Video Game Cliches

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As someone who has played video games for 20 years, I’ve noticed many trends come and go. However, I do know that there are some ideas that are evergreen. In fact, they are so constantly used that they have ceased to be trends; they have become the gaming cliches we all know and love. Well, maybe love is too strong of a word. Maybe “humorously tolerate” works better.


Anyhow, in an attempt to clarify some (and to get away with a cheesily easy column idea), here’s a short sampling of Video Gaming Cliches.


But you get an A for effort


Any time something is graded with school grades, an A grade is never the highest grade.


Yet the rest of the royal family is somehow immune


The only member of the royal family who will get kidnapped is the princess. In fact, you might think that’s her only role in the monarchy.


They have booths at the carnival for that


For many heroes, the reward they seek at the end of the journey is a kiss from the romantic interest (usually the princess that was just rescued).


Speaking of carnies...


A lot of heroes must fear clowns, because there is some circus-related enemy out to get you, or carnival stage in your way. Maybe the main villain just wants to have fun on the roller coaster.


Because Reykjavik has great real estate rates


No matter how little sense it makes, there is always an ice level that you have to trudge through.


So does Mt. St. Helens


Nine times out of ten, said ice level is quite close to a fire level, which makes drastically less sense.


The hero is avoiding what he has to do... just like me!


No matter what your hero has to do, it can wait while you pursue a card game, a matching game, a slot machine, or any other mini-game the designers can wedge in there.


The Smurfette Quandry


Males will always outnumber females, even though biologically no species with distinct genders can pull this off and survive. This invariably leads to questions about how busy the woman must be, and other sexist drivel which confirms why many gamers can’t get a date.


Revenge of the Nerds


The final boss is always more impressive looking than the main character, has more powerful stats, and has more powerful moves. Despite this, you always have the upper hand in the final battle.


The morality of a politician


In your quest to stop the main force of evil, it will be considered acceptable for you to pillage, loot, and destroy anything within arm's reach. For some reason, the people don’t mind that you’re just finishing off the job the evil army began.


I understand czarist Russia operated the same way


Any material can and will be used for any job, no matter how ill-suited said material may be for the task at hand. Gold armor, steel wheels, rubber suits… You name it, and someone has built something nonsensical out of it.


I’m only here to steal your fans


The coolest character in the game will only show up briefly. He will be vaguely on your side, but he’d never stoop so low as to lend a hand. He might even occasionally “train” you.


It makes the villain’s job of finding her much easier


The important female characters can easily be identified by the fact that they have large breasts. Given how uncommon such prominent breasts are in real life, one can only assume that there is a plastic surgeon’s office where primary female characters go for augmentation.


That only means everyone has just one


Anything labeled “rare” in a video game is invariably obtained by everyone you know who has played the game, and even some characters in the game beyond the main one.


More repetitive than I get


Any time the game has random questions for you to answer, you will see a repeated question no later than the third run through the game.


W. H. Auden wrote a poem about this


In games with a time flow, the time either moves at the normal pace which means that you have to game at odd hours to accomplish everything, or the time moves at such an accelerated pace that it’s a pain to time it so that you can do everything.


The subtle message of every video game


Environmentalism is bad. Witness how many different kinds of plant life are dangers to you. Note that you’re fully expected in many points to destroy the world around you to progress in the story. You’re meant to destroy it all, so have fun with it.


I’m always ready for a picnic


Some enemies you encounter will have something you can munch on to regain health. In some instances, this won’t be absurd – plenty of people have a can of soda in case they get thirsty. But I have no idea where they were hiding that pizza with the works or that fully dressed roasted turkey. Don’t you think you should have been able to smell it from a bit away?


He’s not dumb; he’s preverbal


The fewer lines you have, the cooler you are. If you manage to be a main character and never say anything over the course of a game, you are infinitely cool. Why does Link from the Zelda games have such a following? Because it’s been nine games, and he still hasn’t opened his mouth except to yelp.


Anyhow, that’s a partial list. To be added to later, of course, because if there’s nothing else inevitable in video gaming, the sequel always is.

Mostly true statements, but you should attribute it to http://www.netjak.com/review.php/553

All your base are belong to us!

They've made progress for the princesses in video games now. They have more roles, than just waiting to be saved. Like car racing, and uhm, sports games. N' Mario Parties.

Germans were all nazi's and can be shot more easily than turkeys and germany has billions of them.

I made a game a while back and I can confess to the following

There was a grade higher than A. It was * and only one of the 72 characters had it, the boss. Although after playing the game through you could play as him so it wasn't so bad.

