Ridiculous AI

[The Rogue Wolf]

I remember playing Off-Road Challenge for the N64 (pretty sure that was the one) and the AI drivers on there were absolutely infuriating. Take, for example, the seventh-place driver. If you passed that driver to take seventh place, he would do anything in his power- ram you, cut you off, skirt the most dangerous cliffsides and hills- to knock you out so that he could regain seventh place.

And that was it.

You never, ever saw him try for sixth. None of the drivers bothered- they picked their assigned places and guarded them with their lives, but never ever tried to move up beyond them.

I remember coming in second on no less than three races, after spending the entire race in a flawless run in first place, because the guy who was "supposed" to be in first came blasting out of nowhere at Warp Factor WTF.

 

[The Reverend]

To chip in with the original DoW AI thingy, I didn't have a problem mopping the floor with the AI on any difficulty (I'm modest, me) Maybe you just suck.
And Mario Kart Syndrome deserves mention. God, that was annoying. If it returns in the Wii MarioKart, Nintendo will get a strongly worded email from me. You hear me, Strongly!

 

[EnzoHonda]

I've always disliked when the AI does something that I can't do. This always happens in RTSs without a "pause and issue commands" function.

My first experience with unfair AI (that I can remember) happened when I was playing Street Fighter II on my SNES. You know the moves that you could only do by holding in one direction for two seconds then pressing in the other direction? Guile always kicked my ass because he ignored that rule, but he was a little ***** if you actually tried to play as him.

 

[WingedFortress]

I recall having alot of fun with Perfect Dark's AI on the N64, and always hope that a multiplayer game will take a leaf out of their book and throw a feature like that in.

And tonight actually, I was commenting on how I kind of like the AI for army of two. Nothing special, but at least they have the brains to keep moving from cover to cover.

 

[ReepNeep]

To chip in with the original DoW AI thingy, I didn't have a problem mopping the floor with the AI on any difficulty (I'm modest, me) Maybe you just suck.
And Mario Kart Syndrome deserves mention. God, that was annoying. If it returns in the Wii MarioKart, Nintendo will get a strongly worded email from me. You hear me, Strongly!

Dawn of War's skirmish AI is truly weak. If you have an understanding of the build timing and the way the units interact with each other, the AI really won't give you much of a fight. It doesn't challenge me much (and I am by no means a talented RTS player) until it starts to get extra resources on the INSANE difficulty. If you had multiple people with an activated monolith and the nightbringer and LOST, you just need practice. The necrons are nearly impossible to stop once they get to tier 4 without ganging up on them. Not to mention in dark crusade the AI is literally broken: if you inflict heavy enough casualties on them in the first exchanges (2-4 minutes), they wont ever even try to leave tier 1, no matter how long the game goes on.

As for genuinely infuriating AI, I would say any game that ignores the fog of war when making it's decisions. Xcom: UFO Defence & Terror from the Deep come to mind here. You're walking along keeping your eyes peeled for those dastardly extraterrestrials and BAM. Full on psi assault on a guy they don't have line of sight on. Even worse when they use the guided missiles: you can lose a whole squad. Advance Wars 1 for the GBA was the same way. The Fog of War missions against Grit were the worst: rocket artillary on units in the forests when there weren't any adjacent units all the freaking time.

 

[St1gar]

The DoW and CoH AIs are so horrible it's offensive. Relic certainly gets off at making their AIs infuriatingly useless. I blame the Dawn of Skirmish team.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

In defense of Relic, the Company of Heroes AI has thrown me off before with it's absolutely bizarre tactics, namely Puma Spam.

What a strange unit to choose to build, non-stop for an entire game. For those who don't play Company of Heroes the Puma is akin to a Light Tank almost, it can be out before tanks, can run around, does well against Infantry, and upgraded, can at least inflict a little damage on heavier armor.

