Best AI in games?

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Mass Effect 2's AI is kind of good. I think I like the way the enemies behaive according to thier role.

I lolled at the AI once in Oblivion. In a room full of necromancers firing spells they started to hit each other and full scale fight broke out amoungst the NPC's. I was like 'I'll just go and sit over here then :S'

 

[RuralGamer]

Weird that no one mentioned Stalker. The 3rd game definitely had some encounters with the humanoid enemies.

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Stalker AI are definitely some of the best and worst in existence simultaneously. I remember when Clear Sky came out, the developers discussed how on the hardest difficulty, one of the test cells was unbeatable because the AI kept pinning the player down and flanking; I've seen plenty of that,especially in CoP; Monolith are pretty good at that. In the mission where you have to recover the unidentified weapon, a couple of the AI flanked round through the corridor to the left of the battlefield and if one of them hadn't caught my attention, they would have likely wiped out the soldiers with me. I've had battles with those mercs as you said; that position is surprisingly hard to storm or infiltrate.
Even the non-human AI are pretty good, especially the bloodsuckers and dogs because they try and distract you before flanking and attack from behind. I think the whole A-Life system was pretty good, even though you had the occasional hilarious situation where a group of stalkers would be walking into a wall.

FarCry 2's AI were pretty decent too because as soon as you snipe a guard at a base or checkpoint, the others would disappear into cover and then send out search parties for you, usually taking routes with decent cover. Still, they occasionally would make stupid moves, like four of them walking of a platform and drowning (for some reason, none of them can swim).

 

[RuralGamer]

Mass Effect 2's AI is kind of good. I think I like the way the enemies behaive according to thier role.

I lolled at the AI once in Oblivion. In a room full of necromancers firing spells they started to hit each other and full scale fight broke out amoungst the NPC's. I was like 'I'll just go and sit over here then :S'

Brawls like that are funny, especially if you use Frenzy in a room packed with NPCs; I've had at least twelve NPCs involved in a pub brawl in the Imperial City, but mages and necromancers are also really bad for friendly fire.

 

[valleyshrew]

It's one of the few things games have yet to really evolve. Fallout (and oblivion) is the only game series where I can think of characters having persistent AI. I'm not talking about combat AI, most games are basically just shooting galleries and enemies have a couple of paths and a couple of reactions. Probably the most advanced combat AI is in RTS games. But I'm talking about NPCs existing on their own and not just for the purpose of you seeing them for a few seconds. In Fallout characters exist and go about their business without you there. You can give someone a quest and they'll go off to a dungeon and do it and you can follow them and see them do it, or you can leave them alone and go back and see the corpses lieing around as proof that they went off and did it.

Games have yet to really start even attempting this and it's sad. I love Rockstar games but they don't do this at all except maybe Chinatown wars which I've yet to play but I read you can follow the pedestrians around. It definitely breaks immersion.

Then there's the other level of AI that characters can think for themselves and do things the directors didn't program in? Nowhere close, AI currently only have a few rules, narratively they have a few dialogue options maybe.

I thought left 4 dead was shallow, but the AI was the most interesting I've seen in a shooter. It's still primitive really, but it's the best shooter enemy AI I'm aware of as they actually try to approach it from an AI perspective and not just placing dolls around the level.

So, Left 4 dead for combat AI, fallout new vegas for character AI.

 

[balimuzz]

I've always had a thing for the AI in Gears of War 1. On the harder difficulty settings the AI make good use of flanking and are pretty good at maneuvering to get you out of cover. GoW2's AI was still good, but enemies positions and movements felt very scripted, and just seemed less aggressive overall.

 

[RA92]

HL2 Deathmatch was online play...

I forgot, you had to add NPC in HL2DM SDK separately. I mentioned it in MP because the HL2 level structure is too linear to exploit the AI fully.

 

[Tax_Document]

Sword of the Stars.

Rogue AI can take out the entire galaxy!