There was no monarchy on my game except an emperor who you could play as and he was A class.

No female character that is kidnapped on my game but you can get a love interest (with kissing) at any time by talking to normal people.

No clowns, performing midgets, elephant taimers or any kind of circus related enemy on my game.

There was kind of an ice level but this was in fact a ski resort and it was only a sub-mission and you didn't need to play it to further the game.

The nearest thing I had to a fire level was a sub-mission where a volcano erupted and that was miles away from the ice level.

I can confess to having a few mini-games but you could only do this between missions when everywhere was at peace.

On my game the male and female population of and level was precicely 50-50. All the people on each level has unique names also so people wrote them down and discovered this. For them to bother doing that they must have been Aspies.

All my characters were just humans or anthropomorphs so the bosses never looked more impressive than the player's character except for the martial arts they did. My boss had weaker stats than the player's character but he just had more skill that's all

On my game you got into trouble for looting and pilaging. You could choose to be evil or good and by doing that sort of thing your character became evil.

The materials on my game had realistic properties and had to use the right material for the right job i.e. if you used wood or plastic to make a sword it would be less effective and break more easily.

The character that you say is cool managed to get beaten up by you. You can go to different schools to learn different skills and after learning everything you can defeat your trainer as you will have better stats than him/her as you are not freakin' 90 years old.

One of the problems with my game is that everyone complained that the female characters brests weren't big enough. Well parden me for being realistic.

There are rare items on my game and you will really have to look for them. Specialist items such as the sword of Alfyra, etc. there is only 1 of and you would have to play the game over and over to find it. Unfortunately that's another problem.

I don't quite understand what you mean. Do you mean that it is too repetitive or not enough? Anyway my NPCs has tons of ways of saying things and if you really want to you can spend hours talking to them until they say the same thing. Maybe I should have spent less time on this and more the rest of the game.

On my game the time is realistic but you can rest for any number of time, even years, now that was one of it's best features and by the way if you rest for years the people don't get older or move house or anything.

There are no harmful plants on my game other than the poisonous kind. There are venus fly traps but these are real venus fly traps not the man traps of the games.

You can destroy everything on my game until you've leveled the entire city and killed off all the population. Hours of fun. You do get in trouble for it though but if your character's good enough he/she can destroy the police force and army that try to stop you until they stop trying and leave. I'm actually finding this increadably difficult to remake.

Err... about the kill and steal belongings thing. You can do this and again it doesn't make you popular but the only things the enemy leaves behind are what he/she actually has on them. You can even choose to eat their carcas but you are better not to do this as it makes you quite unpopular.

On my game you could type what you want to say and your character would say it and not in a monotonous voice either. If you typed a word in capitals it stressed it too. It worked by counting the sylables in the sentence or between punctuation marks in case anyone wants to try and do it. I really thought that people would be impressed by this it looks like nobody cared so I don't why I should bother doing it again.

Also the AI on games always seemed to be much smarter than you. This was mainly because they could pull of moves that had very complex button combinations first time. On my game the AI didn't pull off each move perfectly. The harder the move was to pull off the less chances the AI could do it.

In case you're confused I made this game back in '98 hence the 98 in my name. It was my best game and I'm making it again right now after 7 years. I lost the original when a virus infected my computer. Teached me to make back-ups though.

http://www.ign.com is a good site to go to for cheats, and anything gaming, so if there is any game with glitches, it'll be shown.

Check out the whole site. You get a lot of cool stuff, including forums for each game.

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Hmm...I was considering making a Nintendo-fanboy game on the "build a core level editor/monster editor&get everybody to create one map, everybody comes to a fanboy convention, brings their map to the fore, and we figure out how to connect them all." But that would be problematic. The one thing I would like to do is reverse every cliche.

-Peach finally learns self-defense, or carries mace.
-Bowser realizes marrying Peach is too much trouble and simply puts out a personal ad.
-Henchmen are usually quite intelligent: There are rumors of some MIT (Mushroom Institute of Technology) graduates serving as sergeants for the Koopa Clan.
-Mario&Co. has to defend the castle rather than storm it.
-Bowser doesn't send troops in progressively stronger waves. Rather, his forces work as a real army, with elite Hammer Bros. supported by suppressing fire from Bullet Bill launchers advancing to clear a breach for rank&file Koopa Troopas to flood in, all while Paratroopas are dropped from behind to cut off escape routes.
-There is no prophecy involving Star Spirits, Star Stones, etc.

They use cheats while playing online (Aimbot, Wallhack etc.)