Computer and video game item clichés
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- For general role-playing game clichés, see Role-playing game clichés.
Computer and video game item clichés refer to items that are consistent within computer and video game development. Many known object and item clichés are crates, toilets, and exploding barrels. Some of the clichés below are perhaps not genuine clichés as they are caused by technological or programming complexity limitations. This is likely due to programming and memory constraints and scope of the game, so as to focus on playability rather than realism.
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[edit] Objects and props
[edit] Crates/blocks
Crates are a familiar item in many video games particularly first-person shooters such as Half-Life. They often contain items which the player can use in the game. They might be breakable (like in Half-Life and the Sonic Adventure series) or movable to solve puzzles (like in The Legend of Zelda).
In the Crash Bandicoot series, crates are primarily used to hold wumpa fruit.
The games Soul Reaver and Tomb Raider were derided by some players for overuse of movable-block puzzles. Interestingly, one of the oldest puzzle games is Sokoban, which consists entirely of movable-block puzzles.
Other uses of the crate include obstructing the player from taking alternate paths or leaving the map; providing the player with "stairs" to reach another level on the map; and providing players with cover where there are no natural obstructions (such as a cargo bay in Halo: Combat Evolved). Sometimes, crates are arranged in sprawling mazes like in the famous Doom level Containment Area.
In many first-person shooters, crates are inexplicably bulletproof, or explosive.
No matter how large a breakable crate is, it is usually either completely empty or contains only small objects. Crates that contains ammo or health pick-ups, even large ones, only contain one or a few packs of ammo or health. In most first-person shooters crates are also impossible to lift, and either impossible or very difficult to move, no matter how empty; Half-Life 2 is a notable exception to this.
Crates have been criticized as a cheap and unimaginative substitute for real architecture. In 2000, Old Man Murray introduced the satirical "Crate Review System" to rate games based on the "start to crate" (StC) time: the shorter the gameplay time until the first crate is spotted, the worse the game.[1] They wrote, for example:
- Heretic 2 starts you off staring right at a large crate. ... It's observably, undeniably bad. It's as if the lead designer arrived at work on day one, sat down at his desk, sharpened a pencil, threw up his hands and said "well, I can't think of anything."
The cliched use of crates was mentioned in The Matrix: Path of Neo during the first practice level where Neo mutters "Crates, how original.". Various other games also include self-referential humorous references to crates, such as SiN Episodes: Emergence, where shipping procedures read on the dock include ‘Packing: When in doubt, use a crate’. The game does indeed include an immense number of crates in illogical locations.
The PC game Star Trek: Elite Force II featured a secret area accessible only by using 5 crates scattered throughout a sewer level. The secret area contained a monster made entirely of crates. Despite the cliché of the indestructible crate, the crate monster was vulnerable to normal weapons.
Usually crates will not have any pallet below them nor any other visible way of lifting them, leaving it completely unclear how the crates were moved there in the first place.
- Seen in: Too many games to count!
[edit] Pieces of string
In point-and-click adventure games, the player often has to collect pieces of string or rope. Rope is also a component often used to solve puzzles in interactive fiction games.
- In Sam & Max Hit the Road, Sam points out "You always need a large piece of string in games like this."
- In Escape from Monkey Island, Guybrush meets his future self, who gives him several items (all of which are only used in this particular puzzle), including a rope, to which Guybrush says "Hmm, a rope. That could be useful".
- The first part of the three-part text adventure Knight Orc is devoted to collecting enough pieces of string to form a rope which can get you across a chasm.
- In both Fallout and Fallout 2, it is possible to buy, sell, and find rope nearly everywhere, though it doesn't take as prominent a part in the gameplay as it does in Wasteland.
[edit] Metal bars
Long metal bars or simply crowbars are also common in point-and-click adventure games in order to break and open things. In Monkey Island 2, a crowbar is found near the end of the story and it proves to be quite useful. Other games that feature generally metal bars used for prying and (in contrast to other items) are used more than twice. It is also notable that the crowbar served the same purpose in the popular FPS Half-Life, which is unusual for a game of its genre (usually in an FPS, a crowbar is more likely to be used as a weapon than as a tool).
- Seen in: Beneath a Steel Sky, Curse of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Full Throttle, Ghosthunter, Manhunter, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Deus Ex.
[edit] Toilets
In several games, mostly of the FPS genre, there is a section that will either take the player to or through a bathroom. An early example of this is seen at the end of Jet Set Willy. In Sierra adventures, like Larry 1, Space Quest II etc., the player will visit a bathroom and obtain hints or items. In Police Quest, the player must visit the department's toilets everytime he must change his police uniform.
