Execute win.exe
 

Don't you hate it when you're kicking ass at a game, only to have the computer execute some cheap catch-up tactic or bust out a killer combo? I'm not talking about artificial intelligence growing smarter and more difficult to defeat, just tactics and maneuvers a computer can use that human players can't. Although new games have some win.exe instances, I find that older games need to use these tactics to make up for an otherwise poor AI. I seem to trigger this secret executable a lot in old fighting games, especially Mortal Kombat II. I'm sure many will remember being thrown by a computer while your uppercut seems to go right through them.

Anyway, the point of this thread was to discuss with you guys the most annoying instances a computer ended up defeating you when it was on the ropes, whether this be "catch-up AI" in racing games, impossible combos in fighting games, or anything else you can think of. I think the most impossibly ridiculous situation was when I was little, playing the aforementioned Mortal Kombat II for the SNES. I wasn't very good at the game at a young age, so I spammed Scorpion's harpoon move on Very Easy. It seemed to work most of the time, but when I was fighting Jax, he kept ducking the harpoon for the whole match. After a while, the executable was triggered, and Jax CRAWLED (and by that, I mean magically came over while in his ducking stance) from the other side of the stage, all the while I was still harpooning, and uppercutted me. To this day, that still tops anything a game has ever thrown at me.

Discuss! =o

Everything ALPHA-152 does in Dead or Alive 4 is a pretty good example of win.exe. Nearly uncounterable, unblockable 10-12 hit combos and throw moves that take off half your health. Tekken 4's Jinpachi is the same. Anyone who's fought him knows what I'm talking about.

There are many instances I can recall from Soul Edge. The Edge Master mode had several battles that I couldn't clear because the enemies would continuously guard or simply use throw techniques as soon as I had reduced their health bars to less than half.

Speaking of Soul Edge, Soul Calibur 3 is pretty bad at doing that as well. Mitsurugi, for instance, as an AI opponent spams blocking. One of the more difficult (lol it's hard ._.) opponents cannot be seen at all -- the entire ring is black and so's s/he. Only time you can catch a glimpse of the person is when they enter the ever-so small cone of light your character is in. But then -- you've no idea where s/he's coming from!

lol Lose. :(

The com has a one-up in all fighting games since it doesn't even have to input commands to do special moves. But I think the worst part is that its counter-attacks are practically triggered by your own input. I've never seen a computer opponent guess on anything. Either they let you hit them or they block you perfectly.

Mario Kart (mostly the original, but all of them to some extent) are fucking annoying about this.

- WraithTwo -

Oh GOD, how I hated that game because of that. One random CPU would run win.exe and get constant mushroom-like speed and never stop. This would push you to 2nd place always. Thank god Mario Kart 64 didn't suffer from the same glitch.

Mario Party 3 was (and still is) really annoying. The computer opponents were cheap as hell.

Usually it goes something like this. I would be winning by 2 or 3 stars, but then...

First turn.
Wario takes 3 steps.
Wario finds a hidden block.
Wario gets a star.

Next turn.
Wario lands on an item game space.
Wario gets a Magic Lamp. (no matter what item game he plays)

Third turn.
Wario uses the Magic Lamp to get a star. (just when I was about to get it)

Fourth turn.
Wario lands on a Boo space.
Wario has 50 coins. (of course)
Wario steals my star.

Fifth turn.
I throw the Nintendo 64 out the window. :mad:

GAME OVER!

BLUE SHELL! BLUE SHELL! BLUE SHELL! *You get bananna* BLUE SHELL! BLUE SHELL!
5th!

I noticed in sports games, teammate AI usually is very stupid compared to computer opponent AI. You'll go to pass to a guy right next to you, and he just turns away and watches the ball/puck/whatever sail right past him. Then one opponent just bowls right over one of your teammates.

You could say that again. I always loved it how Mario or Luigi would activate their Starman in the SNES version just as I happened to be close enough to get hit by it. It got so bad, that my brother and I started playing as Mario and Luigi just so the CPU couldn't have that advantage. One thing is for sure about the AI in Mario Kart, it teaches you to be ruthless to win.

Tekken 5 actually. Dark Resurrection's Jinpachi, or Magpachi as I call him, is no exception of win.exe . With him, win.exe isn't executed, it's on startup so to speak.

There was one time i was playing Chrono Trigger, and i was fighting lavos. I'm doing pretty good, getting close to the end, when bam, he pulls out this spell i've seen plenty of times before, only this time it does over 1000 damage to each of my characters. That has never happened before, or since. And the thing is, he had already used it before in the battle, and it didn't do nearly as much. To this day, i haven't figured it out.

It's called Halo 2. They actually bragged about how smart they made the AI for the game. But once you actually play the game on Legendary, you'll see the AI isn't the least bit smarter; they just up the AI's accuracy to 99% and increase the damage you take by ten times, then claim the AI is godly.