It doesn't sound like it would be that big a deal, but the first time I saw it, it really confused me. People tend to spam more logical units, usually all-purpose Infantry.They caught my Infantry off guard and shredded a number of them, and ate my early armor too. But once Rangers or heavy armor comes to play the Pumas are really inferior (and an absolute joke to British emplacements). It's just such a strange unit to chose to spam, and never stop, but if you play a game like 2 vs 1 or 3 vs 1, it can actually be surprisingly effective.

Most of the ridiculous AI's I've seen have been in first person shooters, where setting the difficulty up high results in every soldier being snipers with virtually every weapon. A cheap way to increase difficulty I've always thought, but appears in a lot of games.

For RTS games, really the last one I played that really was ridiculous was an old cheating 3rd Party AI from Total Annihilation, the Bloodthirsty AI. I just found it really, really hard, it cheated (it had special extractors that gave huge incomes) and it would literally stream units from maybe a minute on and just keep it up in larger and larger numbers. I only beat it a couple times, I was usually just overcome with the absurd amount of spam the thing was capable of.

 

[Sackwak]

Definetly Mario Kart. 150CC races. No matter what you can throw,drop,fire at the CPU Opponents, the first 3 will always be right next to you in a few seconds or just as you take a sharp turn near a pond or lava pit or something they use the lightning bolt and you go slipping into the pond and end up dead last on the final lap.
Gaahh..

 

[sma_warrior]

Mario Kart ISNT so much AI as rigged gameplay - if you're in first, your kart max speed drops while in last your kart max speed increase. It's just wrong, especially if you make the N64 Rainbow Road jump right at the beginning of the 1st lap successfully only to have the other cars catch up by the end of the 3rd, no matter how good you can drive.

I know this for a fact because me and my mate one day switched to the HUD which displayed speedometer - sure enough when I was winning I couldn't go as fast as he was when in last.

 

[General Mostly Electrified Steel]

Or what about the SNK fighting game bosses?

God, not Rugal.

I wouldn't call it that unfair, since all you have to do is get a hit in then play defensive until the timer dies.

Yes, good luck beating Genocide Cutter in a fair fight.

 

[Choukou]

The level of Halo 3 where you're underground in the flood's sort of base or whatever it was. I was playing it on normal and I'd been playing it for around 6-7 hours straight, it was around 5 in the morning, and either the AI was unbelieveably good, or my brain was fried because it took me bloody ages to get through that level! After a while I just started running through it, ignoring the floods of enemies, to get to the checkpoints.

 

[devilondemand]

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.

 

[richasr]

I'm confused. You mean like the game doing something really clever in response to an attack I was making or just a game kicking my ass because it's super efficient?

I mean AI in anyway being ridiculous such as... the lower league players with no strength on FIFa 08 barging straight past someone like Patrick Viera (it happens) and then crossing the ball with pinpoint accuracy on their weak foot onto their striker's head for an amazingly placed goal.

Stuff like that, or just really difficult computer bosses/players.

Back to the Dark Crusade thing, i'm not entirely disagreeing with who said I might suck, I think I do ok but i'm not amazing, my friends however play it a lot. Maybe we didnt attack quick enough or whatever but we found it increasingly difficult to even get a barracks/temple( when we were playing as chaos) without being attacked right off.

Ah well, not complaining too much, its a challenge and will have to try and beat the damn computer later on.

 

[Yan-Yan]

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.

 

[Spakkenkhrist]

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

This makes me wonder is there any true learning AI in current games?

 

[Melaisis]

Dynasty Warriors. Any of them, really. Ranging from idiocy such as one of the last levels on 2 or 3 (I forget) where you could just literally snipe Lui Bei down to one health without anyone noticing, to how invincible they seem compared to your own allies: "ANOTHER AMBUSH!? What do you mean 'you're struggling'!? I'm on the other side of the pissing map!"

All enemies in Quake 4 were omniscient, too.

 

[dontlooknow]

The Hitman games! The AI has two modes - it begins as thick as two planks of wood nailed to a dyslectic potato, then switches to I-can-see-you-through-walls-and-hear-you-breathing-from-eight-miles-away-and-I'm-coming-to-stick-bullets-up-your-nose mode whenever you run past a 'please walk' sign. dont know about blood money though...