Ten clichés in gaming (this list is a bonus one)

You do a story about the top videogame cliches, and not a single mention of mine carts?

Weak.

an exerpt from the last one listed.

"Apparently when the Cold War ended, so many Soviet mercenaries were out of jobs that video games become the hot place to work. If you’re on a mission that involves shooting, there’s a good chance your enemy has an AK-47 and loves Yakov Smirnov jokes. We’ll see you in the warehouse level, comrade."

i hate this one. as a die hard FPS player this one struck me.

IF I NEVER PLAY A MISSION IN AN OLD SOVIET REPUBLIC WHERE I USE NOTHING BUT A KALISHNIKOV I WILL BE ONE HAPPY GAMER!!!!!!!

Eh, I've seen this list done better.

Anyway, why stop at 10 clichés when you can have 192?

http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

Yeah, pretty much everything in the present day is a farce of something else. I mean, when you see a spoof movie spoofing Borat the world seems more and more like a wasteland. At least in videogames (and especially fighting games) there's an excuse in trying to maintain character balance.

But I don't get that far away from TV or the internets so I probably wouldn't here about all that new, unprecedented stuff.

@ 2
Actually they talk about minecarts in the second sentence.

This isn't really a top ten list, since they even mention that they took out all the obvious cliches. And yes, they do mention mine carts as one of the ones they left out. I was struck by the following comment: "During one of our office chats, the subject of games popped up." This article was written by Game Informer. I'll let that sink in for a moment.

Now, as for a cliche that rocks, killing Nazis. That never, ever gets old.

Top 10 list top my cliche list.

Same Roster, different game

That is true for virtually every video game, book, or TV show i have ever seen

all characters can basically be typecast

(like the moody anti-hero, off the top of my head, Knuckles, Shadow the hedgehog, Midna, Vegeta, Piccolo, Wolf O'Donnell, Meta Knight, MAX)

Heh, I do one of these lists every so often, when I run out of column ideas.

I like the one about rats. Those little bastards are everywhere. To be fair, though, they're extremely effective at getting into all sorts of places, they're small and thus difficult to catch, they're remarkably effective scavengers, and they have a notably high fecundity rate. I always thought rats in video gaming was a concession to reality - either rats or some monster in a similar ecological niche should be damn near everywhere in video games. Particularly since most video games do not take place compeltely in extremely clean, almost sterile areas, you should run into lots of rodents.

Oh, the hierarchy of things to murder in games is another list entirely. In fact, I might make it my next column. The absolute top, of course, are undead alien Nazis. Nothing is more fun to kill than those.

Crates, crates and more crates.

Explosive barrels.

I don't get all these crate jokes. I store all my video games in crates and I keep all my gold in barrels.

Speaking of cliche, that pic you chose to use makes me think of OutRun.

Maybe I'm a freak, but I always liked the kill-a-second frantic elevator battles. SOR2 FTW.

this list sucks so bad.

@ 8: "'During one of our office chats, the subject of games popped up.' This article was written by Game Informer. I'll let that sink in for a moment."

This is what they wrote:
"During one of our office chats, the subject of games popped up. Imagine that."
It was a joke. Imagine that.

I like the same roster and the keycards the best... and yes I did keep trying to open those doors that said I need a keycard... hehe

No mention of huge caches of ammo and health just before a boss?

Also I think Mexicans maybe taking over from Soviets and Nazis as the generic bad guy du jour

Now that's a beautiful pic. Just love it.

The last one about the AK-47s is a little off. That is possibly the most realistic aspect any video game could ever create. The AK is the most prolific weapon available on the market, black or otherwise. If I'm playing any game involving guns in any place around the world that isn't the US, Canada, or Western Europe, then I'd damn well expect most, if not all, of my opponents to be carrying the AK.

High-end weaponry is something I expect from advanced and organized criminal groups, not third-world soldiers. Third-world armies can't afford the latest and greatest, which is why the AK is so popular.

Nintendophile may be onto something, but only if we look at UbiSoft.

How can Mexicans take over as the villains when the Arabs are so convenient?