Ridiculous AI

[fix-the-spade]

Far Cry on realistic.
The first level you get the sniper rifle. Merrily started taking pot shots at a large group of mercenaries in the distance. Obviously they started running away and I settled on two who had grouped together but were making themselves very small and hard to hit.

Suddenly the immortal line "I'm gonna shot you in the face!!!" blasts out of the right hand speaker. I look round just in time to be gunned down by at least four mercs from the original group.

Not only had they run away when the shooting started, they doubled back and somehow sneaked across the quarter mile between me and them without being spotted. They'd also got into position behind me before opening fire.

Probably luck, but it scared the bejesus out of me.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I started playing Dark Crusade again with some friends today and while I enjoy playing it i've noticed the AI is much more difficult to battle against than in Dawn of War.

We played on Standard difficulty and witnessed in awe how the computer players almost immediately had big armies of Space Marines knocking on the door to our bases within 2 minutes of the game being started. The sheer speed with which they build is nothing compared to the power they seem to have.

We tried being all Necron, 3 Necron armies against 3 Space Marine armies, Monoliths galore and yet we still got beaten for whatever reason. We're used to playing DoW on Harder difficulties than this and winning, it's crazy and unexplained!

Does anyone have any freakish AI stories or just plain hate AI that developers have come up with?

Could be worse...could have Bioshock class AI... god I been Turok evolution on the PC some(yes PC version) the AI is that antiquated....... BS rant aside WC3 didn't have great AI... WC2 was killer WC3 not so much....

But if you are having trouble with the game on normal...try easy it might suck to do that but games can be built with fcked balances more these days and wit lil options to fix them easy is about all you get....or toss in a cheat to help make it more fun.

 

[Cooper42]

Far Cry on realistic.

Not you, the AI in FarCry seemed exceptionally smart. Many games (Stalker, I'm looking at you) allow you to take up a sniping position, and pop AIs off as they run chicken-headidly around.

FarCry made sniping much more realistic. You took a shit, maybe two, and then legged it. They'd be on your tail straight away.

AI flanking maneuvers in FarCry always kept me on my toes, especially because of the silly amounts opf cover, which they were genrally pretty good at using. Then again, the play arenas were so open that the usual problems AI have in linear shoters (corners, doorways, enclosed spaces) weren't so important.

Shame the game went to pot halfway through and stupid mutants started getting involved...

 

[Razzle Bathbone]

Anyone play Puzzle Quest? That game cheats like there is no tommorrow. It will always drop just the right gems for the computer controlled characters to rack up those massive chains.

(raises hand)
I quit playing that game after about 20 minutes when I realized what it was doing. The gems on-screen are worth less points than the ones off-screen. You can't see the off-screen gems, but the AI apparently can. That game is dead to me.

 

[Artinam]

Civilization 4, the highest difficulty settings are mostly for display...

 

[Nickolai]

As I mentioned in my review of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1, the Ghost Recon series has some of the most spotty, piss-poor AI I've ever seen in a game. I've seen individual zerglings with more IQ points then my crack(head) team of soldiers.

The defining moment was when they charged through an enemy position when I specifcally told them to flank the darn thing. They died, I cried, my controller was very nearly smashed into the ground.

I know that AI is arguably the most complex part of a game, but if I hear my men cry out "Taking fire" when there is a perfectly good wall they can hide behind less than six inches away, the F-bombs you hear will be mine.

 

[Terramax]

F.E.A.R. hs some of the best AI ive ever seen.

I would kind of question that, personally. I played the game, then replayed it on Hard. And really, the A.I. in that game is not a whole lot better then other first person shooters I've played.

Yes, they do use cover fire, flip a table to make cover, use flanking attacks and rarely sit in one spot unless they have cover or cover fire to move. But they don't do those things intelligently. There were numerous times where I realized that what seemed like A.I. was really scripted movements. And scripted movements feels like a step back from A.I. because instead of making that cover from the table because it needs the shield, it does it because it was spawned there solely to do that, then shoot you.

