A few weeks ago, a friend and I were going over things that we hated and wished would burn in a terrible fire. I threw out frivolous things that bother me, like “Michael Bay movies” or “Fortunetellers who try to get you to believe they know you by saying things like ‘Sometimes things happen in life that don’t quite meet your expectations.’” He said things decidedly less frivolous, like “my parents” and “people who disagree with me.” I realized at this moment we were not playing the same game and became very uncomfortable.

Anyway, considering this “hate list” got me thinking about different aspects in the video game industry that need to take a permanent hiatus. They don’t have to go home, but they gots to get the hell out of here!

…Sorry, I just always wanted to say that, and I never had a party where people had to leave quickly. Or any kind of party, really.

Any Mario game where Mario is not killing Bowser or driving a car

One day in the far future, people will look back at examples of how companies whored out their mascots, and Nintendo’s Mario will serve as the prime example. That’s correct, this is what people will spend their time doing in the future.

In the 20 minutes it takes for me to post this article to our At The Buzzer website, Mario will have appeared in no less than 30 more games, most of which will involve partying, and all of which will be terrible. I can understand the marketing strategy involved with putting your franchise in different games to sell units, but at this point, Mario’s face is pretty much the equivalent of “mediocre sports games for babies.” And “grossly over-exaggerated Italian accent.” But mainly mediocre sports.

At this rate, I fully expect Mario to take over for the late Billy Mays and try selling me Orange-Glo during late-night infomercials. “Look-a, it’s-a so clean-a!” FYI to Nintendo — sticking an A at the end of every word does not produce an Italian accent.

Escort Missions

I think a death sentence to escort missions is long overdue. How many times have gamers been subjected to “Game Over” screens because they were trying to protect helpless characters who wandered into the open and proceeded to collect bullets with their faces, or stood frozen in place crying while a pack of zombies slowly surrounded them and proceeded to rip their organs out. Just because standing in fear and crying is what I would do in real life doesn’t mean I want this in my video game.

Besides, has anyone ever labeled any of these missions as fun? When describing the coolest parts in games, I don’t often hear “That part where you have to protect the helpless hostages and they keep dying because they appear to have no will to live was so awesome. So…awesome.”

Guitar Haters

I am annoyed with the people who, upon finding out someone has talent at Rock Band, degrade that person.

After reading an article about somebody scoring something like 500 trillion points on the Dragonforce song, some guy posted “Yeah, but can he play a REAL guitar? Maybe that WANNANBE should stop wasting all that time playing a FAKE guitar and learn how to play a REAL one.” First of all, caps only work if you are shouting these words, which would just be ridiculous. Secondly, I totally agree. Why blow all that time practicing Guitar Hero when you could be aspiring to achieve the totally possible dream of being a real rock star?

Honestly, I don’t think it should stop there. If you like Madden, why are squandering your time with fake NFL when you could be running line drills and training for the real thing? Playing a game will never get you over the hump to reach the Super Bowl. The big game is only a few years of rigorous conditioning and loads of steroids away! And all you babies playing Call of Duty? Why pretend to jam knives into terrorists’ throats and die pretend deaths when you could just enlist and experience it firsthand? You don’t play games for escapism or fun: you play to simulate real life! God, video games are SUCH a waste of time.

Bad Gaming Dialogue

The more I play games, the more I’m convinced the dialogue of any and all antagonists is written by children who pull special “Be a Video Game Writer for a Day!” tickets out of their cereal. Either that, or there is some bingo machine with phrases like “Time to die!” or “How nice of you to join us!” or “Let’s finish this!” written on the balls. Then, in lottery fashion, these balls are drawn and the villain’s dialogue is chosen. Ta-da!

Grand Theft Auto games

You and I are going to perform a little experiment. Go turn on your console and play a mission from any GTA game over the last decade. Any mission will do. I’ll wait.

Done? Okay, I am willing to wager that the mission you just performed consisted of something like this: “Drive to point A. Chase someone. Kill that someone. Then escape from the police/drug lords.” These four-segment missions are getting old, especially after four identical GTA’s. How many billions of times can a protagonist go to a drug deal, and then be surprised when the deal goes badly? “The last eight drug deals have ended in complete bloodbaths, but I have a good feeling about this one!”

I’m just throwing it out there, but how about some original missions for the next GTA? Like, “Drive to point A. Save kitten from tree. Drive kitten to house and feed it and give it water.” That sounds infinitely better to me.