Ah yes, the same goes for Resident Evil 4 on Professional mode. Enemies drop half the ammo, take twice the hits, and deal twice the damage. Genius.

for me it's RTS games in general. I like them but since you have to scroll/select your units before giving orders, it takes time while the computer can order all it's units simulatenously. there's been many times in Starcraft, Aoe3, Rise of Nations,Rise of Legends, etc that multi battles are happening and you have to jump back and forth to mange your troops. maybe I just need to use shortcuts more :) but it's really annoying in a rts like Aoe3 when your units just sit there and get killed while you are busy elsewhere...

Yeah, I meant 5. Typos and such.

Vergil from Devil May Cry 3 is pretty bad about win.exe in the last fight. But at least his fight was fun. Beowulf was just frustrating.

Mortal Kombat II and III arcade versions. I'd always get about 2-3 wins in a row then it's like the computer says "LOL U WIN ENOUGH! :tpg: " Then I find myself being tossed and beaten and just sitting there like "WTF?" Even happened on the console version of MK 2 as well. :(

Fighting games seem to have this mostly, I don't know what it is, but it's almost like the developers don't want you to beat the game on one credit (in arcades).

I don't think that would be considered too much cheating. It's just that his DT'ed mode recovers so freaking much health, but otherwise I think the fight is a fair game for a boss battle. I thought Arkham was way worse than him and Beowulf in terms of frustration.

I haven't been playing any really challenging games, so I can't recall any AI that practically cheated. However, I do believe some of the older KoF bosses are impossible. All the fights preceeding those are ok, once you get there, the boss throws out totally overpowere/ranged/high priority moves, and it's really frustrating like that.

Yeah, exactly. -_- Especially Mortal Kombat II, I agree with you. That game didn't really have an AI. It was more like a reactionary command, because every action from the computer was completely based off of yours, and it always reacted perfectly. Not only that, it did things you couldn't. Sometimes moves would go through the computer when it threw you. O_o You had to basically "trick" the computers in those old games to win.

A recent example is Guild Wars, and it's only been happening with my new character, a ritualist (typical low-health ranged support unit).
In this game you'll be playing as a group, and in this instance I've got 7 computer controlled allies with me.
I die this one time and I'm resurrected with death penalty (every time you die you get less health and energy while in a battle area).

Now the fun thing is, everytime I've died just this one time, every Goddamn enemy target me and kill me off instantly. EVERY TIME!
So I'm lying there till my AI-group kill the enemies off and I'm resurrected again. New group of enemies: "lets kill this guy fast for no apparent reason".

I mean, there's a monk right there. They're usually weak and favored to kill first, please go for him?
Or how about the two warriors right in front of you, slicing your faces? They're in reach...
NOOOOooooooooooo, we'll take that guy in the back or die trying!

Crap. Annoys the hell out of me. There shouldn't be any way for them to know if I have death penalty. My health bar should just show as full, as anyone else in my group.
Even so, there's no reason for them to lose all their defence just to reach and kill me first, so I can just lie there, not playing the game.
Is this fun NCSOFT? IS THIS FUN?

Oh I'm done >=(

Nintendo are legends for this in both Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64. The cheating is still there in Double Rash, but not as blatantly obvious as the CPU CHARACTERS WARPING ACROSS THE MAP ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN THEN SOMEHOW GETTING A RED SHELL ALONG THE WAY.

Sounds like you would do real well as a tank instead ;) Ahaha.

For me I've only really seen the win.exe in racing games such as NFSU2. U get a 10 second lead then within a matter of seconds, Mr. No. 2 comes rushing up at ya reducing the gap to a meer 1.32 seconds. Pah.

Ugh, Tekken 5's Jinpachi is a bastard. 'Sup, instant stagger that lasts the longest in any game, can be done from any position except in the air, interrupts every move (and every ground combo) in the game, and can be linked into an unblockable fireball that does 75% of your health's worth of damage in one hit.

And then there was NFSU2. I swear, that had horrible balancing. Easy was a borefest because the AI sucked ass, and Medium had you losing half the time because no matter WHAT YOU DID they ALWAYS managed to get ahead of you, especially on straightaways. I shudder to think of what Hard was - freaking infinite NOS for your competition? =\

It's true that the AI is often very unfair, but there are also usually unfair tricks that can be used to beat them. So it usually just balances out once you figure out the appropriate trick.

In MK2, we had Kitana and Baraka's bbb moves that could be spammed easily all the way to Shao Kahn.

MK3 had Cyrax's web that could be spammed.

DoA4 has the charge up moves that can be spammed on the boss.

The Mortal Kombat series isn't even a series. The artificial intelligence is so ridiculous that you might as well not bother in the first place.

I've noticed this in a few games, and not necessarily fighters. What's worse is when there's games which are meant to be hard, but only increase the difficulty by lowering your damage, and increasing the enemies health.

There's also a few shooters which come to mind, dodonpachi being one of them. If you end up getting too close to certain ships they'll spray you with bullets, which otherwise won't be there had you of been tamed at the bottom of the screen.

