30. The Fighting Game Non-Sequel

I'm going to quickly recap all the versions of Street Fighter IV. There's Street Fighter IV, Super Street Fighter IV, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, and Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Version 2012 will be out next year. As long as fighting games exist, fighting game developers will be there to release expansion packs at near full price. Of course, the community will keep buying them. Now I wonder when Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition - Turbo Hyper Fighting Edition will be announced.

29. Regenerating Health

Somewhere down the line, someone decided that bullets really weren't that bad. In the old days, you needed to pick up health packs or shield batteries to recover some vitality, but now you just have to wait a while. It's so nice of the enemy to use bullets that cauterize their own wounds and come with an injection of quick-replicating stem cells in the tip.

28. Sewer Espionage

In just about every adventure, some hero at some point or another will have to slink through the sewers in an attempt to gain entrance to a palace or dungeon. In the game, the sewers generally just take the form of an interesting two-lane maze straddling a waterway. In real life, sewer spelunking is far less glamorous, and you rarely find a castle's treasure room at the other end. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience here.

27. Easily Caused Zombie Outbreaks

It seems like everything causes zombie outbreaks these days. Supersoldier virus? Zombie outbreak. Infected animal? Zombie outbreak. Psychic control over your own mitochondria? Zombie outbreak. Heck, it's like all I have to do is drop my hat and—holy crap, zombies!

26. The 1-Up

I would have been totally screwed during the zombie outbreak caused by my irresponsible hat dropping if it weren't for 1-Ups. 1-Ups, or extra lives, are everywhere, but few games actually explain what they are. In Mario games they take the form of mushrooms, but in other games they always seem to be some sort of creepy floating decapitated head. That makes me think that after video game characters die, the severed head they picked up jumps out of their back, gnaws off the old head at the neck, and attaches itself to the corpse, reanimating it. That's just creepy.

25. Bottomless Pits

Bottomless pits are everywhere in the video game world, showing up in the laboratory of every mad scientist and the palace of every evil dictator. I have to wonder what actually makes a pit bottomless. Are these pits honestly dug straight through the center of the planet to the other side? Or perhaps some jerk with a portal gun lined up some portals to make the pits generate an infinite fall. Ah, portal guns.

24. Silver Hair

If you meet someone with long silver hair who's wearing some sort of flowing garment and talking about fate and the grand design of the universe, he's probably evil. That, and he will most likely be the subject of many slash fic pairings on fanfiction.net. You know it's true.

23. Block Puzzles

Block puzzles are one of the three most commonly used puzzles in video games, and you'll find the other two later on this list. The concept is simple: You want a block to go somewhere (usually on a switch) but there are tons of impediments to this. It becomes your job to toil endlessly, pushing and pulling these crates to get them just where you want them, even though lifting the damn things would probably make the process a whole lot faster. In fact, block puzzles are so prevalent in video games today that one of the best games to release this summer, Catherine, is nothing but one giant block puzzle.

22. The Evil Clown

You know how I just said that the guy with silver hair is evil? Well, the guy dressed as a sexually ambiguous clown is twice as evil. It started with Kefka Palazzo in Final Fantasy VI, and now those evil bastards are everywhere. From Twisted Metal's Sweet Tooth to Dragon Quest's Joker to Adam from Dead Rising, evil clowns are taking over. Quick, everybody pile into this totally safe but mysteriously miniature-sized car!

21. Quick Time Events

On the count of three. One.Two.Three. Press X to not die! Yep, that's what quick time events are like. Since we live in the cinematic age, nearly every game needs to have some sequence where all you are doing is pressing buttons while watching a cutscene. This is basically just a glorified Rock Band track with violence. That being said, QTEs aren't going anywhere soon, so you might as well press X to keep reading. Oops, you failed. Article over.

By Angelo M. D'Argenio
CCC Contributing Writer

*The views expressed within this article are solely the opinion of the author and do not express the views held by Cheat Code Central.*