Cheap, cheating games. ARGALJKAGE RUBBERBANDING BULLSHIT
 

I'm currently having to calm myself down and resist the urge to throw something across the room, for I am that pissed off. "Why so angry you fine English gentleman?" you ask, to which my response would be: Sega Rally (add a Revo to that title if you live somewhere silly).

The game starts of fine, the AI is pretty retarded and you can almost guarantee that the order the cars start in off the grid will be the order they finish in too. It's good dumb fun, for a while. Then you start getting onto the harder championships and some sort of transformation starts to occur in your opposition. Their cars gain magic abilities to go magically turbo-boost past you, and to take corners faster than is ever possible. Even when you have exactly the same car, and follow exactly the same driving line, you'll go flying into a wall as they cruise around the corner.

The other trait they start to exhibit more and more is a desire to hit your car. They will actively leave their driving line to ram into you. This wouldn't be too much of a problem except for the rules of collisions always work against you. You hit an AI car, you will slow down. AI car hits you, you will slow down (whilst they use their magic turbo boost to rocket away).

As such the only difficultly comes in passing other cars in an effort to get to the front of the pack, because they will do everything in their power to block you. My levels of anger reached breaking point when, for the third time in consecutive races, I'd been hit into the side of the track by an AI car, which managed to spin me 90º and leave me at a near stand-still, killing any chance of doing well.

This isn't the first time a game has made me so angry either, I can think of other instances where the game flat out cheats to make things tough for the player. Now I don't mind a game being difficult because it genuinely is hard, if the difficulty is an emergent property that comes about from the rules and mechanics of the game. But when a game so obviously cheats, that pisses me off something rotten. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So, it's time to name and shame: what games and their cheap, cheating ways have annoyed you? And by doing what?

Hahah, sorry man. Racing games seem to pull that kinda stuff all the time. It truly is the cheapest genre I can think of. Anyway, I seem to encounter win.exe in a lot of the older games I play, but I can't think of a better example than Mortal Kombat II. I'll just copypasta from the old thread since I'm lazy.

It can be frustrating, but it's a fact of life. Every game relies on win.exe at least a little, even newer games that have great AI. Like, I don't doubt that the computers in Smash Bros. Brawl are smart, but that doesn't stop them from reflect-shielding every projectile and catching every item on Intense now does it?

I was having too much fun doing burnouts in the mud to notice the AI lapping me in SEGA Rally! ='D But having just spent the last few days playing through the frown-worthy Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, I'd say SEGA must share their dirty coding around the different teams. The computer players blatantly cheat in the old Mario Kart kind of way to keep up. You even see their little icons on the mini-map warp closer to you. ;__;

Doesn't matter if you take every possible shortcut and you've got the fastest shit. They'll always be there. Up your arse!

I remember Street Fighter II pissing me off, too. That's bullshit, CPU Guile! You're cheating, you need to hold down on the dpad for two seconds before you can do that! Why are you doing it over and over and over and over again, SEE PEE YOU GUUUIIILLEEEE!

Not that it's a horrible game but I think NHL Hitz or something like that with getting checked by no one. I was playing once against a friend, had a break away, was going towards the goal when BAM, I got knocked down and my friend got the puck. Even he said that was garbage.

Another game that was just so annoying that I have refused to play any of it's sequels MUST be Mario Party. Yes, I can take randomness. Yes, I can take set-backs. But seriously, what the heck with playing the game, having like ten stars, my dad having two, and the second to last round hitting a bowser block that will ultimately SWAP OUR STARS.

Monster Hunter Freedom games to the PSP. Although the games are pretty well made in general and I love playing them there are some things that pisses me off and the first is when the monsters skip animation. A very good example of that is the Rathalos, who has this charge attack that he uses very often. Anyway, sometimes when you hit the monsters and he staggers, what he should be doing is finishing the staggering animation, which in during is a great time to open a can of whoop ass. HOWEVER, sometimes he will in mid-animation suddenly jump into the charge attack and you will have no time to prepare for this at all. I call this the cheat charge, and it pisses me off every time it happens (which is too often).

