Let’s find some of the worst video game clichés ever, pointed out by the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons Game.
There are plenty of worst video game clichés everywhere on the Internet.
For example, The Comic Book Guy pointed out that the Double Jump is the worst video game clichés, thus tooking all the humor from himself. So you have to be creative.
Double Jump
“Oh, a double jump. That’s real original.”
Lost Abilities
“Good luck getting your stuff back, because you’ll never enjoy this game.”
Leaving Punishment
“That’s not Jumanji anymore. If you leave a game to make dinner or take a shower, you’ll be punished.”
Vote Kicking Abuse
“If you wanted to join a random game with other people that are already casting a vote against you, then you’re not gonna like this game.”
The "Blue Spiny Shell" Gimmick
“Every kart racing game will end your friendship if you find yourself in first place.”
Yellow paint sucks. It’s okay if you need it as an accessibility option but it shouldn’t be forced onto players who want to use their brain.
In a similar vein, an overreliance on quest markers to tell you where to go. It’s gotten to the point where the game literally will only tell you where to go based on a marker.
Older games would point you into the right direction with good map design, and npc dialogue giving you directions. It just feels immersion breaking when I’m looking at a yellow triangle on my minimap more than I am the actual environment.
Here’s a humorous line from a cliches you’re suggesting.
Yellow Paint
“If the Simpsons really have yellow skin, then gamers should blame the developers.”
Undersized Characters
“If you choose Oddjob, many players won’t be able to shoot you. We all knew you were a jerk.”
Unnecessary Collectibles
“The only way to stop players attempting 100%… Small tokens that do nothing! At all!”
Costumes/Custom Player Models
“Yeah, I’m totally about to show up to a convention in a furry suit.”
One-Hit Death
“Good luck reaching the finish line in one piece, as you will die. A lot.”
Anti-Cheat Ban
“Well, that has been a fun ride for all of us. You will never come back to the game, from any server, any state, any country, in the world.”
Auto Life
“You’d better knock him out twice, because Flanders can revive after his first knockout.”
Quick Time Events
“You better react quickly, or you will die in a fire.”
Bot Players
“No video game is unplayable without real robots ruining your gaming experience.”
Overvisited Location
"Q: What’s a game that has players doing the same activity and nothing else?
A: Greed."
Second Final Boss Fight
Did you think that you had just defeated the final boss once, no? How about a second final boss battle right after the first!
Water Levels
I will drown if someone creates a level that players hate.
NSFW User-Generated Content
If I had a penny to pay a pole dancer, players would be disturbed if someone play as Jenny from Minecraft!
Review Bombed Games
You do not want to annoy your clients, as it could mentally bring out their torches and pitchforks to turn against you.
Compatible Light Gun Accessories
I dislike it when my screen flashes, even my weapon of choice tastes like concentrated orange.
Alternative Account Ban
If you want to come back into the game after your first ban, the moderators will not give you a second chance. C’est la vie.
Game Communication Spam
“I’ll leaving an online game if someone is playing the Baby Shark Dance in the microphone.”
Button Mashing
“I got blisters in my hand for playing Tug-o’-War while wearing a turtle dragon suit between two cliffs, pulling the same rope, while a carnivorus plant is located between the two, waiting for you and the other team to die.”
Account Reputation
"Q: What game engine when they gave to a bad rep?
A: Steam"
Vehicle Section
“Drive responsively, kids! Because you’ll never drive a real car in real life.”
Tamagotchi-style Gameplay
"Why do I need to take care of my virtual character?
Because you’re leaving him spinning in his grave!"
Copyright Content Takedown
"Oh, Nintendo… My Nintendo…
Where did you’ve become the Most Hated Video Game Developer in the Whole New World?"
Avatar Crashers
"Why is my computer overheating so much?
Because someone touches you with his stack of nukes while you’re playing a VR social game."
Banned Livestream Games
"Q: Who can you called someone who’s in the middle of making Twitch safer?
A: A private dick, except with a graphic nudity."
Game Development Hell
“If an indie developer consume so much time to make a indie game, then you’ll never going to play the most wishlisted video game in the future.”
Blood Code
“If the Dexter TV series was real, I’ll rather be forced to clean a room covered in blood. This ain’t an American fighting game, folks!”
Simulated Arcade Cabinets
“Why would I use a fire hose to turn off the fire?
What would I need to pump a handcar in a such pursuit?
Why would I need to use a double paddle on the boat in a rapid river?
Why would any arcade cabinet designers make their games to experience it?”
Misleading Game Advertisement
“Hero Wars. Why they have to be Hero Wars?“
Product Placement
”Imagine a brand temple run-style game where you can serve Pepsi to avoid anational crisis.”
