The Most Unfair Enemy Placement in a game

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

The later Sonic games were terrible for this, including the 2D ones on GBA and DS. In the older MD variants, the enemies will be placed perfectly so that you always have the chance to react when one pops up on screen, no matter how fast you're going. However in the newer games the developers just got lazy and would throw enemies and spikes on the edge of platforms where you couldn't possibly avoid them without prior knowledge that they are there. That's bad level design.

Sonic 1 had good enemy placement? You have rose-tinted specs my friend. The flying bug-things in the first Green Hills zone set the tone - shooting an unkillable projectile attack just as you were about to jump up and hit the bug. And don't even get me started on the pink pig things with spikes on their backs in the third level.

Generally gree about S2 and S3 though (apart from the star and boomerang enemies in "Metropolis Zone" in Sonic 2, they sucked.)

 

[Amnestic]

I'm gonna go with "Infinitely Respawning Enemies" as a placement tool in...well, most FPSes. It's not cool. It's not clever. If I want to play slow and steady I shouldn't have to kill 5 times as many enemies as the guy who plays by sprinting through the game like a madman.

 

[Xazetuf]

Any indoor environment-Rainbow 6 Vegas

Police officers-GTA series, Driver series, Just cause

 

[Iron Mal]

Worst I've seen are:

1. Pretty much every guy with a sniper rifle, rocket launcher or minigun in Turok (my current death count for inhuman difficulty is in the quadruple digets).

2. The adult aliens(especially the ones that dropped down from the ceiling) in Alien 3 (on the megadrive), they ran really fast, were hard to kill, appeared at the last possible moment and if you didn't kill them the first time they run by, they appear from the same spot the next time you pass by.

3. The white zombie guys in Alone in the Dark: the new nightmare, they were pretty much designed to block up narrow corridoors (a fact made worse by the fact that the pistol couldn't kill them).

 

[The Iron Ninja]

Dammit it's already been said, by the OP no less...

Pretty much anywhere during terrorist hunt in Vegas 1&2... The AI is cheap, to the extent that you can predict what they'll do.
I find myself yelling out (drawing many confused looks from people around me) "oh look! I'm reloading, I sure hope no one- Oh what do you know? A terrorist suddenly came from the room I just cleared, how delightful!"
The game deliberately spawns enemies in your weakspot, you can look at a doorway for minutes, then the second you look away one will appear, and land a headshot instantly.
Yet I still play it, it's a fun game, and I releive stress by shooting the dead ones repeatedly in the face, if only it had teabagging physics like in Halo 3.

I got that a lot while playing. Did the Crab help at all?

Of course it did.

Not quite as unfair as the two Rainbow Six Vegas games, but here's another one (since people tend to ignore me when I just talk about Crabs):

Tenchu Z (Ninja game for the 360) had this mission where you had to sneak past a forest road checkpoint guarded by other Ninja. I sneakily killed off all the patrols and was gingerly attempting to climb up the side wall of the checkpoint to catch the guards inside by surprise. Unfortunately a bear found me. I both hate and adore that bear at the same time.
On the one hand it broke the perfect score I had going
But on the other hand it's a fucking bear, and that is awesome.

 

[NeedAUserName]

Big one that comes to mind is the sniping level on Call of Duty 4, I'm sure many can relate!

On veteran especially, it's just plain awful. I can't attribute a specific 'placement', they're just fracking everywhere!

It brought my already limping attempt at beating the game on veteran difficulty to a brutal and unceremonious end!

Absolutely. I think there's a difference between 'good AI' and 'Godlike' that the developers failed to determine.

Yeah its was hard, but I'm not afraid to say I spent a whole afternoon grinding that level (well both of them) until I did it. And upon my momentous achievement, well I realized how sad that was.

 

[GenHellspawn]

COD4 defiantly, enemies often spawn behind you and on Legendary it's just really frustating to be killed by a guy that came from a building you just cleared.

...What?

 

[searanox]

The later Sonic games were terrible for this, including the 2D ones on GBA and DS. In the older MD variants, the enemies will be placed perfectly so that you always have the chance to react when one pops up on screen, no matter how fast you're going. However in the newer games the developers just got lazy and would throw enemies and spikes on the edge of platforms where you couldn't possibly avoid them without prior knowledge that they are there. That's bad level design.

Yes! Someone else gets it!

The new 2D Sonic games have been pretty good, but never live up to the classics precisely because of the level design. The originals are never really cheap; they always gave you a window for your reaction time to kick in so that you could jump over an enemy, up over that spike pit, and land just on the other side. You can conceivably run through those games at full speed, barely stopping or slowing down, provided your reaction time is good enough. Now, they just toss bottomless pits everywhere, and stick enemies in places that don't give you enough time to react to, which means that it is actually easier to beat the game going slowly than it is while going fast. That is the antithesis of a Sonic game.

I love you now. Sorry.