The second is the monsters hit boxes (that you get hit by) which sometimes are absolutely ridiculous. When you're thinking you should be out of the monsters way it somehow manages to hit you with a charge or whatever, even when you're obviously standing next to it and you shouldn't be hurt by it at all. Sometimes it's almost like an invincible wall hit you from nowhere and sends you flying. If you're walking under a monsters legs you can be stopped by the monster TURNING, making you fall down on your bum and very vulnerable to a coming attack.

And yes, racing games are the kings of cheating. If they weren't cheating the games would be too easy. At least the old games.

In at least the SNES version of Mortal Kombat 3, the game was very interesting that even on the very easy difficulty level and the Novice ladder, if I won the first two matches in a row, the next guy would be impossible to beat. He would parry every attack, use the extremely cheap duck-and-uppercut counter when I would try to uppercut him, and was just plain annoying. This was all done of course to force me to use a continue so that the game could try to prevent me from getting to Shao Khan. Of course if I did continue, then the same guy who just completely owned me, would act like an idiot on our subsequent rematch. That level of "difficulty" really pissed me off sometimes.

Pretty much every racing game I've ever played had some sort of catch-up AI (hi Super Mario Kart), but only in Need For Speed: Underground was it devastating. If you were at any point ahead by 10 seconds it was not a safe lead because you could either clip something and be irreversibly stuck spinning out or you could hit something head on that would not flip you or cause you to pinball but it would make you come to a dead stop and force you to back up and drive around it. By that point your foes will have caught up and at best made the race a little closer and at worst would put you 10 seconds behind without any chance of catching up for the rest of the race.

Cheating is blatantly obvious in fighting games, particularly SNK fighting games and numerous examples can be cited. The CPU reading your inputs is a given, and no matter if you're on the easiest level, or the hardest, the final boss will kick your ass unfairly. A couple of examples:


Power Instinct Matrimelee - Sissy the princess is the final boss (not joking) and she happens to have a variety of high priority moves with large hitboxes. That's fine and all but conducting an attempt to win took me 10-15 minutes of save states and reloading at safe-neutral positions. If I ever jumped towards her, she would summon Abubo and knock me away. If I jumped her in a corner, she would pull out the sword which has a small chance of missing compared to Abubo, or just use Abubo. If I was anywhere within her range to do so, she would use Abubo and push me back if I was blocking or not. At full screen's length she would use the unblockable frog, which leads to either a painful multihit saw combo (range) or some form of being knocked away again. Point being, she would use the absolute best move for each situation, evidenced through many, many save states. Nothing was safe to do because she had a counter for everything that would happen to be used at the right time, every time.

Rage of the Dragons - Uhhh, I think it says something when I can't even beat him with save states. Using Cassandra in particular, literally every single thing he did outprioritized any of my attacks and he would even stop blocking in the middle of my attacks and throw out a move that eats whatever I was doing at the time. The only way I could damage him was using air drills vs. wakeups, but he would just stop those whenever he felt like it. Something was clearly wrong here.


Some games are particularly funny and ramp up the difficulty to max when the comp is at low health. The most obvious example being Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, where you could be facing an idiot team until you get it down to the last half portion of life with one character remaining. If it's say, Storm/Magneto, for example then you could see (super jump-> air dash downwards-> 20+ hit combo w/ super finisher) cycle in place that would repeat within less than a second if the initial hit fails. Not only that, but even characters like servbot will pull out all stops and go combo crazy in a frantic steroid burst to destroy your team with the little health that is remaining.

Def Jam: Icon did it for me. It started off nice and easy, and at first the difficulty rose gradually. But about halfway through the game it just gets insanely difficult, mainly because of cheating AI if you ask me. The computer starts blocking and reversing all of your moves, always uses the most harmful way to attack you (i.e. using the environmental damage aspect of the game constantly), and the cheapest thing of all, actually stops your moves mid-animation. How is this shit even possible? I'll be in the middle of kick (and they're not even blocking it) and all of sudden they'll do an attack that just overrides mine, despite the fact that I started mine first and mine is the more powerful of the two.