Unskippable and UnPauseable Cutscenes
"Enjoy the game where you can, because you’ll never be able to skip a single cutscene entirely!“
Escort Missions
”Do you hated it where you have a old lady in your car, constantly smackiing on you with her handbag while driving around like a chauffeur? Well, this is a game for you.”
Forced Failures
”Ah, yes. Even though you got defeated by the final boss of the game, your epic adventure has just begun. So, you better grow stronger like Conan.
I’M ALSO LOOKING AT YOU, HERO WARS!!”
Ridable Animal Friends
”I hate of taking care of my furry buddy who throw bombs at enemies. Even with the individual colors, a yellow boxing gloves, can perform magic tricks, hop on a pogo stick, and even gets fatter!”
VR Exclusive Games
”Steamed Frames. That’s why I called virtual reality.”
Invincibility power up
No video game isn’t complete without an item that makes you immortal less then 10 seconds.
Unlimited lives
Death is only a minor inconvenience. Might as well not have lives in your game at all.
Dark and Griddy games
Oh wow. Another super dark mature serious and violent game with serious characters, a dark and grim story and with no bright nice colours, no catchy music and no imagination put into it. Wow, that hasn’t been done for like the 900th times in a century of games ENOUGH ALREADY!
Surprise villain
Remember kids, never trust strangers especially the ones that asked you to complete their tasks because they’re too lazy to do by their own and will stab you in the back (figuratively and literally) when you finish all of the said stranger’s deeds.
Touch controls
Name ONE DS game that doesn’t use the touch screen in any way. I’ll wait.
Explosive enemy
I’ve dealt with suicidal people in my life, but these ones are over extreme.
Anti-Piracy Protection
Arrr! Whoever tries t’ copy games ‘n sell ‘em t’ scallywags fer free? Ye better buy a new physical copy o’ the game if ye won’t t’ be arrested by the guards!
Multiple Accounts
We all hate when trolls use multiple game accounts to keep coming back for more. After banning the same troll like once, twice, three times WE HAD ENOUGH! People should have a limit of one account at the time.
Social Trolling
What’s the definition of the proximity chat feature?
Recording videos of people’s privacy online, taking and posting pictures and names of the trolled victims in his museum without consent and tell victims to pay a $100 fee, if they force you to take it down.
Tupper will be over-extremely furious if he continues to post record stuff online without anyone’s consent!
Here’s a full rewritten of the Worst. Video game cliches. Ever.
Please enjoy!
“Oh, marvelous. I spent forty hours in the prequel transforming a fragile farm boy into a literal god of war, only for him to trip over a pebble in the opening cinematic of the sequel and contract total, convenient amnesia. Good luck getting your level-99 meteor spell back, because you will spend the next three hours learning how to jump over a hedge. Worst. Sequel. Ever.”
“Apparently, modern game developers believe that a brief bathroom break or a necessary nutritional intermission is a high crime against digital society. This is not Jumanji; my physical form requires sustenance. Yet, if you dare step away for five minutes to flip a burger, the servers will banish you to a matchmaking purgatory with the hackers and the toddlers. I am being punished for basic biology.”
“Ah, the online matchmaking experience. If your lifelong dream was to join a public lobby only to be instantly exiled by a trio of Mountain-Dew-fueled teenagers because your avatar’s cosmetic helmet is ‘out of season,’ then this is the digital wasteland for you. They cast a vote against you before your textures even finish rendering. Utterly toxic.”
“The ultimate betrayal of meritocracy. You navigate every hairpin turn with surgical, robotic precision, only for the game to hand a heat-seeking missile of pure malice to an infant in eighth place. Every kart racing game is specifically engineered to incinerate your hard-earned victory—and your closest friendships—the exact microsecond you cross into first place. Highly illogical, deeply frustrating.”
“Oh, fascinating. Apparently, modern game designers believe the average consumer possesses the spatial awareness of a blind mole rat. Must we slather every climbable ledge in bright, immersion-shattering yellow paint? If The Simpsons genuinely had skin that shade of neon, I would suspect severe radiation poisoning from Sector 7G, not a subtle hint to press the jump button. Worst. Art. Direction. Ever.”
“Let us be entirely candid. If your selection on the character matrix lands on a certain vertically challenged British secret agent, you are not displaying tactical prowess; you are advertising your status as a social pariah. We all know your hitbox is mathematically impossible to target. You are a jerk, and your victory is completely hollow.”
“The ultimate insult to the completionist intellect. How do developers artificially extend a ninety-minute narrative into a hundred-hour slog? By scattering nine hundred identical, microscopic tokens across a sterile map. They offer no lore, no mechanical utility, and absolute zero satisfaction. They exist purely to Mock. My. Time.”
“Ah, yes. I am entirely certain that a high-stakes, tactical military simulation is greatly enhanced by an operator wearing a neon-pink anthropomorphic animal suit. If I desired to witness an unsettling gathering of individuals in plush, synthetic furs, I would simply attend a sci-fi convention in mid-July. Keep it out of my tactical shooters.”
