3. Alcohol – Most games (WHY?!)
Alcohol is an entirely pointless endeavour. The only use is that it makes my screen go blurry for a bit. Nearly all games with a modern or partially futuristic setting seem to include this useless thing that has absolutely no benefit at all.
2. Unrelated evidence – Most adventure games
Does he really need to investigate everything?
Adventure games, along with their distant cousins in the point and click genre, usually follow the pattern of every riddle requiring one specific item and every item being needed for one such puzzle. Somewhere along the line though, someone got the great idea of sending us all on wild goose chases. The red herring has since reared its ugly head in the genre in many different forms. Whether it be the clown’s nose in Broken Sword or the myriad bottles that infest the world of L.A. Noire, unrelated evidence plagues all of the obsessive completionists amongst us with its inventory space wasting ways.
1. Coins – Mario series
It goes with gaming nature in its entirety. Few gamers can leave those collectibles behind. Coins, rings, stars etc. We won’t rest until we have them all. In the end though, they often don’t do all that much. Coins in the Super Mario Bros. Games are the biggest culprits, only granting lives upon getting a hundred of them. Aside from this, they have no real point. They add to your score, but is anybody really playing Mario games for a high score these days? As useful as the odd extra life can be, the coins have managed to far outweigh their use. They have become a massive force in mainstream gaming culture, despite their relative pointlessness.
