Moments where the enemy A.I is surprisingly competent.

[Riddle78]

I was playing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. I was stringing along and Adaptive Aeon AI,scouting every few minutes (with over three dozen simultaneous T3 spy planes - Holy AA,Batman!) to scout for artillery or Game Enders,and bomb them into oblivion with some T3 bombers. Just to se what the AI would do. Three hour mark? Assloads of aircraft ticks on my radar. I felt secure; I had a defensive line that can wreck ANY mobile Experimental in the game.

The wave of bombers,screened by spy planes,flew over the line as if it didn't exist. My ACU ate about fifty strategic bombs. I guess it really DOES adapt; It stole my "Scout and bomb" surgical airstrike strategy. I'll never string along the Adaptive AI again.

 

[kingthrall]

Play myth 2 and you will understand how deadly an AI can be in a game. Having 100% of your armies remaining in the later levels is a huge feat of achievement.

 

[BaronUberstein]

In CoH, I'm not used to the AI fighting back in terms of smart artillery. Usually they get maybe one howitzer and strike seemingly randomly.

In one match that had gone one for two hours (unlimited popcap V russians can be...difficult when there is only one vehicle bridge you can cross) VS two hardest possible Russians, suddenly my Hummel SPH's and rocket-tanks start getting hit with a combination of rocket artillery and normal howitzers. Once my artillery was dead, suddenly the other russian computer who did breakthrough tactics stormed the bridge and managed to take half of my territory before I pushed back.

 

[snekadid]

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.

This, usually when i rage in a FPS its because enemies had precognitive powers and shot me through their own backs or I only died because of endlessly respawning guys. What ever happened to killing everyone in a level so you could look for secrets?

Rage while a terrible game over all had amazing enemy AI that frustrated me to no end as they would roll around my point blank shotgun blast or jump over the boomerang i just threw while stabbing me in the face. If only the game had a story or had completely removed the driving BS<seriously, amputate that crap>, it might of been good, however It did one thing right, it had a crossbow in it which is my favorite ranged weapon of all time and is my flat answer when people ask me what made bioshock 1 better than BS2.

 

[minimacker]

Half Life 2's AI seems to get smarter and smarter the farther away you are from it.

The NPCs are so fragile, they rarely get to show that it's capable of moving like a squad, flushing you out with grenades, move from cover to cover and flanking.

It's quite nifty when you get to observe it. Unfortunately, Gordon is a titanic superman with his HEV suit and crowbar, sprinting around at 20 mph.

 

[Erttheking]

It seems like whenever I throw a plasma grenade at an Elite in Halo Reach, it always managed to jump out of the way just in time. And not throwing himself to the ground and taking five seconds to get back up like the Brutes, he nimbly sidesteps and keeps shooting me the whole time. I can see why they have the nickname Elite, these guys don't screw around. You know I never got that about Halo, the friendly A.I. is always pants on head retarded, but the enemy A.I. is going for their freaking PhD.

 

[Elgnirp100]

The final battle against Vergil in Devil May Cry 3 is incredibly hard, especially on higher difficulties, not only because he does craploads of damage, but because the A.I. is good enough to allow him to dodge most of your attacks while getting himself into the best place to counter. Same goes for the fight against Dante in DMC4.

Or that might just be my man-crush on the sons of Sparda talking. I don't think so, but it is entirely possible.

 

[Brendan Stepladder]

Reach's Elites never cease to amaze. they can punish cover-based, long-range combat by trying to deceive the player, which is easy for them, as they are tyopically in groups. Close range combat is punished by brute force and dodging speed. It is incrdible.

 

[Reaper195]

The first two F.E.A.R. games. The amount of times I found myself actually flanked and out-manoeuvred was amazing. I've been so used to enemies simply running at me or hiding behind cover and not moving that I hardly ever check my sides, That game still surprises me. One time, I saw a guy flip over a table for cover. I looked away for a moment and when I looked back, he was gone and was hiding behind a pillar to my right. When I moved towards the table thinking he was still there, shotgun to the face.

 

[llew]

[

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.

They didnt catch on to your plan, they simply ran out of people in that area, ME3 A.I are retarded...

OT: the only ones that cross my mind are on ninja gaiden 2, warrior difficulty or above the A.I are pretty smart and will try make you jump before unloading exploding shuriken into your helpless body

 

[Cowabungaa]

FEAR's seemingly good AI was actually the result of a bunch of smoke and mirror level design, and not actual AI.

