Just doing a small survey for work, what are your favourite enemies in a game, and your least favourites. With a short explainations if you can afford the time. Reasons can vary from their visual looks to their attack styles or even their sounds, AI. Just anything about any enemies that you either liked or disliked.

They can be from any genre of game, but I'm mainly concerned with the FPS/Action games.

mmm i cant remember comig up against enemies that were notable...


most just do the boring old stuff...

I think the marines from hl were still my favorite enemies.

Those little piss-ant mosquito things from Daikatana were the worst things evar!! So basically small flying things are ghey.

yeah, im with shad, the marines are definitley the better enemies i seen in a game

last edited by Andrew at 13:44:27 29/Oct/04

Favorite Enemy: At least one of my favorites enemies would be Ugh Zan III from Serious Sam: The First Encounter. (This is the end boss in serious sam). Reason being, the shear size of him alone just makes for an awsome battle especially in co-op. Hugh opponents in FPS's are normally alot more fun to go up against that smaller ones imo... the cyberdemon is another that comes to mind.

As far as most hated goes nothing springs to mind right now but if i think of anything i'll add to this post.

Don't know if this is what you're looking for but Frogbot for qw (the Kombat Teams version done by Parboil) is the best game opponent I've played (for ai). Oh and those headless guys who ran with the bombs and yell their, well, heads off in Serious Sam.

Someone made an updated frogbot recently for quakeworld, smashed me in the f*** on aerowalk for a while before I got the hang of it again. Frogbot is still by far the best AI I have seen in any game.

The only real problem I find with the Frogbot is that it follows you around if you've suffered some damage and ignores available armour. All you gotta do is keep running in a roundabout way back to the armour and by then, you're ready to stink. Apart from that, I still get surprised sometimes which is rare for ai.

I loathed those "cherub" baby things with wings in D3 they were c***s to hit and jumped around and suddenly launched at you.

They really gave me the s***s!


I also agree the HL Marines were very cool for their time. I loved the "s*** GRENADE" they often yelled when legging it out of their cover just after you'd lobbed a gren in there.

GOOD:

HL Marines - fairly smart, lifelike. i liked how they were usually in squads. i liked how they fought not just you, but other enemies. it helped give the impression the game wasnt just about you.

Doom (1,2,3); Cyberdemon - massive. kinda scary. not smart but could munch you in seconds; Pinky demon - satisfying to kill in the originals. kinda cool in 3.

Serious Sam; End Boss - once again MASSIVE. really epic feeling to that level.

Quake; Shambler - fast and ferocious. kinda gruesome looking.

AVP; aliens and preds - do i need to explain?

System Shock; er whats her name. the boss - you dont get much interaction with her, but this is one scary piece of AI.

Unreal; Skaarj - Fast, smart and varied. come in various shapes and sizes. some armoured some not. love the pred-like talons.

Metroid; Ridley - this dragon-like bastard never dies for good. hes fast, strong nad is never easy to beat; The metroids - cool design, kinda freaky. i just love the idea of their life stealing. loveable pulsating, transparent beasties.

Turok; T-Rex - once again. hes big. and hes a T-Rex.

BAD:

way too many bad enemies to list.

I hate human soldiers who have the AI of a zombie.

I hate small irritating enemies. every game has one at least. they are usually really fast, jump or fly and there are lots of them. recently Doom3 had those stupid cherubs. Unreal had slug-like things. Quake had wierd goop creatures. HL had headcrabs.




Thats all i can think of right now.

In Metriod Prime, there were these Phazon enhanced Space Pirates called the Elite Pirates. It's incredibly strong, well-armored, and heavily armed. Their Energy Siphon system absorbs Beam weapon shots, which they use to fuel a massive Plasma Artillery Cannon. The nature of this system makes them vulnerable to concussion-based weapons. The Elite Pirate is effective in close combat and at a distance. Their massive size can be a weakness, and their sluggish speed allows for evasion and quick attacks.

For the least favourite enemy (in the same game)it would have to be those flying brain mutants called the Fission Metriod. The Fission Metroid is a mutant, capable of splitting in two. This split endows the new creatures with invulnerability to most weaponry. This effect is unstable, resulting in weakness to a type of weapon fire. The vulnerability appears to be random, due to the chaotic nature of Phazon Mutation.



last edited by Booyah at 15:14:33 29/Oct/04

also any enemy that just splits into two pisses me off.

