What happened to Varied enemies?

[Necron_warrior]

I was looking at my game shelf, and I remembered games like DOOM3, fire warrior and the like. And I wondered, what happened in modern games to different enemies?

Its not paint-palette swaps I'm talking about, I mean having to develop stratigies e.t.c. for each enemy.
For example DOOM3, Dodging lost souls and revving the chainsaw was always my strategy, while running while shotgunning for cherubs and Plasma gun and hiding was what I used for Hell Knights, tactics like that are what I miss.

And I was just wondering, Do you know any recent games with quite varied enemies that require a some use of tactics?

 

[Kekkles]

You state a good point, nothing I remember does ANYTHING like this. It's all just sacks of "realism" running at the wrong end of a machine gun...

 

[cryogeist]

Oblivion has a lot of different enemies...but they all have the same tactic...CHARGE!!!!! or RUUUUUN!!!!

 

[THAC0]

I actually really enjoyed the single player mode in Wolfenstein for that very reason.

most of the time you were just fighting Nazis, but there were enough supernatural enemies thrown around that it had a nice pace to it.

 

[genericusername64]

Games started to be made out of more than 2 pixels

 

[daydreamerdeluxe]

In two relatively simplistic games that are not generally seen as combat focussed have this. Minecraft enemies die easiest when you use different tactics for each of them, and the varied AIs in Terraria need different methods to kill them. Not to mention that I've never seen a Zelda game in which all of the enemies fight exactly the same.

 

[Necron_warrior]

Halo 3
Grunts, Jackals, Brutes, Hunters, Buggers, Flood mini-things, Flood Snipers, Flood Carrier Pods, Flood Mammoths, Sentinels.
As for strategy, every enemy can eventually be killed by filling them with enough bullets, but there are more effective ways to kill each of them.

I should have realised that ,I have the special edition of it as well which actually comes with a little book reminding you they're all different.

I quite enjoy(/hate) it in games when you need to conserve your ammo, so you find winning combinations of what to do E.g. Shotgun-then-punch.

 

[Necron_warrior]

In two relatively simplistic games that are not generally seen as combat focussed have this. Minecraft enemies die easiest when you use different tactics for each of them, and the varied AIs in Terraria need different methods to kill them. Not to mention that I've never seen a Zelda game in which all of the enemies fight exactly the same.

Ahh minecraft. teres nothing more fun than when you get the skeleton to kill it for you

For zelda, I was actually trying to stay in the realm of first person, if you didn't have varied enemies in an RTS or RPG, then you'd have a pretty shitty RTS or RPG.

 

[Magicmad5511]

I have a few games with varied enemies (Fable 3, Warhammer 40K:Space Marine, Halo) but you bring up a good point. Tactics in these sorts of things are always keep hitting it till it stops moving with the only tactics seemingly being aim for the head.

I've just realized that every game I own follows that formula with some swapping shooting for smashing with melee weapons.

I want a game with proper varied enemies that you have to face with different tactics.
At the moment the only modern game I can think of that delivers is Minecraft. You have to be careful around Creeper, don't look at Endermen and battle Skeletons from a distance.
All the other games have so little variety it normally comes down to little guy, big guy, boss guy, all of which you just shoot.

 

[Akyho]

Because this is what game have become today.

Manpuncher vs Boxhead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRuHIOskFqQ

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well developers got the concept of minimum development requirement down to an art, varied enemies(complexity on the whole) take alot of extra time that the publishers don't want to give them, so they cut corners and release the simplest still sell-able product.

And publishers know full well marketing sells alot more then quality, so we get fucked.

 

[Sexy Devil]

In recent memory inFamous 2 has a fairly varied amount of enemies. Albeit while at first it requires a plethora of different abilities, the strategy for all of them by the end of the game is pretty much "Megawatt hammer or lightning bolt machine gun thing until dead".

 

[funguy2121]

In two relatively simplistic games that are not generally seen as combat focussed have this. Minecraft enemies die easiest when you use different tactics for each of them, and the varied AIs in Terraria need different methods to kill them. Not to mention that I've never seen a Zelda game in which all of the enemies fight exactly the same.

Ahh minecraft. teres nothing more fun than when you get the skeleton to kill it for you

For zelda, I was actually trying to stay in the realm of first person, if you didn't have varied enemies in an RTS or RPG, then you'd have a pretty shitty RTS or RPG.

Zelda is most definitely NOT a RTS or an RPG. I get your point, though. FPSs are all about engaging and taking down the enemies, so the homogeny you're describing is central to the lull we're experiencing in the genre. Truly sad. I think the Uncharted games are a little too watered down and mass marketed, but they're still engaging even when you fight a boss character on a train and empty a couple of clips into bare skin and he still doesn't go down, because the levels, the challenges and the nature of the gameplay keeps changing. The nature of FPS gameplay doesn't really change all that much. Goldeneye gave us objectives, the Rainbow Six games were more tactical and focused nearly as much on being a leader as on shooting, and Crysis 2 lets you take advantage of the skyscrapers to get around/take down your enemies, and gives you superhuman jumping, speed and strength. Most everything in between suffers from the technology making the illusion more difficult to maintain because everything around the illusion is fast approaching photorealism.

 

[xplosive59]

Worst has to be Just Cause 2, i swear that there was only one type of enemy thoughout the entire game outside of the main storyline (and even then that lacked variety).

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Well developers got the concept of minimum development requirement down to an art, varied enemies(complexity on the whole) take alot of extra time that the publishers don't want to give them, so they cut corners and release the simplest still sell-able product.

And publishers know full well marketing sells alot more then quality, so we get fucked.

Precisely. I only wish more people would recognise this and then adjust their buying habits accordingly.

 

[Duruznik]

Although it's not a very combat-focused game, Minecraft. You can't say the enemies aren't diverse:

(The newer 1.9 mobs are even more so, such as the Blaze and Magma Cube, but there are no good pictures of 'em yet)