The 11 Worst Trends in Video Games

[The Kraig]

As far as I recall, there's never been a 'perfect woman'. They all have various weaknesses, or just aren't attractive (even for polygons).

Bloom is fucking annoying. Especially in Fable. And GRAW. Everything is a fucking shade of brown. Halo and GTA did not have bad bloom, these guys are crap at picking examples.

Why Halo is in the 'offenders list' for the supersoldier storyline confuses me. How can it copy itself? And to be fair, the stories involving supersoldiers all have very different circumstances. It's not the same story. It's like saying any game with the ability to shoot someone is the same.

Regular soldiers...is that a joke? What the hell are you supposed to do in war games then? Try to outfarm each other and economically starve neighbouring countries until they do what you want? They're not a trend, they're a necessity. Without them, RTS, FPS, stealth, blah blah genres wouldn't actually exist.

Are they actually trying to argue that it's better to take out actions/abilities from a game because there's enough buttons to use them but they can't be arsed learning how to use said buttons? Wow. That's quite amazing. I'd hate to see them playing PC games with a keyboard.

Licensed soundtracks are vital to the nature of certain games. GTA with an orchestral symphony accompanying your character's every mood would be very, very gay. Very gay.

I agree with the pointless yearly updates...I mean 'sequels'. FIFA was a cunt for that for years then everyone realised PES was better, and actually improved itself as much as it could by listening to the players. So much so that it didn't need the official licenses to impress people.

I also agree with the game price increase. It used to be about £20 for a Game Boy game in 1999. £30 for a Playstation game then as well. Then the PS2 games were £40, and now 360 and PS3 games are up near £50 when they're first released. It's getting ridiculous, I never actually buy games unless I know I will play it over and over with the same (or thereabouts) satisfaction.

Microtransactions can piss off. It's £40 a year for Xbox Live. That pays for the servers that run the online gaming. And the 'free' patches that automatically download. And that's about it. Marketplace and Arcade should pay for themselves, so I'm not exactly sure why I seem to be spending about £5 a month on extra content for games that I already bought (at an already-mentioned overblown price of £50).

Gangsta themes are fine, because there's very few of them. And fewer still of those very few that are actually worth looking at. Let alone buying.

WWII games have been done from every angle possible, every war has been re-enacted thousands, maybe millions, of times. And 95% of them suck massive cohones. But it's not really a trend. There's always been WWII games. Constantly. That's not really a sign of a trend, but a sad fact about gaming, and gamers.

Something that's not on the list is the 'special edition' releases of new games with bizarre shit in them. I don't mean like Halo, where you got a 'making of' documentary DVD and that's pretty much it. I mean stuff like Viva Pinata's special edition coming with an actual pinata. And the Halo 3 Legendary Edition, which comes with a hideous plastic helmet that you should be ashamed of showing anyone. If you're lucky it might fit your cat.

I also hate the merchandise trend. Halo getting it's own drink is fucking lame. And a lot of people despise Pokémon because of the mass merch-whoring it caused, without even playing the games. Not long until we'll be able to buy GTA mugs, scarves, lunchboxes and of course belt buckles. I know fans like to have merchandise, but it gets to the stage where it's ridiculous for almost all of the big gaming franchises.