I could go on, but I won't. To list a few, there's every boss in Soul Edge/Calibur. Onslaught from Marvel vs. Capcom 1. Gill from 3rd Strike. It's not like anyone actually uses the bosses once they've unlocked them (I can just imagine the ENDLESS AMOUNTS OF FUN an Apocalypse vs. Apocalypse would do to a PS2's framerate) but HEY. MAYBE IF WE INCREASE THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL TO "FUCKING ANNOYING" PEOPLE WILL CREDIT FEED SOME MORE.

OMG, I hated this! Yeah, the AI wasn't necessarily smarter, they just shot like 10x faster, and their dmg output was about 10x more than even on heroic. Not only that, they had more hp as well, so it took most enemies longer to kill.

I remember one time on the first stage, running towards an elite with 2 plasma rifles. Both guns were going at it, and his side was exposed (I tried to sneak from behind, but it's almost impossible unless they're distracted by a Marine or flood). How does he respond? Not by shooting me (which would've took me down in like 5 shots on legendary), but simply whacks me once (I was getting tired of getting shot to death, hence why I charged), and I'm dead. So much for the Mark VI shields lol.

And to make things worse, if you play co-op on legendary, and either one of you dies, the game starts over from the last checkpoint. While I suppose it would eliminate the kamikaze tactics of the first game (where one guy stays behind somewhere safe, while the other goes and kills enemies one by one repeatedly), this, along with the "Ultra powerful 2-shot you" attacks by the enemy, makes legendary not worth playing through unless you like to suffer (if I didn't die in 2 hits from the enemies, I'd play through it on legendary). To this day, my brother and I have yet to beat it on legendary (the last boss is cheesy too cause you have to hit him a lot, and his shield hardly ever seems to be down long enough for you to hit him).

I wouldn't of cared if they dodged my shots, and used more sneaky tactics against me, but just making them shoot faster, and doing more dmg per shot, isn't "smarter AI", it's just lazy programming.

A similiar thing happened to me in Mario Kart too. While I did hate the SNES version where they had unlimited items and used them almost everytime I passed them up, on the N64 one, if you ever let any of them pass you up on 150CC, you will literally never able be to catch up with them. They move at such a super speed that no matter how well you do, or how fast you go, they will be so far ahead that you'll only be able to place 2nd (the only way to catch up to them is to like get 3 lightning bolts in a row, and hope that it lasts long enough. But usually you're in 2nd place, so good luck getting that lightning bolt too).

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This is a cool thread. I wouldn't mind AI being more challenging, but to essentially resort to tricks and tactics which amount to borderline (or outright) cheating is kind of lame. They should just make it where the AI has several pre-programmed things in them, and as you increase the difficulty (or kick the AI's butt too easily), extra code/sequences get added to them so that they become more unpredictable (as opposed to simply doing more damage, which is what virtually all FPS games define as "harder" difficulty modes).

For example, let's say in a FPS game, you're hiding behind a barrel. On normal, the AI enemy might decide to wait till you show your face to fire at you (rather than continually firiing at the barrel, unless it's an explosive one). On hard, they would throw a grenade near where you are to flush you out (something the player would no doubt do to the AI).

On very hard, if there were more than one of them, one of them would either send a guy where you are to see what you're doing (esp. if you're hiding in that spot too long), or they would cook the grenade off a little longer (as opposed to just throwing it where you are right away), so that it'll be harder for you to avoid the damage (but you should hear the pin pop, and then be able to wonder why the grenade hasn't been thrown yet after a while). The grenade still does the same amount of damage, just the AI really is smarter, and will use some more deceptive stuff rather than "OMG my bullet does 2x the damage now!"

I suppose programming this would take a lot longer, but if it's done right, it'll give the game massive replay value, cause the AI may not act the same way, making the encounter a little more challenging and different each time you play.

I think M. Bison in SFA3 suffers from a bit of win.exe aswell, course then again, how are you supposed to susspect that his ism allowed for SCREEN FILLING PSYCO CRUSHER MADNESS!?!?! ?

Heh. I see a lot of people complaining about Super Mario Kart, and for good reason. ^_^ Honestly, I love the N64 version and every incarnation afterwards, but the SNES game was really difficult. Not because of smart AI mind you. Infernal isn't exaggerating so much when he says the CPU icons would just kinda skip across the map if you were too far ahead. I guess the programmers programmed win.exe in that game to only execute when you're about to win, you know, just to piss you off. Guess what Nintendo? It worked. -_-

I don't play the FPS genre so much, so I wouldn't know about this whole "same AI intelligence with different damage" deal. Sounds pretty half-assed, although I'm sure it's very hard to program enemies to interact with their environment in an FPS.

Nothing beats Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey for the 64. Yeah lets go up 5-0 or 5-1 and then suddenly you can't so shit and your guys you are not controlling can't do shit either.