It goes without saying that video games are still an emerging art-form looking to find their place within the world. Their frequent comparison to movies - usually unfavourably - does bring into question when video game writing will eventually reach the point that it can compete with the best Hollywood movie, or even the best novel. Though some individual games might be able to live up to that claim, they're very few and far between; the medium as a whole might have progressed technologically, but the stories are still positively rudimentary, and as a result, this transpires through to the gameplay. Gameplay is always plot-driven, but it can be in the most perfunctory and casual of ways - i.e. "Shoot through this horde of enemies to progress to the next area, where the next boss lies in wait". Though a degree of this is permissible because it's basically impossible to structure a game without it, developers and writers need to start working closer together to make these markers more subtle; otherwise they just come off as lazy, trite plot devices that simply operate as switches for the next sliver of gameplay. Here are 10 lazy plot devices that ruin awesome games...
10. Forced Stealth Sections
It probably seems paradoxical that my least favourite sections in any game are stealth-based ones given that my favourite video game is Metal Gear Solid, but at least that series allows you to - to an extent - put up arms if you so wish. What really grinds my gears is sections of games - and the Metal Gear Solid games themselves have featured this intermittently - which
force you to go stealthy, either by taking your weapons away or explaining that firing them will blow up the building. Though the brief starting section of Far Cry 3 that fails you if you try to play Rambo is frustrating, at least that mechanic vanishes soon thereafter. Having to play as Ashley in Resident Evil 4 proved to be one of the most infuriating gaming experiences of my life; weak, waifish, unarmed Ashley is useless against any enemy, so you instead have to be surreptitious, though again, thankfully, the section doesn't last long.