Moments where the enemy A.I is surprisingly competent.

[Simskiller]

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.

Here you go.

 

[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.

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.

Pop Rockets FTW!

I think RAGE "failed" because it tried to keep old shooter sensibilities while integrating modern design conventions.

It used invisible walls outlining natural earth ramps, creating "cooridors" and players asked why can't I just walk everywhere until I hit some untraversable feature (a pit, a 20 meter high rock wall)

It didn't retain enough of the old style to garner nostalgia and it didn't embrace enough of the new norms to be competitive side-by-side with equivalent FPS games.

 

[marurder]

FEAR was good, but they all used waypoints to do things. And the moments where AI could 'shine' were few and far between. Any person who played FEAR would know the rooms stated above. But best AI would be in open environments, OP Flashpoint was good, and Galactic Civilization (first one) was good too.

 

[Random Argument Man]

In Halo: CE, a grunt throwed a plasma grenade, but not towards me.. Turns out he throwed it on a bunch of other grenades which the explosion killed me and sent me flying a few kilometres away.

Smartest.Grunt.Ever.

 

[Orks da best]

In Halo: CE, a grunt throwed a plasma grenade, but not towards me.. Turns out he throwed it on a bunch of other grenades which the explosion killed me and sent me flying a few kilometres away.

Smartest.Grunt.Ever.

smart, or just plain lucky, he could have been aiming for you and just missed, and the grenade landed in a pile of more grenades.

Besides halo reach elites which have been said a few times already (those clever buggers, I've gotten kicked in the chest and slain more times by them than I can count.) I am going to sayLeague of legends bots, yes they maybe idiotic most of the time, but since there A.Is they reaction time is pinpoint accurate and have great comboing of abiltes.

 

[doomspore98]

I remember how in the arkahm games during stealth sections I would be so impressed with the AI for doing a bunch of stuff. They would stick together but maybe one guy would go off on his own and then when you eliminate all but one guy, the last guy just freaks out and shoots randomly.

 

[fuzz]

In Dark Souls when you fight Oscar in the Asylum. Most enemies just run at you but he actually dodges well and blocks. He makes it very hard to get a backstab by circling you. It doesn't help that I always end up in the tiny area next to his cell.

 

[Kursura]

I had a cool moment from the fear demo.

I had descended some stairs into a corridor going left and right, with a large window in front. Looking through the glass I see to solders and try to head shot one but they duck before I can kill them. Expecting them to head for the door to the corridor I back peddle up the stairs.

Just as I reach the top the window shatters as one of the solders dives straight through it, forward rolls along the ground and stops on his knees with his gun pointing at me. Fortunately for me, I was aiming at the base of the stairs but the manoeuvre took me completely by surprise (if he?d taken the door like expected I would have had enough time to been ready for him).

 

[SajuukKhar]

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.

FEAR actually didn't have good AI.

The people who made FEAR even explained that FEAR's AI only seemed good because they carefully designed all the levels to make the AI seem smarter. The AI didn't flank you because the AI thought it was a good idea, it did so because the level design forced them into action that seemed like flanking.

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

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Hmm, i can`t say much about FEAR but i thougt that Killzone (2-3) has a good AI. They use cover, rush out if you try to use grenades and change positions. Same goes for the enemies in Max Payne. They force you out of cover with molotovs or grenades and attack, if you stick to long in one place. Those guys can also shoot.

 

[Ekonk]

The AI of the bloodsucker mutants in the STALKER series may not be about to gain self awareness, but it does a great job at seeming ruthless and intelligent; taking it's time to attack, and backing off and cloaking after it does.

I find that the bloodsuckers in the last STALKER game are the best example of this. Especially in open environments, like in the swamp at night their intelligence can be horrifyingly convincing.

 

[Vanitas likes Bubbles]

I was just playing ME3 and while the AI is most of the times incredibly thick, one moment stood out for me. It was the last wave on silver and there were 3 guardians coming at me in a turtle formation. Then, a wild phantom comes out of no where. I take away half her barriers then she begins to flee but she flees right behind the oncoming guardian formation making it impossible for me to kill her. Then they just went stupid again.

 

[Surpheal]

I was walking around in Dragon's Dogma, doing the escort quest that takes to the Great Wall fortress in the north. Near the end of the travel you have to go through a castle swarming with female bandits that will attack you if their leader sees that either you or one of your pawns is a male. Then you walk through what looks like a burned out forest, and prowling through which is a chimera. So I sat back a good distance and watched what it was doing, as it walked behind a big rock. Sat there a while and waited for it to move, because the rock was very close to the path I was taking.

That quest ended after the smarmy little kitty jumped out after I walked past thinking that it was asleep. It set a trap, it actually set a trap.

 

[Fasckira]

In Skyrim while fighting a dragon it decided to dive bomb into the grand and pass through it before vanishing completely from reality.

This seemed like a very sensible move on its part, as it avoided me killing it and absorbing its soul. Very clever.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

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.

So so true.

When you first get one of those bandits jumping over cover and bouncing off walls I was freaking out at not being able to hit them. Still one of the most impressive systems Ive seen, a shame about its problems though.

 

[Alex Baas]

Dragon Quest 9 you partners had a bunch of tactics and almost all of them made them smart. Oh, and it needs to be said: Monster Hunter

 

[Legion]

In Starcraft 2 on Brutal difficulty the enemy will target your healing units regardless of whether or not they are closest to them, whereas normally they'd choose to deal with the immediate threat.

In Skyrim while fighting a dragon it decided to dive bomb into the grand and pass through it before vanishing completely from reality.

This seemed like a very sensible move on its part, as it avoided me killing it and absorbing its soul. Very clever.

Thank you for making me smile.

 

[Random Argument Man]

In Halo: CE, a grunt throwed a plasma grenade, but not towards me.. Turns out he throwed it on a bunch of other grenades which the explosion killed me and sent me flying a few kilometres away.

Smartest.Grunt.Ever.

smart, or just plain lucky, he could have been aiming for you and just missed, and the grenade landed in a pile of more grenades.

Besides halo reach elites which have been said a few times already (those clever buggers, I've gotten kicked in the chest and slain more times by them than I can count.) I am going to sayLeague of legends bots, yes they maybe idiotic most of the time, but since there A.Is they reaction time is pinpoint accurate and have great comboing of abiltes.

He didn't seem to aim for me....but then again, I'm a freaking ninja at Halo.