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A friend and I got talking about clichés in gaming. Seems like there's always some sort of slime creature in early RPGs, or giant plant battles in recent platformers, or double jumps in basically everything. So my challenge is this: How would you make a game that parodies clichés found in gaming today?

For example, a 2-D fighter in which the characters are so huge that they have to hunch over just to fit on the screen.

Just for fun, anyone got other ideas or want to expose other clichés you're tired of?

Let's see what type of imagination CAGs have...

Edit: Changed "cliches" to "clichés" for non-caffienated people.

I swear I read this post a half dozen times before I realized it said "cliches" and not "glitches."

I need some coffee...

Coin collecting. It all started with Mario Bros... It went downhill from there.

Pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher.

I'm all up for FPS but can't they get a little more creative with weapons?

Also, I've noticed since playing a bunch of recent third-person action games that most involve floaty orbs that appear after you kill an enemy and magically float toward you and get absorbed into you. Who decided that all of a sudden the gamer is too lazy to virtually run a couple of feet to grab a powerup?

Well i don't like coin collecting, but i guess id rather have them come to me instead .

This was done in a magazine earlier,

Ill tell you a cliche that I miss personally, are the mini games like bustin the car in SF, Breaking the Items in Mortal Kombat, The mini games in Simpsons Arcade.

I miss Simpsons Arcade. There hasn't been a 4-player game I've enjoyed as much as that and TMNT.

I liked busting up the bricks in MK, but I totally sucked at it. Thats the only reason I continued playing that game after I got bored with the fighting aspect.

the storyline of the social misfit/outcast has to end up saving the people/world that rejected him/her and in the process...gets a new outlook on life.

How about the "implied" romance in all the RPG's (Most Final Fantasies come to mind) that never quite comes to anything?

Or better yet, the cliche that has become so normal that it can almost be discredited as a cliche because it is so expected that you just assume it is part of any game

--The "boss" that you destroy at the end of any game, only to discover *gasp* the REAL boss who has been behind the whole thing to begin with.

How nearly every RPG starts out with the main character either unconscious or in bed...

And the main character is an effeminate 5'7 teenager or a spunky misunderstood girl?

The whole "Collect the Yellow Key" puzzle solving setup. I don't want to find another damn key! I've got five - isn't that enough?

how about that those bosses you beat earlier in the game will all come back and you'll have to fight them again.

Oh and Jumping puzzles are the worst thing in gamming.

How about the evil corporation threatening to take over the world? You are the lone wolf who can save all humanity. Most games today are as cliche as DC comics, and Lord of the Rings.

RPGs with the ubiquitous crystals of some earth/elemental power.

For RPG cliches:

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

As far as fps shooters and many other games for that matter, its funny how many items are stored in crates/boxes, and how many barrels explode.

Ah yes, crates and barrels. How could one forget about those, unless they were so overused and common place that you simply disregard them and assume their existence even before you have played the game.

There should be a game where nothing is hidden in any crate and barrell for the entirte game just to piss people off.

Yep, the RPGs are often some of the worst offenders. Here's some elements I'd like to never again see (My personal peeve list):

- any kind of stone, crystal, gem, or jewel that has been split into pieces, secreted away in volcanoes/mountains/underwater/etc, and that cause great and amazing things to happen when they're all brought together.

- parts of an ancient weapon that have to be reforged

- "Legend has it..."

- "Go kick their butt!..." (I never want to see the word butt ever again in any game, unless it is referring to a cigarette.)

- ninjas, swords in general

- shooting someone with a gun/slicing with a sword/exploding at close range, only to have them get up and offer a stirring expository sequence. A shotgun blast to the face should cause horrible, bloody death, not loquacity.

- corpses that DON'T STAY! ARRRGGH! I hate blinking/disappearing/dissipating corpses in battle. Let me see the smoking, charred ruins of my enemies (or my comrades).

bratty heroes in rpg's

well something I hate, that's a cliche would have to the multi-part final boss battle, why can't final bosses stay *DEAD*