10 Video Game Clichés That We Secretly Love

In recent years, countless AAA games have ramped up their efforts to keep players glued to the screen for as long as possible through the tried and tested "carrot and stick" approach.

That is, constantly hurling another task at the player in order to elongate the experience.

Open-world games such as those produced by Ubisoft - especially the Assassin's Creed games - are surely the most obvious offenders with their icon-littered maps, and then there are more innocuous offerings like the completionist headache that is Super Mario Odyssey.

But perhaps no game has perfected the art of stringing players along than the recent Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which constantly inundates the player with new challenges, yet also limits the amount players can get done in a single day to keep them coming back again and again.

There's a reason why so many of us are fixed on these games, though - beyond sheer psychological addiction, obviously - and it's the truth that people love the comfy warm blanket of familiarity.

Just switching your brain off after a hard day at the office and grinding loot or farming XP may be monotonous, but it's also weirdly relaxing, because you feel as though you're accomplishing something, no matter how meagre, without much being demanded of your brain.