Cliche
I've recently noticed three huge cliches in the world of gaming.
1 : The Hunter.
There are too many creatures and enemies called "Hunters". The three that instantly spring to mind are from Halo, Half-life 2 Episode 2 and Prey. I'm sure there are others - no doubt some pixelated variety of Strogg is called a Hunter. Would it be so much so ask for a more interesting name?
According to the synonyms tool in Microsoft Word, another word for Hunter is Seeker. However, this sounds rubbish. If you reduce it merely to "Hunt", then one of my favourite suggested synonyms is "Search for".
Thus, I think a great new name for a video game enemy would be the "The Searcher For". It would have horns and whatnot and be generally shit like stuff from Uwe Boll (creator of such stunning movie-graphical masterpieces as House of the Dead, a film with a lower IMDB rating than art-house classic Porn stars from Mars.)
2 : Predictable Bosses
You enter a room filled with ammo, weapons and armour. There are medkits lying around and no enemies are nearby. What does this mean? Other than a very foolish marine/monster/guard/NSA agent deciding that leaving all the weapons in one place is a good idea, it means there's a boss coming up. Or at the very least a pretty big fight with lots of stuff to kill.
It's always so predictable. For a change I'd like a boss to come right at the end of an area where you've used up most of your ammo and make things a lot easier. My second complaint about bosses is that they always have a nervous habit of exposing their weakspot. Take Thardus, the rock-monster boss from Metroid Prime.
As I see it, he had two options at any given point in the fight.
> Keep throwing rocks at you
> Expose his weak area for several seconds
Maybe I don't speak for all of us here - and I admit what I'm about to say is a little crazy - but I'd have gone with the rocks option. Why quit when you're ahead?
3. Women in games
It would be nice if, just for one, women in computer games wouldn't overbalance in real life due to extreme breast-size. The most absurd example I could find was Lucy from Quake III, shown on the right. That's just not natural.
Every game I can think of - except Halflife 2 - has women shown with unbelievably huge bosoms. It's just not realistic in any way, and I think talks down to people who can play video games. When I say that, I exclude those who play on Xbox Live. It would be very difficult to talk down to that kind of person without resorting to grunts.
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For those who haven't noticed, some holiday updates are generally of a slightly reduced size because I know there are fewer people around to read them. However, Sunday's full-sized update will return to normal and should be an education in everyone about how not to go about entering the stock market. All will become clear...
1 : The Hunter.
There are too many creatures and enemies called "Hunters". The three that instantly spring to mind are from Halo, Half-life 2 Episode 2 and Prey. I'm sure there are others - no doubt some pixelated variety of Strogg is called a Hunter. Would it be so much so ask for a more interesting name?
According to the synonyms tool in Microsoft Word, another word for Hunter is Seeker. However, this sounds rubbish. If you reduce it merely to "Hunt", then one of my favourite suggested synonyms is "Search for".
Thus, I think a great new name for a video game enemy would be the "The Searcher For". It would have horns and whatnot and be generally shit like stuff from Uwe Boll (creator of such stunning movie-graphical masterpieces as House of the Dead, a film with a lower IMDB rating than art-house classic Porn stars from Mars.)
2 : Predictable Bosses
You enter a room filled with ammo, weapons and armour. There are medkits lying around and no enemies are nearby. What does this mean? Other than a very foolish marine/monster/guard/NSA agent deciding that leaving all the weapons in one place is a good idea, it means there's a boss coming up. Or at the very least a pretty big fight with lots of stuff to kill.
It's always so predictable. For a change I'd like a boss to come right at the end of an area where you've used up most of your ammo and make things a lot easier. My second complaint about bosses is that they always have a nervous habit of exposing their weakspot. Take Thardus, the rock-monster boss from Metroid Prime.
As I see it, he had two options at any given point in the fight.
> Keep throwing rocks at you
> Expose his weak area for several seconds
Maybe I don't speak for all of us here - and I admit what I'm about to say is a little crazy - but I'd have gone with the rocks option. Why quit when you're ahead?
3. Women in games
It would be nice if, just for one, women in computer games wouldn't overbalance in real life due to extreme breast-size. The most absurd example I could find was Lucy from Quake III, shown on the right. That's just not natural.
Every game I can think of - except Halflife 2 - has women shown with unbelievably huge bosoms. It's just not realistic in any way, and I think talks down to people who can play video games. When I say that, I exclude those who play on Xbox Live. It would be very difficult to talk down to that kind of person without resorting to grunts.
-----
For those who haven't noticed, some holiday updates are generally of a slightly reduced size because I know there are fewer people around to read them. However, Sunday's full-sized update will return to normal and should be an education in everyone about how not to go about entering the stock market. All will become clear...
posted by Mkzrj at 6:56 pm
5 Comments:
Wow. When I type a word wrong now, Firefox 2.0 automatically points out I've spelled it wrong. And insists Firefox has a capital. Which annoys me. So I'm adding the uncapitalised version to the dictionary. And its Americanised. Must fix that. Argh! Stupid desire to use z for every word.
Anyway. The entry was good. You should have included exploding barrels though, since I did mention them to you *evil glare* and are definitely on of the more prominent cliches - That they are always conveniently located near enemies, always in clusters, and remarkably outnumber normal barrels. I don't get why this supposedly amazing AI decided an explosive barrel is good cover.
Lucy - Quake III makes me feel sick.
First off, the word is "Americanized" :p.
Secondly, using "z"s in -ize and such is not American spelling at all. It's been a valid option in British English for years, and was indeed the most common spelling in the early 20th century.
Many publications, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, still use the "-ize" ending instead of the "-ise" one.
Strangely, people now often accuse those who spell this way of Americanizing.
I can't sympathize.
It isn't wize.
You shouldn't be so hasty to generalise. It is not true that all -ize endings are not Americanisations.
Also, why assume I am talking about -ise and -ize. I may have been talking about 'z' in a completely different context. For example, prise and prize, analyse and analyze.
Hasty assumptions achieve nothing.
Yes, exploding barrels get a bit boring, unless they're in Black, in which case they ROCK!!!!
Ashley in Resident Evil 4 doesn't have HUGE breasts. And I'm surprised that your example wasn't Lara Croft. FOOL.
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