“Marvelous design. I have navigated a veritable labyrinth of traps, only to brush against a pixelated blade of grass and instantly disintegrate. Good luck reaching the finish line in one piece, as you will die. A lot. It is not challenging; it is a cheap, mechanical trial-and-error memory test masquerading as difficulty.”
“Well, that has been a thoroughly disappointing ride for all involved. Once the automated corporate overlords flag your client, your digital existence is effectively expunged. You will never return to the game—not from any server, any state, or any sovereign nation on Earth. Banished to the shadow realm of the offline world.”
“Highly illogical. You must execute a flawless victory twice, because a certain hyper-religious Springfield neighbor apparently possesses the miraculous ability to resurrect immediately following his first knockout. A blatant, unfair mechanic designed to induce controller-shattering rage.”
“Ah, the pinnacle of interactive cinema. Press ‘X’ within 0.4 seconds or your legendary, battle-hardened warrior will clumsily trip over his own cape and perish in a tragic, unskippable fire. I did not purchase a high-end computing rig to play a glorified game of Simon Says.”
“There is no digital landscape so pure that it cannot be utterly ruined by the introduction of automated programming. No video game is unplayable without real, mindless robots sabotaging your match, walking into walls, and ruining your competitive ranking. I prefer my opponents to have actual brains to mock.”
“Allow me to present a query. What is a digital destination where thousands of players engage in the exact same repetitive, mind-numbing activity for eternity, to the exclusion of all actual narrative depth? The answer is simple: corporate greed. It is a digital Skinner box designed to harvest your currency.”
“Oh, brilliant. Did you foolishly assume that your triumphant orchestration of buttons and strategy had actually defeated the antagonist? Laughable! Behold, he has transformed into a giant, celestial space-squid with three entirely new health bars, immediately following the first encounter. My wrists are throbbing.”
“I shall surely drown in a sea of my own tears if another developer forces me into a subterranean aquatic level. The physics are invariably sluggish, the oxygen meters are universally anxiety-inducing, and the movement controls mimic a shopping cart with broken wheels. Universally reviled.”
“If I possessed a single copper coin for every time a block-based sandbox game was corrupted by highly inappropriate user-generated models, I would be wealthy enough to purchase a mint-condition Radioactive Man #1. Witnessing blocky, low-polygon avatars engagement in illicit activities is profoundly disturbing.”
“A masterclass in public relations failure. You do not wish to alienate your core demographic, as they will mentally brandish their digital torches and pitchforks, descending upon your store page to reduce your user score to an absolute zero. Hell hath no fury like a scorned nerd with a keyboard.”
“I highly despise it when my cathode-ray tube display flashes violently, yet my plastic weapon of choice is entirely incompatible with modern television technology. The peripheral feels less like a precision laser weapon and more like cheap, concentrated orange plastic plastic. Completely useless.”
“If you harbor the naive delusion that you can bypass a punitive moderation restriction by simply generating a secondary digital identity, think again. The administrators possess zero leniency and will instantly delete your secondary presence. As the French say: C’est la vie.”
“The proximity voice feature was a mistake. I shall immediately sever my connection to any digital match the exact microsecond some prepubescent child decides to broadcast the ‘Baby Shark Dance’ directly into my high-fidelity headset. It is absolute auditory psychological warfare.”
“I currently possess literal dermatological trauma on my palms from executing a digital tug-of-war minigame. Why must I wear a spiked turtle-dragon shell while pulling a rope suspended over a chasm containing a carnivorous plant? It is a literal health hazard masquerading as family entertainment.”
“Let us ask a poignant question: What digital distribution platform has managed to turn a player’s social reputation into a toxic, metric-driven nightmare? The answer is Steam. A single negative comment on your profile, and you are branded a pariah by the elite.”
“Please, drive responsibly, children. Because the abysmal, floaty physics of this mandatory driving segment ensure that you will never comprehend the actual mechanics of operating a real motor vehicle in the physical world. A complete detour from the core gameplay.”
“Why must I constantly monitor the metabolic functions of a virtual entity? Because if I dare neglect my digital ward for more than twenty minutes, I will return to find him spinning in his virtual grave, replaced by a tombstone. I am a collector, not a babysitter!”
“Oh, Nintendo… My Nintendo… onto what dark path of litigious tyranny have you stumbled? When did you transition from the purveyors of whimsical childhood joy into the most aggressively feared, copyright-striking entity in the entire New World? Cease and desist, indeed.”
“Why is my liquid-cooled graphics card currently emitting smoke? Because some malicious individual in a social virtual reality space has approached me while projecting a localized stack of ten thousand high-polygon nuclear explosions, intentionally crashing my client. Unacceptable behavior.”