In GoldenEye 007 the player can kill a man who is in a bathroom stall in the second mission. In Resident Evil 4, the player can blast a Ganados standing in front of the urinal; investigating the urinal afterwards gives a comment that the Ganados retain enough humanity to use the restroom. In Medal of Honor: Frontline there is a mission where the player finds a very surprised German while he's in the bathroom. Also, there is a similar encounter in one of the early levels of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault where you enter a bathroom with a German soldier still in one of the booths. In Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3 (after the playable dream sequence), Prey and Indigo Prophecy, the character starts out in a bathroom.
Many games have a feature where the player could walk up to the toilets or urinals and try to use them. Sometimes, before the ushering in of better hardware, the developers would add sound events to the urinal or toilet bowl to make the game seem more interactive. Examples of this can be seen in Duke Nukem 3D, where use of a urinal not only evokes a sound effect and a comment from Duke, but also increases his health by several points. A children's game called HURL has the main character replenish his health by sticking his head into a toilet. Some games, namely Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, even go as far as requiring the player to go down the toilet to reach the next area (parodying the use of Warp Pipes in Mario platformers). In Final Fantasy VI, characters could use the toilet in the Imperial capital (using the wounded/weakened sprite). In train level TimeSplitters: Future Perfect a female guard can be heard on the toilet saying "It's like giving birth!" Another instance in this game is when the player enters a restroom on the same mission; the advisor says "This is hardly the time!" Adventure game Maniac Mansion features a bathroom complete with toilet. When the phrase "USE TOILET" is entered, the characters say to the player "I'd like a little more privacy for that!".
Baten Kaitos has a restroom area in the Imperial palace where the player can find toilets, items and even a guard looking at what appears to be a pornographic magazine. In the game Boogerman, the toilet is an integral part of the gameplay as it transports the hero to various areas; a toilet in a secret area of Earthworm Jim's first level also served as a teleporter. In Deus Ex: Invisible War, a futuristic urinal near the end of the game allows you to transport to a special "party area", featuring flaming penguins and a floating collection of humorous development quotes.
In Conker's Bad Fur Day Conker must battle the Great Mighty Poo in an area that turns out to be a giant toilet, flusher and all. Additionally, a multi-player stage features a bathroom area where normal weapons are replaced with a urine stream. One level in the Mock 2 joke level pack for Doom actually involved being teleported into a man's rectum, going down the toilet, and fighting "shit and piss demons" in the pipes. Banjo-Kazooie required gamers to venture down a toilet smeared with fecal stains and sporting crude noises called Loggo.
In Hitman, toilets are often used to grab diguises from lone people. It should also be noted, in the early feature notes of Battlefield 2142 it was stated as one of the features being: Usable toilets on the battlefield. Why such a note was included is yet unknown. In the GameCube version of Resident Evil, there is a point where Jill Valentine drains a bathtub to find a dead body in it, which immediately causes her to vomit in the toilet. In Breakdown, your partner Alex has you vomit into a toilet.
In Max Payne, especially during the initial levels, there are numerous toilets seen during the levels, they are usually inhabited by junkies (or a thug in one case), and provide painkillers. The floors are almost always littered with pornographic magazines and syringes. There is even a scene parodying Pulp Fiction in which a thug walks out of a bathroom completely unarmed, his gun being held by the protagonist who conveniently finds it laying on the kitchen counter.
- Seen in: Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, GoldenEye 007, Duke Nukem 3D, HURL, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Final Fantasy VI, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Earthworm Jim, DOOM III, Resident Evil (GameCube version), Resident Evil 4, Indigo Prophecy, Maniac Mansion, Hitman, Redneck Rampage Rides Again, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Breakdown,Max Payne
[edit] Exploding barrels
In many first-person shooters and the occasional RTS, exploding barrels are frequently seen. These objects can take out large groups of enemies after being shot at by the player. The barrels are more often than not marked with a hazard warning symbol and are colored red. They might also be fire extinguishers or compressed gas canisters. Sometimes, they are an obstacle or hazard to a player under attack by enemy fire. However the enemy very frequently ignores the danger and even uses it as cover occasionally. [2] (The abundance of explosive barrels in Half-Life 2 was humorously "explained" in one issue of the web comic Concerned.)