I figured that out the moment I started using proximity mines. It's incredibly easy to exploit.

I always found very high level bots in Unreal Tournament pretty clever in terms of weapon usage and how much distance to keep and all that jazz. And as said before, Halo's Elites were pretty clever at times too when I still played Halo.

And of course, it has to be mentioned again, but for a game released in 2004 Half Life 2 had some really good AI.

 

[teh_Canape]

snip

true, it felt like it tried to do too much and achieved very little
but in my opinion, what little it did, it did great

if anything, the environments were a sight to see, especially the "public" ones (like the resort where you do the first mission)
also the guns felt great when using, despite that the revolver's reload looked pretty silly (a problem HL1's revolver also had), a special mention going for the double barrel shotgun and the gauntlets, those things packed quite a kick, although the gauntlets did feel quite OP though
but overall, I thought it was underrated

btw, Big Mommas ftw

 

[MidnightSt]

The Suffering - this might not sound like a lot, but first few times when those basic spiked creatures jumped up at the ceiling, I was pretty impressed. And second time when I noticed they do it often when they're nearly dead, and it worked, threw off my concept and aim for a while. After time, I got used to it, so it wasn't really a moment the AI really did something surprising as much as encountering something they were rigidly programmed to do for the first time.

Operation Flashpoint - One of the first missions I played was a single mission where you were supposed to get into a village, steal a jeep with some documents, and drive it to your base. Until then, I played two or three campaign missions, where it's something like 3 squads versus 3 squads, so I had no chance to notice, but in this mission, it was just me versus 4 or 5 soldiers, and I started noticing their behavior - when I could see them, that is. And I was pretty surprised, and fascinated at how smart they appeared to be (and they really were, at least for the time, long to mid-range, they were good) - sprinting from behind building to behind another building, trying to flank me with a pretty wide circle, one guy was prone behind the jeep, so when I was running to it in the end, sure that was all of them, I couldn't see him and he comfortably shot me... I failed that mission about 5 times before finally making it, all due to underestimating the AI. I'm not sure about it, but to this day I believe it really was pretty good, tactics-wise. Unable to do quick short reactions (roll out of the way when shot at, run and hide behind that wall that's half meter from you, etc...), but in the maneuvering and tactics stuff they seemed pretty competent - and strange thing: the less there was of them on the battlefield, the better they were.

 

[Jinjer]

Enemy AI in Arkham Asylum was pretty well done. Noticing when another mook doesn't show up on their scheduled patrol, going to investigate, and when paranoid enough moving around in pairs while covering each other's backs with firearms... eat your heart out Assassin's Creed

 

[Terminate421]

The AI in all the Halo games are down right ingenious. They WILL kick your ass I they get the opporunity.

 

[Gormech]

Dragon's Dogma
The bandits are pretty strong as long as you don't go into easy mode. I was up on a ledge spamming magic at them while my pawns kept the crowd busy but one of them broke off from the group, snuck up around behind me, and used a skill to send my character flying off the cliff just before I'd finished casting a spell. They also seem pretty adept at getting out of the way when a random griffin enters the scene.

 

[Dansen]

I swear that this happened, on the first arbiter mission in halo 2 one of the spec ops elites got stuck by a grunt. He screamed ripped the grenade off his leg and lobed it right back at the grunt who threw it.

Probably the most bad ass A.I. I have seen.

 

[Kargathia]

Total War was pretty good too though.

Surprising to hear that, as one of its major complaints is the AI. It's quite rigidly scripted behaviour that can easily be exploited.

There is one noteworthy exception though: since Shogun 2 the AI makes excellent use of cavalry.

It seems like whenever I throw a plasma grenade at an Elite in Halo Reach, it always managed to jump out of the way just in time. And not throwing himself to the ground and taking five seconds to get back up like the Brutes, he nimbly sidesteps and keeps shooting me the whole time. I can see why they have the nickname Elite, these guys don't screw around. You know I never got that about Halo, the friendly A.I. is always pants on head retarded, but the enemy A.I. is going for their freaking PhD.

I'd be willing to hedge a bet that in pre-alpha all units were using the same AI, until they found out you could just munch popcorn while the AI were duking it out in an epic showdown.

Sort of takes the edge off the whole need for the Master Chief to save their collective asses when marines can handle it just fine.