If you read my review of the new Tom Cruise flick Edge of Tomorrow, you'll have noted that I approved of its adherence to the tropes of video games. For reasons of flow and space, however, I didn't get into many of the similarities. But I have a blog! So I figured I'd do so here. Spoilers, etc., below.
1. Spawning at the Last Save Point
If Edge of Tomorrow were actually a video game and people were playing as Tom Cruise, IGN's message boards would be filled with people screaming about the broken save system. "You have to go all the way back to the beginning if you die? Are you kidding me?"
2. Ridiculous Melee Weapons Wielded by Absurdly Small Women
That sword looks as if it was almost literally lifted out of Final Fantasy VII. "We're going to strap you into an exoskeleton that will increase your speed and strength and has chain guns for arms." "Cool, gimme that sword." "Uh...but, the guns?" "Nope. Sword."
To be fair, though, I'd probably let Emily Blunt do whatever she wanted to as well.
3. Stealth Missions
There's a very funny sequence where Cruise and Blunt attempt to infiltrate a military HQ in order to retrieve an object. In addition to being your standard-issue fetch mission, it also plays out as a real-life stealth mission, a Splinter Cell-style sneak around during which our heroes must avoid being seen by the enemy lest the alarms go off and the mission fail.
4. Winning Through Rote Memorization
Like a walkthrough explaining step by step how to defeat a level, Cruise is forced to sit down with Blunt after each "reset" and describe to her the precise steps she must take in order to avoid being killed on the beach. It's a humorous moment, all the moreso because of her obvious frustration with Cruise's inability to precisely lay out her movements for her. And it's one that almost any gamer stuck on some hellish level for days at a time can sympathize with. (Those of us who grew up playing 8-bit side-scrollers especially.)