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Game tropes

Started by syntaxerror, December 10, 2014, 07:49:24 PM

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syntaxerror

Red barrels = explode
Green barrels = poison gas

What constants have you noticed in games? What mechanisms make you roll your eyes, what would you love to see done differently, just for once?

Destroy all earthenware for sporadic currency.

Hangthebuggers

Side-quests that fucking make no sense, considering you're supposed to be saving the world.

'Yes I know there's a radioactive dragon eating all the cities, but first I need to collect 50 herbs for an old man who I've never met before until now.

--

Also another things that really fucking annoys me in some games. The progressive economy and loot - Okay let's say you've got a world. You start off at Village A. Village A has very limited resources but just so happens to have easy monsters. Village B has a slightly better weapon that you'll have to pay for, that is just strong enough to kill the monsters in zone B and is just about affordable from the cash you've earned from Village A.... By the time you've got to Village Z, the end game, everything is super expensive and the monsters are super tough, but you'll just have enough coins to buy the weapon to kill the super bad guys in village Z...

Why the fuck doesn't the shop keeper just kill them then? Also what sort of fucking economy is this? Does nobody travel between the villages ffs?

I know it's a game, but that kind of thing got tiresome in the 90's and yet people still go down this 'progressive/lazy' route.



syntaxerror

I love it when you get to the 'city' for the first time and the shopkeepers are all that little bit meaner because the 'city' is being run by the bad guys or something so red potion costs 40 gold rather than 30 by the nice shopkeepers in the 'village'.

Funnily enough, that's one of my favourite things in games, especially when you can revisit the earlier areas when you're TOOLED THE FUCK UP and TAKE THEM BITCHES TO SCHOOL. I like a sense of gear/skills progression in games, artificial though it is.

Take Demon's Souls, for example. Go back to 1-1 weeks after after you've tuned up your enchanted FALCHION and ONE-SHOT some blue-eyed BASTARDS.

Urinal Cake

The quiet protagonist with an unremarkable history (seemingly) but destined for great things.
Also cooldowns.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

All the games I've played the hero has a really big penis. Let's just see:

-Hexen
-Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix
-Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing
-Football Manager 2009

Big penis
Big penis
Big penis
Big penis

Fucking hell

Bhazor

Mavis had notorious minimum requirements


madhair60

Fight boss.  Effortless.  Take no hits.  Dance gracefully around all his attacks, striking hard and accurate.  Its health hits 0.  You've won!  Cutscene.  It smacks you down in one hit.  Because STORYLINE

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

The bit where you lose all your weapons and have to sneak around.

Stealth bits where if you're spotted you have to repeat that section. Never finished or even got anywhere in Wind Waker for that reason. Fuck em.

syntaxerror

They're quite early on in Wind Waker iirc, annoying yes, but worth pushing past.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

You need a straight line of four in tetris and IT NEVER FUCKING GIVES YOU ONE DOES IT EIGHT BLOCKS IN A ROW CHEERS YOU WANKER

syntaxerror

Pretty sure that only happens in Tetris.

If you're ever sitting in the belly of a helicopter with a group of people. It will crash and you will survive with a bit of tinnitus.

In fact, any non sandbox game, if you're in any kind of air vehicle, it will be scripted to crash and your temporary tinnitus will be coming right on back.

Viero_Berlotti

Finding emails or written notes in a game that hint at underlings frustration at poor treatment from boss.

Big Jack McBastard

Quote from: madhair60 on December 10, 2014, 08:56:55 PM
Fight boss.  Effortless.  Take no hits.  Dance gracefully around all his attacks, striking hard and accurate.  Its health hits 0.  You've won!  Cutscene.  It smacks you down in one hit.  Because STORYLINE

The cousin of:

Finish section, wasting dudes all over, bucketfull of bullets available, you've just reloaded your clip, you've been shot a few times, you've taken bullets to the face, s'ok, no biggie, health packs sorted it.  Probably an S+ rating!

Then someone hits you 'round the head with a bit of wood or a gun-butt and you fall over and can't use your weapon. Because STORYLINE.

chand

Quote from: Viero_Berlotti on December 10, 2014, 11:28:07 PM
Finding emails or written notes in a game that hint at underlings frustration at poor treatment from boss.

Yes, also audio recordings in various forms, needlessly filling in tedious bits of background that we've already figured out.