In a similar way, throughout the Diablo franchise there are barrels which block the way, and which when destroyed can also explode doing damage, or uncover minor amounts of treasure. The exploding ones are particularly daunting seeing as they cannot be identified from the non-exploding ones. When triggered, they frequently create a domino effect that in turn makes other nearby barrels explode causing much more damage than the initial one.
In the Donkey Kong Country games, the barrels (marked with prominent "TNT" lettering) must be thrown in order to have them explode. They can destroy a large number of blockades and enemies within a small area.
- Seen in: Battlefield 2, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Freedom Fighters, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Crash Bandicoot, Nox, Half-Life series, Doom series, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, Medal of Honor series, Call of Duty 2, Commandos series, Diablo series, Donkey Kong Country series, Fable, Resident Evil: Nemesis, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Perfect Dark, Perfect Dark Zero, Black, F.E.A.R. (computer game), Star Fox Adventures, Enter The Matrix, Spider-Man: The Movie, many James Bond, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker video games.
[edit] Where do they hide that?
Many games rely on health potions, mana potions or some sort of item like food, meat, soda, ammo and weapons. Many times when playing in a role-playing game for example, the hero will often find items dropped by a mob when it has been slain, even though it would seem impossible for that creature to hide that hunk of meat, pizza, can of soda or huge axe anywhere. The same applies for the characters themselves — although they have an inventory that can hold many weapons and/or items which can be switched at will, it would be impossible to realistically hold that many items and still do battle. Also, in some games (such as Xenosaga and Final Fantasy X), characters who are currently separated, or who have not even met yet, have access to the same inventory. (See hammerspace) Most first person shooters allow the player to carry huge amounts of heavy ammunition as well as several large weapons unhampered. Shooters aiming for more realism, such as Halo and especially World War II themed games, tend to limit the weight and number of weapons player can carry at once, and some like Deus Ex and Resident Evil 4 go as far as to use a Tetris like inventory for the player to pick his items.
In many comic point-and-click adventure games will satirize this very rule, showing the player character trying to fit an object in his coat. A famous example of this appears in the Monkey Island series, where Guybrush Threepwood is seen storing various items by stuffing them into his pants. Another spoof appears in the 2004 game The Bard's Tale, where the bard kills a wolf near the beginning of the game and it drops a massive pile of treasure, much to the surprise and consternation of the narrator. Baten Kaitos also pokes fun at this, stating early in the game that "You can't get money just by killing monsters" (which in the game you don't).
A notable exception to this is the Zone of the Enders series where high end large robots called Orbital Frames possess a vector trap which compresses space and makes it capable of carrying pieces of equipment that are sometimes several times larger than the orbital frames like Jehuty's "Vector Cannon". Also, Beyond Good and Evil includes a scanner-like device able to store physical objects as data, and recall them as required. Also, in the pc game Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force, the player and other characters are able to store weapons in a 'transporter buffer'. The weapons subsequently materialise in the players hands when selected.
- Seen in: Almost all of adventure games and role-playing games
[edit] Health packs, ammo and armor
Found mainly in first-person shooters, health packs, ammunition and body armor are found lying around in places you would not generally find them; for example, a new weapon might be found hovering a foot off the ground in the middle of a road. Health packs can heal near-fatal wounds instantaneously, even during a heated battle, with no need for stitches or periods of convalescence; sometimes, even more ridiculously, so can food (which is also found lying on the floor or, even odder, hidden in crates, trash cans, or the oil drums that don't explode), or in the case of the Max Payne games, painkillers. Likewise, armor and ammunition take effect instantly; it takes no time to pick them up.
A common occurrence in games featuring firearms is weapon magazines behaving unrealistically; when the weapon is reloaded after being partly emptied, the player almost always keeps the ammunition that remained in the discarded magazine without taking any time to remove it. This is not true in the Battlefield series, however - if you fire a single bullet, then reload, you lose the rest of the magazine. In addition, enemies can shoot an unlimited amount of projectiles but the hero has a limited supply. Yet, if he actually gets his enemy's weapon, it is loaded to the maximum and the amount of projectiles decreases normally as he uses it. Additionally, while almost all firearms have a limited supply of ammo, and flashlights frequently run on very short limited batteries, chainsaws always have an unlimited supply of fuel.
These clichés are generally avoided only by the most realistic tactical first-person shooters. In Operation Flashpoint, injuries can only be patched up via medics or MASHes to reduce their negative effects on soldier performance, and soldiers are never fully healed. In the Rainbow Six series of games, injuries last all mission, and the death of an operative is permanent. In both game series, magazine ammunition is tracked correctly, and reloading will select the magazine with the most remaining ammunition.