Best 'enemy' ever - the Metroid.

Although, they weren't nearly as scary as they should have been in Prime, done right these things should be absolutely terrrifying. I mean, think about it, this huge flying glob with tusk-like tentacles attaching it to your head and sucking the life out of you...

Also, Ridley (again, from Metroid) comes to mind. There's something about a bigass dragon-like thing that's just cool :)


Other notable enemies - the Bob-omb and Bullet-Bill. A bigass bullet with a grin on its face, so simple :)


Hated:
The Imps in Doom 3. Just the way the danm things crawl through/from under stairs and catch you by surprise. Eeee!

i love any zombie or skeleton enemies, cos usually they are slow and or stupid, which works well against my terrible lack of hand eye co-ordination.

the flying snot blobs from quake scared the crap out of me many a time...

and the headless bombers from serious sam rocked bigtime

BEST:

Humans
The Clock

WORST:

Humans
Controllers

all of the enemies in quake scared the s*** outta me.

Definately the shambler from quake (1).

Nothing fancy about him, he didn't run fast, or anything. Just a tuff c*** with lighting.

The sort of monster that should be a plush toy.

EDIT: Not the shambler, i mean the big polar bear with lighting.

last edited by nF at 18:39:23 29/Oct/04

thats was the shambler though nf.

Kamikaze bombers in serious sam get a vote from me, they were so simple yet so memorable. Surely everyone must remember the first time they thought 'hmm, what's that yelling sound?'. They make you run backwards the most in a game that has the major complaint that you spend most of your time running backwards :) (trying to make that sound like a good thing).

Those kamikazi dudes were the best thing about Serious Sam and also those skeleton things as well. You could hear their hooves or however it's spelt from a mile away like the bomb guys. Damn hairy when you're inside a pyramid thingy and the sound of trotters (ROFL) can be heard.

The word "trotter" always cracks me up!

8-)

also that devil boss in the lava in quake was pretty uber

System Shock; er whats her name. the boss - you dont get much interaction with her, but this is one scary piece of AI.

Shodan is what you're thinking of.


Best enemies is a hard one... HL marines were ok but not the best. Some of the best AI I've seen was actually in NOLF 1 and 2... the AI in #2 was actually very good. If you did things like leave a door open, filing cabinet open or unscrewed a light bulb (to darken the room) they will notice and try and figure out just why that is the case. It's pretty funny watching a guard patrolling his route, then later on you sneak into a room, kill the light, then leave the door open. Guard sees open door, walks in and is now ready to be picked off silently and left in hte same spot (kill and hide in 1 easy knife move!)

last edited by sikgem at 19:44:04 29/Oct/04

yeah shodan. for some reason i just couldnt remember the name.

Best:

The Half-life Marines are highly memorable being the first enemies I remember to really give the illusion of human intelligence.

The Cherubs of Doom3 - What, You didn't like them?

Most of the bosses from Tales of Phantasia for giving really challenging and rewarding fights.

The skull-faced grunts from Viewtiful Joe for being so incredibly fun to wail on - the Fire Lion boss gets honorouble mention for being so challenging, in a retro platformer way.

Ganon from Ocarina of Time. A reasonably epic battle that made up for the terrible boss fights of the preceeding games.

Big Baby Bowser of Yoshi's Island - something just made this fun

The dog things in Half-Life that let out a lovable squeal before producing a small green nova/explosion.

Pindleskin.

Worst:

The endboss from <insert name of capcom fighter here, particularly the vs. games>

Any Chrono Trigger/Illusions of Gaia/Terranigma boss - except for *spoiler* of course.

Bats in Prince of Persia - You couldn't attack them properly and they'd usually swarm you when you're hanging percariously. Stupid.

last edited by Hashy at 22:10:34 29/Oct/04

Nazis! there always fun to shoot the f*** out of

how could i forget Ganon.

Favourite enemies to kill - The bums in max payne that were high of that drug (forget the name stated with a V), they were always fun to throw grenades at.