So to me, F.E.A.R. doesn't have great A.I., it just mimics great A.I.

Though sometimes, that is enough to ignore the difference and enjoy it.

I question F.E.A.R.s AI too. It's supposed to be clever, yet the locations are so small and uninspired the game tactifully CAN'T show how clever the AI is/ should be.

They always hold in the same area too. You can't lure them into another section of the level. Complete bull if you ask me.

 

[ComradeJim270]

Anyone played Dead Rising?

Yes. The AI wasn't terrible, except for the sniper battle w/ Carlos.

My 'Y' button may disagree, and I'm not sure how many times survivors hit me with their weapons.

 

[ComradeJim270]

Also, I am playing Mass Effect at the moment, and I still find it amusing that when their weapons overheat, Krogan enemies become "Leeroy Jenkins in SPAAAAAAaaaaccce!".

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

Apparently Far Cry is supposed to have ridiculous AI.

 

[Melty Blood]

Pokemon... Mother... Fucking... Puzzle... League... For the N64. In late hard and Very hard difficulties (And don't get me started on super hard), the opponent pulls off impossibly long chains with greater then human precision and speed, sending you cringing under about 3X the amount of space your screen has, thank god for time freeze during clears), clears off your chains like nothing, and basically every single battle must be done 100 times until the enemy is stupid enough to raise the stack to the top. Which is frustrating, especially when the final boss rears it's ugly head and you lose, you get sent back to the last stage, causing you to HAVE to get inhumanly lucky in order to win.

Nevertheless however, I still love that game for being inhumanly fun to play for a puzzle game.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Anyone played Dead Rising?

Yes. The AI wasn't terrible, except for the sniper battle w/ Carlos.

My 'Y' button may disagree, and I'm not sure how many times survivors hit me with their weapons.

Oh, I never escorted survivors. Let them get eaten. I'm busy killing zombies in drag.

 

[MattyDienhoff]

Operation Flashpoint with the "super AI" difficulty setting enabled.

Basically it just bumps every AI unit's skill level up to maximum, maximizing their reaction time and proficiency with weapons. Doesn't sound like much, but it makes a huge difference. So much so, that a competent player who can take on an entire squad of AI in a pitched battle normally, will likely have trouble with 2 or 3 with super AI on.

 

[EittilDratsab]

Halo 3 doesn't have the best AI, but sometimes the AI does something amazing.

I was shooting at a Brute with a gravity hammer when all of the sudden I get blinded by a Flare. Panicking, I threw down my bubble shield. Now, at this time, ANOTHER brute put down a radar jammer. Before my vision could be cleared up, I was properly pwnt by the Brute Hammer. My friend, being the ass that he is, watched. It could have been luck, but w/e.

F.E.A.R's AI is really good, imo. I enjoyed the game solely on the firefights. The scare scenes bored me.

 

[clouddyl]

Oblivion has rediculous ai, how do all the guards in all the towns know oyuve bloody killed someone fucking instantly!?

 

[ComradeJim270]

Rob Inglis]Apparently Far Cry is supposed to have ridiculous AI.

Haven't played the PC one, but in the Xbox one... those motherfuckers are crazy... they will HUNT... YOU... DOWN.

 

[LukeD]

I have to say the best A.I. I've experienced is in F.E.A.R.

From a technical point of view, F.E.A.R. is one of the most advanced AI systems going in gaming right now. The main thing that it does that noone has done before (or since I think?) is what's called online planning, which more or less means it can plan its actions based on the environment in real-time (more or less), whilst other games rely on offline planning, where the AI has set-piece maneuvers pre-determined responses to situations and chooses the most appropriate. I've never played F.E.A.R to any great length so I couldn't tell you how well its all pulled off, but advances in game AI (and more widespread applications) in the future will certainly be in part related to what F.E.A.R implemented.

End of the day though, there's a big difference between "smart" AI and "hard" AI. Its pretty easy to make AI hard, and by making it hard give the illusion of it being smart. Truly smart AI is much more complicated, but there's a lot of people, myself included, working on it at the moment