"Day 1: Excited to be here for my first day in the lab, thought I'd make some audio logs of this above-top-secret project on separate memory sticks to be scattered in chronological order throughout this compound. Looking forward to injecting human beings with potent cocktails of experimental drugs in order to...well, I'm not sure exactly, but the cackling 8-foot battle-scarred maniac with an eye patch who's employed me to do this assures me it's all above board. I need this job anyway if I'm going to pay my daughter's medical bills, so I guess I'll just have to trust that this freakishly muscular psychopath with no medical qualifications and a mysterious past knows how to run a successful top-end research facility"

"Day 17: the test subjects are displaying increased aggression, and signs of physical mutation. I hope they don't turn into flesh-eating zombies! Haha! That would really be a kick in the pants. Especially after I worked so hard on this project that I'm assured by the guys upstairs definitely won't go wrong".

"Day 29: the test subjects are really off their fucking tits now! One of them tried to bite me! Really starting to have misgivings about this project to be quite honest. They're really pushing me too, missed my daughter's birthday party but I promised I'd make it up to her next week and take her to the zoo. Hopefully it'll be less terrifying than the human zoo we seem to have ill-advisedly created here! I'm still confident we can get good research out of these roidy-looking mutants though"

"Day 33: one of the test subjects escaped and had to be whomped to death with a fire extinguisher to the head by one of our security guys. Lucky he was here, although coincidentally he's since come down with a mysterious illness and had to be quarantined, hope his replacement gets here soon because I'm getting a bit nervous. Was talking to the janitor and he mentioned that our back-up generator is broken, and I just realised that this means if we were to have a power cut, all our security systems would go down and the containment cells would become unlocked! Seems a bit of a security flaw to be honest, especially now the test subjects are starting to really look like they're yearning for the sweet taste of human flesh. We've got a meeting Friday where I plan to raise this. I mean, it's probably nothing, but you can't be too careful, eh?"

"Day 34: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

HappyTree

Hello there traveller. Could you please help me with this large sack of gold I need to carry to the next village?
-No, fuck off. I will kill you and steal your gold, MWA HA HA HA
-Yes of course, m'lady. I would gladly die to protect you from the goblins up ahead.

Best game trope thing is of course Limmy's Falconhoof. I was crying with laughter the other week, never gets old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfKhDiUNOG0

Pdine

"You'll need to get the generator started..."

Hangthebuggers

PRESS A to jump!

*YOU'VE JUST UNLOCKED AN ACHIEVEMENT*

glitch

Quote from: Hangthebuggers on December 10, 2014, 08:01:13 PM
Also another things that really fucking annoys me in some games. The progressive economy and loot

Fable had a "better" economy where you could sell items that were abundant in one village but scarce in another for more money, but it was very easy to game the system and end up with more money than you could really use.

Jerzy Bondov

In Gears of War 3 you spend ages looking for some fuel for your car. Then you drive the car to the submarine base and find a submarine, but it hasn't got any fuel so you've got to go and find some fuel. So whatever that is.

Obel

Characters dying in cutscenes means they're dead forever, even if you could just revive them in game. Fuck off Aeris.

Also neutrality is unrewarded. You either have to be lovely, or a massive cunt to get rewards.

Pit-Pat

"Soldier, you're leaving the mission area, turn back within 20 seconds or we will be forced to use an artillery/poison gas strike to summarily execute one of our own men for desertion.

Cerys

You've been running around, demonstrating your stamina and agility.  Can you bunny-hop over that tiny fence?  Can you buggery.

Pit-Pat

The big bad guy was really your boss all along.

Which makes sense when you hear how game companies are run...

madhair60

[YOU NEED THE SILVER KEY]

"Well, I actually have a rocket launcher here, so I could j-"

[YOU NEED THE SILVER KEY TWAT]

glitch

Quote from: Obel on December 11, 2014, 01:43:14 PM
Characters dying in cutscenes means they're dead forever, even if you could just revive them in game. Fuck off Aeris.

Also neutrality is unrewarded. You either have to be lovely, or a massive cunt to get rewards.

Unless it's an Obsidian game, in which case neutrality is the path they want you to go down, e.g. KotOR 2.

BPFHAY

Quote from: Obel on December 11, 2014, 01:43:14 PM
Characters dying in cutscenes means they're dead forever, even if you could just revive them in game. Fuck off Aeris.


I think that revives in RPGs usually means bringing them back from being knocked out.