My gaming wish-list

I play games a bit. I'm certainly not a hard-core gamer, but I do like the occasional bit of escapism. A week or so back I posted a list of my favourite games, and for the most part those are objectively very very good. That said, there's problems with all of them. DeusEx has poorly implemented stealth. Half-Life 2 doesn't have much by the way of stealth at all, and there's no real opportunity to influence events - either you finish the level or you play again. Call of Duty is great in the squad parts, but once you get into the corridor bits it's just like any other corridor shooter youo care to mention. 

All that said, here's my wishlist for developers. Of course no game's perfect, but there are some that are a lot further from it than others...

1) Stick to you're strengths - Call of Duty is getting a withering stare right now, as is Assassins Creed and many others besides. When a game does one thing really really well, don't pad it out with stuff that isn't so good. Call of Duty had wholly unnecessary corridor bits that took away from the majesty of some of the set-pieces, and they just shouldn't have been there. End of.

2) If you're doing something right... - DeusEx 2. Need I say more? Well, I will anyway. The biggest crime ever perpetrated against any franchise, and that idiot-genius Spector had the gall to claim it made the gameplay more "streamlined". Running down an empty tunnel with no enemies, weapons or storyline would be streamlined too, but that doesn't mean we want to do it.

3) If the story's crap... - Assassin's Creed. I'll admit, I played it for all of an hour or so, but what the hell was the point of the modern-day bit? Why did that need to be there at all? It might turn out to be an incredibly interesting story, in the end, but when it seems like padding leave it out. 

4) Settings - Some settings are genuinely cool, and I don't mind that, for example, World War 2 has been the setting for so many games. It was a momentous event in history, and that's fine. Post apocalyptic settings are another thing though. I'm thoroughly sick of them, because they just seem to be an excuse to not bother fitting civilisation into the story-line.

5) Weapons - Why are selections so limited? Surely you could put 50 different weapon types in a game, each with its own characteristics, and it would add loads without taking a significant amount of development time. Or am I missing something? Even in WW2 games, you could have some officers having different pistols or something, using the same ammo as normal pistols but better range or accuracy or something.

And there's some other stuff I'll get to, but that's basically it. I'll have my ultimate game wish-list up sometime soon too, that'll be one worth watching.

And as an entirely random bonus question, name a film which features no stairs whatsoever including no natural staircase-type features. There's a poser...