Date: Early 2011
Reason Never Published: Never finished/polished
Note: Whenever I do //italic text I am making a note to clarify a bit of the blog whilst reading it again.

1) Extended/Alternative Ending: Doesn't happen all the time, but enough to get my attention. To give an example, in Halo if you beat the game on Legendary (hardest difficulty) you got to see another scene, a scene that would have been cut out if you beat the game on another difficulty. Halo isn't the only game that has done this, so has Alan Wake I believe (correct me if I am wrong as this is based on what a friend told and haven't actually played the game). The reason this bugs me is that the game shouldn't force you to play on a difficulty you don't enjoy. Secondly, I commend the game for rewarding the player for their hard work, but reward in another way, don't lock a piece of the story from gamers like me who prefer to play on a normal difficulty.

2) Online Multiplayer: Believe it or not, this actually isn't a stab at popular multiplayer games such as CoD or Halo. They know how to make a decent multiplayer game, I know that I really don't like playing CoD online, but it would be arrogant of me to say the the multiplayer experience CoD does offer is terrible. It isn't, and I can see why people enjoy it, although it is annoying when they turn into a zombie and play it non stop avoiding any contact from any of their other games. But continuing, this is actually a stab at the games that have online multiplayer just because every other game has it. Not only is it painful to find that the only way to earn a compete achievement/trophy set is to go online, but to find that no one is online to play with is really painful. Not only that, but some games just don't need it and should have spent their resources adding other features to the game instead. Also some games don't even do it right either which result in rather laggy gameplay, glitches or unbalanced matches which usually result in a dead online community within possibly a week or month upon release. What else can I say apart from do it right or don't do it at all.

3) Map Screens: This actually isn't a trend I hate, I love map screens. I hate the fact that games don't use them anymore! The only game that I have seen that used it was the New Super Mario Bros and that was just to bring tribute to the older Mario games. The closest you will see to a map screen is a level select screen but some platformers don't even do that. With Limbo, you start the game in the main menu and you go straight into the main game. Granted, Limbo didn't need a map screen and was probably a good idea to not have any form af maps screen or level select, I was just naming a game that was a platformer and didn't have it. In Donkey Kong Country, the map screen was awesome. You really felt a sense of exploration and journey ahead of the characters which you just don't get with modern platformers and level select screens. However, since this really isn't a trend I hate but a trend I want back, I can't really include it on the list but I will leave it in here to give tribute to a trend that I want to see in more games.

Real 3) Alcohol: Not really a big trend, but I have seen it in a few games... ok two. The truth is, I love the premise, as saving the world isn't as easy as it sounds and there is nothing wrong with a drink or two to take the pressure off. The problem I have is the two games that did utilise this didn't do it right. The first game I played was Fable 2. I really couldn't see any change in gameplay, apart from (I think) when a character talked to me, it was low pitched or in slow motion or something. I have been drunk before, many times actually and I can tell you that this does not happen when you are drunk. If it does, I would question what the hell was put in my drink? The second game was Mass Effect 2, after a few drinks the screen was woozy, that's great. You talk to the bartender and Shepherd has a bit of a slur in his speech, hey maybe this game actually has a realistic representation. Shepherd walks away and... what the hell? Instant Sober! That does not happen, it really doesn't. What would be great in a game is that consumption of alcohol actually has an impact on the gameplay. Make the character stumble around making hard to evade gun fire. Make the camera a bit woozy so it is harder to aim. I want to see something like that, sure it would be more of a challenge in the game, but it would be interesting to see, am I wrong?

4) Aliens: I don't really hate this trend, but it is overused too much for my taste. You know the story, it is the future and some form of alien civilisation has been discovered. They don't like us humans, probably because we looked at them funny or something, a war breaks out and us humans have to work really hard to win it as more than often, they have better technology than us. I pretty much described the plot for many sci-fi shooters like Halo, Gears of War and Resistance with their own variations of course. I don't have that much of a problem with aliens as they do make for some creative enemies, but it is pretty cliche if you think about it. Why are the aliens always the bad guys? If there is an alien civilisation out there, they might be as excited to meet new intelligent lifeforms as we are. I always felt bad for shooting the grunts in Halo, they seemed like such friendly guys apart from trying to kill you that is. Maybe a game should pull a District 9 every now and then, help protect the aliens from the evil government. You know what I am talking about, that power hungry sector of the government that exploits anything that they see fit. Or why not have just have a normal war. You know, just because it is in the future doesn't mean that aliens HAVE to be the enemy. BF2142 didn't have aliens and that game was still awesome. Either way, the concept of the world putting away their differences to fight a more powerful enemy is great, but I do like to see something different every now and then.

//Yes, I know the 'evil' government is a cliche on it's own, I was just trying to bring about ideas.

5) Realism: You know what, this is more than just a trend. This has been the goal of nearly every videogame whether it be graphics, physics or just overall story. Many gamers want developers to push on how in-deph and realistic games and I am quite curious myself. But you know what, is it such a sin to want an unrealistic game every now and then? A game that doesn't care about realism but instead just there for... pure fun?

//There was going to be more to be said about realism but never ended up finishing the whole explanation.