Moments where the enemy A.I is surprisingly competent.

[Misterian]

I know alot of people with games like to make fun of times where the enemy mooks are generally thick and suicidally courageous.

But has anyone here ever encountered a moment where an enemy mook's A.I actually does something smart? or at least competent?

I remember one moment while playing Mass Effect 3 as a biotic adept, I was on that mission where I had to take a giant gun from Cerberus troops in Tuchanka, I managed to move close to a ladder close to a ledge and I caught a trooper climbing it down, I quickly used a biotic heavy melee that blew the trooper off the ledge, instantly killing him, I saw another trooper do the same thing and I repeated the process. But I then waited a few seconds for the next bad guy climb down the ladder, only to find that they other soldiers were instead ignoring me and were focusing on my squadmates, they were no where near the ladder as if quickly catching on to my strategy.

Anyone else had moments like these where video game enemies were actually being competent? or even managing to genuinely outsmart you?

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

The original F.E.A.R. provided plenty of moments of this, although it might be a bit of a given considering how much the AI in that game has been praised.

One moment that sticks out in my mind is when I was in this area that had two corridors leading to a large room. I took one of the two corridors and killed all but one member of the enemy squad in the large room, strangely finding a lot of difficulty in finding this last enemy. Turns out, he had gone around through the corridor I didn't take and tried to surprise me from behind. Cheeky bastard took out a nice chunk of my health in the process too.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

All the time in Killzone 2 and 3. Those guys are smart. They cover each other, set ambushes and use combined arms tactics. The final level of Killzone 2 where you assault Visari's palace had one of the most incredible firefights I've ever played in a game. You and thirty other troops charge up and up and up against an entrenched foe slowly pushing them back, while the Helghast make you pay for every inch they give up.

 

[LtFerret]

All the time in Killzone 2 and 3. Those guys are smart. They cover each other, set ambushes and use combined arms tactics. The final level of Killzone 2 where you assault Visari's palace had one of the most incredible firefights I've ever played in a game. You and thirty other troops charge up and up and up against an entrenched foe slowly pushing them back, while the Helghast make you pay for every inch they give up.

They are tough S.O.Bs as well. They can eat an assault rifle clip and still be standing. It helps drive home the fact that your invading their home and they are giving everything they got to stop you.

And like the first two posters said FEAR's AI is amazing. Even the melee enemies are smart. One guy will smack you and run away and when you try to chase him down his buddy will show up from behind and give you a good whack.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The original F.E.A.R. provided plenty of moments of this, although it might be a bit of a given considering how much the AI in that game has been praised.

The thing is, they developers never actually made that smart of an AI.

They have some extremely simple AI, "shoot at player" and "move around to get in line of the player." The level design, however, made the AI flank and the AI attempting to shoot at you only appeared to be covering fire for it's squad mates. The developers were just as surprised by this as the players were.

 

[Wayneguard]

There were several times in the original FEAR where I just got flanked out of nowhere because I hadn't kept an eye on certain paths/hallways. Man that's a great game.

 

[skywolfblue]

Halo Reach Elites on Legendary. Pretending to hide and be low on shields only to turn around and shoot your face off. The higher health elites move in to block shots intended for their low health buddies in the background. Sooo many times I got lured into an enticing ambush.

That game's AI is smarter then I am.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Every time that Ashley ducks when I point a gun at her so that I can shoot the giant spider-headed zombie creeping up on her, she wins +1 bro points. Best (helpless) escort mission partner ever.

I consider every person that you have to escort somewhere in almost any game an enemy. They're just an enemy that you can't shoot to complete the mission because they try and actively sabotage you by running into a crowd of hostiles while either lightly armed or not armed at all like a dumbass. Search your heart, you know what I say to be true.

 

[gideonkain]

RAGE may have had graphic issues, a shallow story, uninspired game play, cookie cutter missions....but those bandits sure knew how to juke and dodge.

 

[Shadow flame master]

The enemy AI in Bad Company 2 knows where the fuck I am, and are not afraid to shoot a stream of grenades my way.

