9 Most Overdone Clichés In Modern Video Games

8. The Two Types Of Climbing Sections

Type 1: Everything Collapses

This came directly from the Uncharted book of action adventure, where if you're climbing any section of handholds, let's say one in three will collapse. Cue you falling back down to climb up again, or dangling off what remains as you push a button or complete a quick-time event to regain composure.

Type 2: Follow A Weirdly Neat Sequence Of Handholds

This seems to be a way to add a baseline mechanical variety to what you're doing, but it's in the most plain way possible. Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Far Cry, God of War - all give you specific highlighted paths of perfectly placed handholds to simply pilot your protagonist up or down.

God of War eventually narrativised this in a pretty genius fashion by tying it to Kratos' wife knowing where he'd go the whole time, but many other titles have pathways that feel too "gamey" and immersion-breaking.

The last big game to revolutionise climbing and do it right was Breath of the Wild, before that was Grow Home and before that was the original Assassin's Creed, where buttons were assigned to your head, arms and legs. This latter system went nowhere because we all just held sprint and the "leg" button to auto-climb, but clearly so much more could be done if developers took verticality seriously.