Hated facing small annoying enemies - headcrabs in HL, also hated...
http://www.newdoom.com/newdoomshots/images/051303/2.jpg

Good:
* Blah blah Marines from HL

* The Arch-Vile from Doom is an uber creepy f***er! He's like a giant, rabid, child molester with the power of resurrection. I love smashing the c***!

* Those undead skeletor looking guards from Thief! Those c***s are the best swordfighters from any game. Scared the guano out of me a few times.

* Those big cows from Serious Sam.


Bad:

* The pain elementals from Doom. I hate how those c***s just keep spewing out Lost Souls... very annoying.

* THose naked bird sluts from serious sam piss me off big time.

* The ghosts in Pac-Man

Arch-Vile.

another vote for the metroids in metroid prime. most of the enemies in that game were very organic and fit in well with their surroundings.

although I hated those damn fission metroids near the end, they were f***ing annoying, splitting in two and requiring switching weapons etc, while losing health required for defeating prime

power bombs fixed them good.

I hate anything small and jumpy, mostly they do sfa damage and just s*** u to tears instead (still a victory for them IMO).

Good Skaarj was by far the scariest enemy, way they could move at you and then slice and dice.

HL Marines also awesome for two reasons, they AI the way they'd warn of grenades etc AND cause u get to shoot americans (not enough games let u do that).

another vote for the skaarj for best enemy, even when u were playing co-op in unreal they still were a challenge to take down

Just doing a small survey for work, what are your favourite enemies in a game, and your least favourites. With a short explainations if you can afford the time. Reasons can vary from their visual looks to their attack styles or even their sounds, AI. Just anything about any enemies that you either liked or disliked.

They can be from any genre of game, but I'm mainly concerned with the FPS/Action games.

If you are paid to do surveys and this is your idea of a survey you suck at them. I mean for f*** sakes, at the very least a survey poses questions … I don’t see a f***ing question mark in there at all.

The major issue I have with AI is that all they consist of is pathing and some minor tactical choices, and BAM we have working AI (apparently).

The marines in HL where probably the most interesting because they actually responded with funky scripts that where surprisingly human like. I mean who doesn’t remember the “fire in the hole” as a grenade landed at your feet?

However, what really s***s me off with most game developers is that AI is left to last (or near last) in the development cycle. Which means that the developer who is left to develop AI processes has f*** all cycles to work with after all of the other s*** has been put in.

The bigger picture with enemies is that most people loose the plot with narrative when it comes to enemy NPCs. In fact, so many games just throw narrative and plot out of the window when it comes to boss mobs it isn’t funny.

I imagine that design meetings in some game companies sound a little like this:

Dev1: OMG LETS PUT RAY GUNS ON THE GIANT ZOMBIE HITLER

Dev2: OMG YEAH LETS MAKE HITLER A NINJA TOO … COS NINJAS ARE RAD.

Now, I am the last person who would suggest that a pirate ninja dragon Hitler with ray beams wouldn’t be cool, but out of context it would completely shatter immersion.

Funnely enough HL already has been given a + enemy mob. However, I think it also has one of the worst enemies of all time. That giant floating alien baby that you had to destroy at the end game; I mean what kind of f***ed up s*** was that?

Actually, the entire last third of HL was immersion breaking (and s***).


Even if AI was developed concurrently to the rest of the engine, quite often it gets the guts ripped out of it at the end of development because people push for the pretties over good AI.

I'm not paid to do surveys, but thanks for the abuse anyway.

I'm not paid to do surveys, but thanks for the abuse anyway.

Thank god.

no problem

;)

Also Walton Simons, Maggie Chow, and Bob Page.

I agree with a lot of these (HL Marines, Archvile, skeletons from Thief) and I'd add that most of the boss fights from Undying were memorable. Each boss was the member of this old Victorian style post-WW1 family that was cursed, and each had their own kind of back story. Creepy game too.

As for worst, I don't know how they did it but those cherubs in Doom 3 were more annoying than the lost souls from Doom. Worst enemy ever.

The Cherubs honestly rank on my favourite list, they're freaky, and quite dis-orientating to get attacked by.

I normally don't like small, swarming enemies; but while the cherubs caused me a few frustrations I can look back and appreciate them.