Flaws and overused features in modern video games

Console games and computer games alike provide constant and fresh entertainment, though game developers do not now feel secure enough to try many new features. Developers, lacking the gumption for risky originality, offer similar experiences under slightly different guises and allow few games to stand out on any platform.

Most developers incorporate the player into a game as either "the chosen one" or the "surviver of the post-apocalyptic world, on a mission to help a loved one." Such storylines and character types are no longer original or appealing.

Graphics are important to most modern games. They can greatly contribute to visual appeal, realism, the game's setting, the world, themes, style, and character development. However, themes such as a dark post-apocalyptic world, in the future after a nuclear war, are overused. Developers reuse such a theme to copy games like the Fallout series, which was one to make post-apocalyptic themes popular.

Few titles offer unique gameplay. Most rpgs, button mashers, and shooters follow the examples set by the most popular game of their genre and shallowly mimic it, acting only as "clones." Button mashers tend to follow the example set by "God of War", and rpgs tend to follow the example set by the "Final Fantasy" series and the "Fallout" series. Developers often attempt to rejuvenate a recurring and tiresome combat system and control scheme to make a false sense of freshness, but often fail.

Music is too often overlooked. It usually acts as a background feature and nothing more. Many games, especially modern sandbox games, add specific music tracks or songs for realism. However, such music rarely contributes to an appealing theme, and many tracks offer only blarring and obnoxious songs. Few developers have used music to influence the game's overall style, theme, presentation, and overall appeal. Pre-rendered cinematic segments, which are most often found in rpgs, have occasionally offered appealing instances where such music has greatly influenced the game's style.

Cutscenes used to be vital to action games, adventure games, and rpgs, but that is no longer the case for many games. Cutscenes are still used by some rpgs to progress the plot, but, despite the advancement in graphics, modern cutscenes are not as appealing, nor are they often as cinematic as they once were. Some games no longer use traditional cutscenes, rather than instances where a scene unfolds in real time; some games allow the player to move around and interact during such scenes. Pre-rendered cutscenes were rarely used excessively in games, but they did often appear at the openings and endings of games. Being pre-rendered, such cutscenes can be cinematic and easily unfold the story. However, they are not often used to their full potential by modern games.

A goal of most modern games is to immerse the player. However, this is difficult when the player is constantly shown unnecessary icons, meters, and gauges, such as combo points, health bars, and special moves icons. Many modern games have adopted new systems for revealing such details, such as displaying a character's health through their stance or the camera and glowing items to declare a special movie to be ready.

Modern console games and computer games alike are seldom original on the account that developers do not feel secure to try anything fresh. Developers attempt to offer similar experiences under diffrent titles, providing little new content.