 

[M3707ik]

Star wars The force Unleashed. Snipers always postioned out of reach of that first jump plus At-Ats and a billion ground troops = suck

Wow- just got off the damned thing but, i love how enimys repawn behind you ill the dungeons making backtracking or dieing at the end a hasle.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

Supreme Command should win a prize for "Worst placement of your own base"... I swear every level put you in either 1. A wide open area which was nigh impossible to defend or 2. An area where you didn't have enough space to build everything you needed. Then it should get a silver or bronze for most annoying enemy base placement because they usually had a single entrance which was heavily guarded and were surrounded on all sides by water or mountains or who knows what.

I've never sent more troops to die in any game like I used to in Supreme Commander.

 

[searanox]

I've never sent more troops to die in any game like I used to in Supreme Commander.

Don't worry, they're robots.

 

[Vim-Hogar]

The train level in 007: Everything or Nothing's a great one. Once you set off an alarm, enemies start spawning behind you, even though you started at the back of the train and cleared every little corner as you went along. And of course, given that game's controls and cover system, an enemy behind you can take half your health before you can get turned around and take care of them...

 

[Wicky_42]

One Half Life 2 mod (substance, I think) placed a sniper behind a hill on the edge of the map at the section when you have to dismount from the hovercraft to open a gate. All that is visible is the top of his head, but he can still shoot you. The only way to find him is to slowly scan the entire map, cos there's no bullet trails, the muzzle flash is hidden by said hill and the area's echo masks the direction of the shot. Thankfully he can't aim for sh!t, heh.

More seriously, Sniper Alley, Halo 2 lvl 2, on Legendary. It's just one bastrd sniper nest after another. There's about four covering the first corner you go around, standing in darkened windows so oyu can't land a simple headshot. Becomes one long, slow grind - then, after fighting flying and invisible enemies, snipers appear ahead of you, down a long corridor, behind you on a roof top, and interspersed on various bridges and rooftops around the square block you foolishly walked into. These are all 1 shot, insta-kill, pinpoint accurate snipers of PAIN. it's only because they shoot big purple beams that you can eventually learn all of their locations and methodically grind your way through.

 

[Jobz]

Tenchu Z (Ninja game for the 360) had this mission where you had to sneak past a forest road checkpoint guarded by other Ninja. I sneakily killed off all the patrols and was gingerly attempting to climb up the side wall of the checkpoint to catch the guards inside by surprise. Unfortunately a bear found me. I both hate and adore that bear at the same time.
On the one hand it broke the perfect score I had going
But on the other hand it's a fucking bear, and that is awesome.

That game drove me to the brink of controller-through-television-set violence more times than I care to remember. It was so bloody frustrating.

 

[Hellion25]

Sonic 1 had good enemy placement? You have rose-tinted specs my friend. The flying bug-things in the first Green Hills zone set the tone - shooting an unkillable projectile attack just as you were about to jump up and hit the bug. And don't even get me started on the pink pig things with spikes on their backs in the third level.

Generally gree about S2 and S3 though (apart from the star and boomerang enemies in "Metropolis Zone" in Sonic 2, they sucked.)

Ah but those instances you mentioned in Sonic 1 weren't so much bad enemy placement as bad enemy design. After all, neither were thrown in your face so they were unavoidable. After all if you're jumping to hit the bug then you've seen it right?

To put it another way, when I play the older Sonic games I generally come across very few occasions where I believe the enemy placement was unfair. The enemy AI or design maybe, but not the placement.

 

[Emperor Inferno]

It's not a shooter, but here goes. Playing Diablo II one time, I got killed (gee, Inferno, what's new? Yeah, I know) Anyway, I'm trying to get back to my body, and it's been swarmed by every monster in the whole level. Not kidding here. I refused to die again, but it did take like a half hour to kill them all without my good equipment on. My reserve equipment was OK, but nothing to what was sitting on my dead carcass. Also, in the same game, it really sucked to be low on life with no potions and no time to go into inventory to use a portal cuz of being chased, and finally find a way point, but it's covered in monsters.

 

[Zombie_King]

Halo 3 on Legendary. Arrival. Trying to take on one large Flood on Legendary is enough. Trying to take on THOUSANDS is impossible.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

Tenchu Z (Ninja game for the 360) had this mission where you had to sneak past a forest road checkpoint guarded by other Ninja. I sneakily killed off all the patrols and was gingerly attempting to climb up the side wall of the checkpoint to catch the guards inside by surprise. Unfortunately a bear found me. I both hate and adore that bear at the same time.
On the one hand it broke the perfect score I had going
But on the other hand it's a fucking bear, and that is awesome.

That game drove me to the brink of controller-through-television-set violence more times than I care to remember. It was so bloody frustrating.

Really? I loved it. I actually find playing it rather relaxing (somehow)

 

[LewsTherin]

Snipers in Halo 3...

Nothing like feats of skill on legendary only to be head-shotted from 9 miles away by some jackal so you can have the privilege of doing that shit all over again.

GAH! So frustrating. Legendary with all skulls on is simply impossible with those snipers. Enter their field of fire and DIE.

But i did it... by damn did i do it... only took me 12 hours a level but by lucifers pubic hair did i do it...

*applause* My main tactic is just to run in and strafe, spikers blazing. SIX beam rifle headshots as I turn a corner. I nearly threw my controller through my friends' flatscreen.