“Question: What do you call an individual tasked with making livestreaming platforms safe by hunting down pixelated, graphic nudity? A private investigator, except with a distinct lack of dignity and an overabundance of exposure to digital smut. A truly thankless occupation.”
“If an independent auteur consumes an entire decade attempting to micro-manage their magnum opus, you can rest assured that you will never actually play the most wishlisted title on your digital storefront. It will remain vaporware until the sun burns out.”
“If the narrative of a certain blood-splatter analyst television series were real, I would far prefer cleaning a literal crime scene than dealing with the sanitized, sweat-drop-filled censorship of a localized 16-bit fighting game. Give me the gore or give me nothing!”
“Why, pray tell, must I physically operate a plastic fire hose or frantically pump a mechanical handcar peripheral to simulate a railroad pursuit? Why must I use a dual-paddle mechanism to survive a low-resolution rapid river? Arcade cabinet designers clearly despised the human wrist.”
“Hero Wars. Why must it always be Hero Wars? I am promised intricate, logic-based pin-pulling puzzles, yet upon downloading the application, I am greeted by a generic, auto-battling mobile nightmare. This is literal commercial deception of the highest order.”
”Imagine an infinite runner where the narrative apex involves delivering carbonated, branded soft drinks to citizens in order to avert a localized geopolitical crisis. I am playing an advertisement, not a video game. The blatant commercialism is utterly repulsive.”
“Oh, marvelous. I am trapped in a cinematic hostage situation. Enjoy the interactive narrative where you are physically incapable of pausing to attend to basic bodily functions, nor can you skip a single frame of this poorly voiced melodrama. I came to play, not to watch.”
”Do you harbor a deep-seated desire to protect an elderly matriarch who continuously assaults you with her handbag while you act as her personal chauffeur through a warzone? No? Well, too bad, because the developers have mandated this torturous escort mission.”
”Ah, the classic trope. You orchestrate a flawless tactical battle, deplete the antagonist’s health, only for a cutscene to trigger where your character is inexplicably defeated anyway. Apparently, my ‘epic adventure’ requires me to grow stronger like Conan. I am looking directly at you, Hero Wars!!”
”I am entirely adverse to managing a fictional, multi-colored mammalian companion who hurls explosives. Why does he possess yellow boxing gloves? Why is he performing amateur magic tricks, operating a pogo stick, and visibly gaining weight? It defies all biological logic.”
”‘Steamed Frames’—that is the definitive title I bestow upon virtual reality. I paid a premium price only to strap a heavy, overheating monitor to my face that drops frames and induces immediate, profound motion sickness. A thoroughly miserable gimmick.”
“No casual platformer is complete without a sparkling item that renders your avatar completely immortal for a grand total of ten seconds while playing an obnoxious, repetitive musical loop. It removes all semblance of skill, replacing it with temporary, unearned bravado.”
“When death is reduced to a minor, three-second inconvenience, the entire philosophical weight of the ‘Game Over’ screen is obliterated. You might as well excise the concept of lives entirely. There is no tension when failure carries zero penalty.”
“Oh, spectacular. Another aggressively mature, hyper-violent dystopian narrative featuring gravelly voiced protagonists, monochromatic grey color palettes, and a complete absence of catchy melodies or imagination. This is the nine-hundredth time we have trodden this bleak path this century. Enough. Already.”
“Remember, children: never trust a non-playable character who requests that you execute a series of mundane chores because they are too fundamentally indolent to perform them themselves. They will invariably stab you in the dorsal region the exact microsecond you complete their tasks.”
“I issue a challenge to the entire gaming community: name one dual-screen handheld title from the mid-2000s that does not force you to aggressively scratch your lower liquid-crystal display with a plastic stylus for no viable mechanical reason. I shall wait indefinitely.”
“I have encountered some deeply unstable individuals in my time running a comic book establishment, but these digital, self-detonating zealots are absurd. They exist solely to sprint directly at your position and detonate, destroying your armor and my patience.”
“Hark, ye digital buccaneers! If you attempt to duplicate software and distribute it to fellow scallywags, the developers will trigger an anti-piracy matrix that locks you in a virtual dungeon or summons invincible guards to arrest your avatar. Purchase the physical media, you criminals.”
“We universally detest it when internet provocateurs utilize redundant, secondary accounts to continuously bypass moderation. After banning the exact same toxic individual three consecutive times, we have surpassed our limit. Human society requires a strict, one-account-per-citizen mandate.”
“What is the true definition of the proximity chat feature? A tool for degenerate digital exhibitionists to record your private online interactions, display your username in their virtual ‘museum of victims’ without your consent, and demand a financial extortion fee to remove it. If this behavior continues, it will induce an epoch-defining level of fury!”