of mentioned clichés are actually added to TVTropes. The food as health is found under "Hyperactive metabolism", but that's all I could find. Hmmmm. Maybe they're actually classified under fancy names?

[4thcharacter]

You first start with fire. You get Ice and Lightning after a while. Then you get earth, wind, plant, dark, light, time, and the best non-elemental magic evah

[Naniyue]

So true about armor, although Severance: Blade of Darkness did take this into account somewhat. If you played the swordsman, and came across a suit of armor shaped for the dwarf or amazon, you couldn't wear it.

[Naniyue]

Polygonal FPS games for roughly the past twenty years: There will be a yellow commercial mop bucket.

[Reactor]

Another cliché regarding to hostile entities: WAAAAAY too many games utilize zombies as enemies - even those where the "zombies" aren't really zombies, they're rather mutants (Half-life, for instance). And 98% of the "real" zombies aren't scarry at all. Maybe for a 5 year old...

[NeuralStunner]

At their core, zombies are the perfect foe because they're impossible to humanize. 100% killer instinct. On the other side, they used to be human, which adds the extra scary factor of an enemy that grows their ranks the more battles they win.

Besides, they're trendy. Just like aliens were before freakin' Star Trek made them all relatable and stuff.

[Reactor]

I don't really know. Apart from being trendy, I don't see why they are so overused. They cannot be given orders, nor they would follow them if the great big evil-doer up there gives them one anyways - but that's the smaller kind of problem. The bigger is, their combat value hardly even reaches zero. Shambling, rotting, emitting funny noises, having melee weapons at best, they're anything but useful against a well organized, tactical enemy, who can also man vehicles (zombies most likely cannot). It's very sparse that zombies wield and can handle firearms, like in Doom 3, and because of this, they're rather easy to take out even with melee weaponry, not to mention outsmarting or setting traps for them. I never really understood this at zombies - they're crap even for cannon fodder.

[Naniyue]

I think that the continued popularity of zombies, especially in increasingly realistic looking video games, is in part that you get to kill someone, yet have no need for remorse, and aren't guilty of a crime, as its self defense. They're not human, yet are. Guilty pleasure and/or power fantasy.

DooM is a power fantasy for me, as I get to destroy evil beings in various nasty ways. Sort of a fire with fire thing.

[Reactor]

Hehehe! I think the so much love for zombie enemies comes from that their AI is very easy to program, and if players complain about the primitive enemies, developers can say "they're just reanimated walking carcasses, don't expect them to act smart!"

Clever. Very clever...

Aliens were never really overused outside games which focus on alien invasions of Earth. There were huge numbers of alien infestation-related games before 2000, thanks to movies like E.T. or Independence Day, and the various real-life alien-related occurrences, such as foundation of SETI, the case of Betty & Barney Hill, or Villas Boas. Popular culture was full of "ZOMG da alienz r comin!!!1!!1!!111ONEONEONEONELEVEN!!", comic books, cartoons, novels, and so on. I don't know how many of you remember that era. Of course, video games also began to feed upon the alien craze, from Space Invaders to XCom, and even if we consider them cliché, they are well within their limits, and not all alien races eager to invade our planet were those typical flying saucer riding little green men shooting pew-pew lazorz at innocent people - Half-life dared to surmise that if life exists outside our planet, it may be very well primitve, and uncivilized, and many games were thinking along the same line. Sooo...I guess alien invasion of Earth is not THAT overused...yet. Maybe in a few years, however...

[Naniyue]

I dunno . . . The zombies in Dead Island were anything but easy. And if I remember correctly, a small group of zombies from the original D&D, not AD&D, could easily mow down a level 1 to 3 character.

[Reactor]

I never had luck with D&D, it was not really popular here in Hungary. We preferred the Jackson-Livingstone Fighting Fantasy

BTW, the wall health automatas are cliché or not? It was invented by Half-life AFAIK, but it became hugely widespread amongst games. What are your concepts about this?

[Naniyue]

GURPS is da best!!! But I'll play with most systems. Damn, I miss traditional roleplaying! Still got ma dice!

Actually, all those old solo adventure game books are available online, with many having recent reprints, including FF!!

Speaking of aliens, how about a little DooM mod for ROM? But yeah, I never really thought about how often alien infestation is used in (modern) gaming over invasion.

You first start with fire. You get Ice and Lightning after a while. Then you get earth, wind, plant, dark, light, time, and the best non-elemental magic evah

That does seem to be standard elemental order!

[Reactor]

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...

[NantoCodd]

One sentence :
The Goddamned Bats.

Every games with sci-fi or fantasy settings always have those tiny critters that move fast either bats, rats, fishes, etc that have low health but too small to attack and scutter around you slowly chipping your health 1 point per attack. Bonus hatred if they came in pack of 5-10.

[wildweasel]

One sentence :
The Goddamned Bats.

Every games with sci-fi or fantasy settings always have those tiny critters that move fast either bats, rats, fishes, etc that have low health but too small to attack and scutter around you slowly chipping your health 1 point per attack. Bonus hatred if they came in pack of 5-10.

Especially if it's a platformer and they have a tendency to knock you backwards.