In Spec Ops: The Line, the enemy AI seem to employ a lot of tactics to kill me which takes the form of flanking me while I'm focusing on that God-damned heavy, or snipers actually making their shots.

 

[Slayer_2]

The goddamn SPAS-12 and AUG Para wielding terrorists in Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 are the bane of my gaming existence. They have the reflexes of a terminator, can shoot a microbe off the tip of a pin flying through the air, and kill with one shot. On top of that, even if you somehow manage to shoot them first, they let out a silent alarm on death alerting every hostile within a kilometer of you about your presence. Just one last "fuck you" as they die. The only time I can kill these bastards is if they aren't looking my way, or if they are incapacitated.

 

[Saulkar]

Operation Flashpoint and Fear both throttled me with their A.I. but when it came to actually surprising me then I lay my hat at the feet of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. This game has rather bland A.I. but on many occasions they did things that really left me dumbfounded, most notably deliberately setting up ambushes with overlapping fields of fire and the ability to reorganise should I choose an alternative route.

 

[chuckdm]

RAGE may have had graphic issues, a shallow story, uninspired game play, cookie cutter missions....but those bandits sure knew how to juke and dodge.

My only graphic issue with Rage was that it does have some major texture pop-in (part of their snazzy new MegaTexture feature that apparently is the most awesomest thing ever - but only if you have 4GB+ of video memory...ugh...) but my issue wasn't really the game. It was all the dipshits who posed solutions to the issue and out of 30 "how-to's" to fix the issue, only one had the correct value at all. Go figure.

But yes, the AI in Rage was awesome. And more importantly, balanced. So many games these days make "easy" level 10% easier than "nightmare" and think they're balanced. Easy should be dead fucking simple easy, Hard should be a genuine challenge involving at least 20 retries, and Normal should be exactly 50% dead center in between. This can't be THAT hard. Anyhow, in Rage they hit this perfectly - not only does enemy health + damage scale, and even spawn counts, but even their tactics and their choice of deployables change with difficulty. On one mission where you have to plant some demo charges near Subway Town, once you grab the TNT, if you're playing on easy you can basically slap down a pair of turrets to your right and then just shotgun the mutants as they climb the balcony in front of you. On nightmare, they start to spawn from the ceiling and go for your turrets first so their friends can make it to you alive and kick your ass. Not only that, but they don't even wait to kill the turret - they're so smart they just knock your turret over and then let it sit there, and go straight for you instead (because turrets in Rage become totally useless once knocked over.)

The uninspired story was pretty awful, but many of the dev interviews stated outright that their goal was to make a good shooter that had "RPG Elements" rather than an RPG. Considering the guns (and especially the Ammo - Dynamite Crossbow Bolts FTW!), the enemies, the tactics, and the solid combat racing (because there's only so many times you can shoot an Authority Elite in the face with an Electro Bolt before you get bored, heh) I still don't understand why Rage didn't do any better than it did.

Then again, I'm also apparently one of 5 people on earth who liked Brink (though the AI wasn't nearly as good in Brink) so I suppose I'm just strange anyway.

 

[Mr Binary]

I was playing that Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad game when the AI seemed to really impress me. If we concentrated fire on one side, they'd let some in only to flank us and wipe out our team. That was damn startling for a sniper trying to avoid as many close encounters as possible.

 

[AntiChri5]

Halo Reach Elites on Legendary. Pretending to hide and be low on shields only to turn around and shoot your face off. The higher health elites move in to block shots intended for their low health buddies in the background. Sooo many times I got lured into an enticing ambush.

That game's AI is smarter then I am.

This so hard. Best AI i have ever seen. They know when to fall back to draw you in, when to flank, when to push, when to cut and run to recharge shields. Those bastards were SMART.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Pokemon games have great AI, you can beat them with brute force though

 

[munx13]

AI in STALKER: COP. Always trying to flank you and flush you out with grenades.


And the dog packs - as soon as you get a good aim at them they either jump you or start circling around you.