Stupid Video Game Cliches

Oh man, where to start...

Well first off, I just love those games where you can put away your gun, switch to a knife, and somehow... this allows you to run faster. Like, WTF? The gun didn't disappear, you're still carrying it somewhere on your body... why would holding a knife instead reduce your overall weight and allow you to move quicker? It makes absolutely no sense. Wasn't it the case in Counter-Strike? It's been a while, but I think it was. People on your team would immediately pull out their knives at the start of every match so they could leg it a bit quicker to the chokepoints. Absolutely retarded game mechanic. I think I saw the same thing happen in a Quick Look of Fallout 3 DLC. Hey, let's run faster because we put the gun back into our backpack and pulled out our knife. Yea, way to go... that makes a lot of fucking sense.

And what about the super weak flashlights we always get to use in games? Like, the ones that only work for 30 seconds before you have to turn em off to recharge? Let's see, what games have these weakass flashlights... I think Half-Life, FEAR, and AvP 2 just to name a few. Cmon, where do they buy these piece of shit flashlights? Are the batteries really that weak? They seem to work forever, but you just need to let them recharge every 30 seconds? What are you recharging them with? Is there some perpetual motion device you use to crank em up? Is that how those work? Cause I know regular flashlights can work for hours without needing their batteries replaced. How they didn't decide to buy those regular good ones for use in Black Mesa, whereever-the-hell-FEAR-is, and the Colonial Marine Corps, I just don't know. It's mind boggling.

Weapon balance in games is just silly sometimes. In almost every action game, you've got the pistol, then the rifle. Sometimes it's called an SMG. Now, the funny thing is... the pistol's bullet somehow seems a lot stronger then the rifle's. You'll pull out this pistol and it delivers a mighty semi automatic bang. Yet when you switch to this faster rifle or SMG, their bullets seem mighty underpowered. Like, the bullets are individually much weaker then the bullets in the humble pistol. When in reality, a rifle's bullets are actually going to be bigger or at least the same as the pistol's. Yet while you can snap off one or two rounds from a pistol to down an enemy, the rifle might require bucketloads of shots to put down the same enemy. Obviously, this isn't the case in every game, but it's a trend I've noticed in quite a few. It makes absolutely no sense. Why don't the rifle's bullets pack as much of a punch as the pistol's? It seems to be arbitrary balancing bullshit on the part of the developer. Good example of this phenomenon would be the assault rifle from Halo. You can use a few shots from the pistol (which somehow also has a scope) or use up 60 rounds from your rifle. Why does the rifle use plastic bbs instead of real bullets like the pistol? Hey, I'm not Bungie.

Okay, now let's talk about another gun, the shotgun. The shotgun in a lot of games seems to be insanely short ranged. Like, I've seen water hoses with more cohesion at range. Classic example is the shotgun from Doom 3. Now, this thing sprays buckshot so wide that it only has an effective range of about five feet. Seriously, I'm not exaggerating here, you just shouldn't use it beyond five feet. The spread is that bad. It just defies logic, why would anyone make a shotgun that only works out to five feet? An honorary member could also be the assault rifle from Halo. No, it's not a shotgun, but it also has an effective range of about five feet. Why would anyone use a rifle with spray that wide? Who knows.

In every sort of GTA open world game, all you have to do is jump into the car and push out the driver. They all have their doors unlocked for some reason. Is this really how people drive? They leave their doors unlocked? I sure as hell lock my doors when I drive my car. Do you? You should, precisely so you don't get someone kicking you to the curb and driving off in your ride. It's common sense, really. Also, if you grab a vacant car in a game, they'll always have their keys inside. No need to hot wire it or anything.

In RTSs, you'll have battlecruisers the same size as five or six infantry soldiers. How does that make any sense? The goddamn battlecruiser's supposed to be the size of the whole fucking map, right? Why would they make it a buildable unit and then make it look as big as six soldiers? How does that do justice to the battlecruiser? Frankly, it seems a bit insulting. There are probably four or five hundred people on board the battlecruiser. Maybe more. Maybe it's over a thousand, like the Galaxy class Enterprise-D. Yet here it is, floating about five feet over the battlefield and looking comparable to a squad of marines. Why would anyone think this was a good idea?

I recently watched a new gameplay video for AvP 3 and saw a marine being held down by an Alien, completely helpless, his gun nowhere to be seen. This pleased me, because it has always frustrated me how melee has gotten the shaft in first person games. Melee should be insanely scary, just because if the big bad monster actually makes it to you, you're not just going to get to shoot at it with your gun while it futilely claws away bits of your health and armor. If it gets into melee, it's going to knock your fucking gun out of your hands and proceed to rape your face off. That's what a melee enemy in a game should do. Yet it's never been portrayed this way. Both the previous AvP games just had you shooting aliens even at point blank range, negating their effectiveness. I'm glad to see that AvP 3 is gonna be different, giving melee enemies their teeth back. You should be scared of them surviving your ranged fire and getting into melee range. Guns never getting knocked out of your hands in FPSs was simply illogical and way too easy.