Final Fantasy	If there's one genre that needs a colossal kick up the arse, then it has to be the traditional role-playing game, typified by the Final Fantasy series. This hugely popular and successful series of overlong, overwrought RPGs are held in high esteem by gamers all over the world, particularly in Japan. Personally they leave me cold. It's high time that RPGs freed themselves from the tiresome swords-and-sorcery imagery that blights the genre, which seems to be happening to an extent. But what really needs to be consigned to the dustbin are the depressingly inevitable random battles, creaky turn based combat system and lengthy, irrelevant cutscenes. Advocates of these games will point to Final Fantasy's unrivalled storytelling and characterisation, to which I say: "watch a film instead". The disastrous feature film, The Spirits Within, only demonstrates the gulf that still exists between these two narrative forms.
Max Payne, looking constipated	Which brings me on to another personal pet hate: games which just wish they were movies so much it hurts. Games such as Max Payne, a substandard third person affair which plays like an FPS (never a good idea) desperately clinging on to one shred of innovation - the poorly implemented "Bullet Time" system. Max Payne is also guilty of the worst kind of trial-and-error gameplay since the likes of Dragon's Lair. And Metal Gear Solid 2, which is otherwise a very worthwhile game, commits one of the most heinous crimes of all with literally hours of superfluous cinematics. As a lover of both games and the cinema, I'm as big a believer in film/game crossovers as you'll find. But developers will need to do more than trotting out another identikit film licence, or putting hours of cutscenes into their game, to justify the tag "cinematic". For me some of the most cinematic games have been Another World, Resident Evil, and GoldenEye, to name but three.
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider	Another example of film/game synthesis is the phenomenon known as Tomb Raider. I haven't watched the film, I'm not interested in that, but I am interested in the appeal of Lara Croft. She has done a lot to bring games into the mainstream and has to a large extent transcended the games which she has starred in, becoming something of an icon. This doesn't disguise the fact that Lara is a massively dull character, with nothing to define her other than her breasts. And that Tomb Raider, the game, was never anything more than a tedious trawl through boring, blocky environments and very occasional encounters with poorly-realised creatures which could be disposed of with ease thanks to Lara's auto-aim.
	As a 3D artist, I am sick to death of game visuals which are dark and rendered in shades of brown, green and grey exclusively. I am sick of character models which I'm told contain 50,000 bump-mapped, light-sourced polygons and look worse than many 32 pixel high sprites from the 2D era. Technology is great, sure, and when used in the right way can produce staggering results. I want to see more real art in games. I am tired of "hardcore" gamers denouncing techniques such as cel-shading as gimmicky. Any technique which makes videogames look less like videogames is to be applauded, and I believe that cel-shading is just the tip of the iceberg. I look forward to seeing more innovative, distinctive visuals which can truly be called art. Videogames need to look further than just videogames and movies for their inspiration. Otherwise they will just fall deeper into a self-consuming spiral of cliché and mediocrity.
Command and Conquer	Finally, I intensely dislike all real-time strategy games, epitomised by the Command and Conquer franchise. Whereas turn based games have always emphasised strategy and tactics, beginning with chess and taken to brilliant new heights by Advance Wars, the RTS genre has somehow managed to successfully and clinically remove any trace of fun. RPGs, despite the problems outlined at the beginning of this article, still have the potential to enthral when they deviate from the traditional formula. The RTS does not need a kick up the arse; a standout game to reinvent the genre. It simply needs to be buried deep and never spoken of again.

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