The sad thing is that they know they're doing it to. You're fighting a lot of the same people throughout the game, so it doesn't make sense that they're easy to beat the first time and then hard as fuck the second or third, despite the fact that you're on the same difficulty level. It would make sense if you were fighting gradually harder opponents, but no, you're fighting someone you easily beat at the beginning of the game and you're now losing to them. Ridiculous. I actually broke my TV remote in half with my bare hands while playing this game.

The first thing that comes to mind is the AI in Wipeout Pure. To me, it doesn't cheat too badly for the majority of a race, but from the starting grid to the first few corners, the other crafts have some ridiculous thrust. Getting the boost start yourself does little to help, as they usually power past you either way.

Saying that, once they're all past you if does calm down. But it just makes the starting grid boost mostly useless.

Some of the AI in Goldeneye. Many times you were able to fool the AI by hiding and stealth, but there were many moments when the AI was simply scripted to know where you were. And I don't mean storming a room you're in, I'm taling about complete bullshit, telephatic, I-can-see-you-through-walls kind of know where you were.

This was most evident in that one trainyard level where completing one objective caused a number of guards to spawn outside of the warehouse you were in. Sometimes they wouldn't open the doors and would just stand against them, with their guns sticking through. As you moved about the room during this, you could see the barrels tracking you :mad:

Mother. Effing. Soul Calibur 3. The first few fights or so in story mode are pathetically easy, then the game executes fuckshitassrape.exe and the enemies begin to guard impact every single fucking blow you throw at them from any angle, every single time. I played the crap out of SC2 and unlocked every bonus weapon and what-not. I've never even beaten single player in SC3 because the ridiculous AI disgusted me so much.

Most recently some random stuff in Halo 3 has irritated me. Such as a a plasma grenade hitting someone in the head and rather then sticking like it's supposed to, it'll bounce off and they'll walk away like nothing happened. I've also had spiker grenades go right through people. I've also gotten splattered by ghosts when I jumped over them and they only clipped my foot.

Another game I thought about, while it was intentional for this, is WWE:DoR1 when facing Flair/Show at one part of the storymode, depending on which brand you'll go with. They will block just about EVERYTHING, counter just about EVERYTHING, and if you do have your finisher ready, you can use it only to have them pop right back up. You're only hope to win is to get a ring bell or something and let them hit you with it for a DQ.

As another wrestling game, probably the old SNES Raw game, Royal Rumble style. It always seemed that if you and a friend demolished the computer by throwing them out repeatedly that someone like Doink would suddenly go crazy and win every grapple including the one that throws you out. I dunno how many times I have seen us doing fine, then in comes Doink, and within four seconds winning a grapple against each of us and throwing us out.

In fact a few recent fighters have been like that, Dead or Alive 4 comes to mind. The first few fights are easy enough, then the bullshit begins and the computer becomes ridiculously adept at pulling off exactly the right block and counter whenever you attack. It gets bloody annoying very quickly.

It's not even a recent thing. Street Fighter 2 had complete bullshit AI later on, with characters like Guile pulling off charge moves without charging. For instance, he'd walk up to you and pull off an instant Sonic Kick as if it was a Dragon Punch, whereas you need to hold down for a moment before pressing up and kick to activate the move.

Zangief's hyper fast machinegun light punching and low kicking were other particular "Oh come ON" moments I remember.

Don't you mean the whole Dead or Alive series? The boss fights in those games are incredibly cheap, which I would find annoying if I didn't already hate the games anyway.

Only other DoA game I've played was DoA2 on the Dreamcast. But now you mention it, yes the boss fights on that were stupid at times.

I think as Q says, it's something that has plagued fighting games for many a year (Street Fighter 2 on XBLA still pulls the same cheap shit, and is highly annoying as a result). So it seems fighting and racing games are established genres prone to cheap, cheating ways.

I think first-person shooters would have to be another. Q pointed out Goldeneye, but even recent FPSs start to show their robotic computer-powered ways at times. Call of Duty 4, as much as I love that game, even slips when - on Veteran difficulty certainly - the enemy AI can throw grenades with such pinpoint precision. It doesn't matter where you're hiding or how difficult the throw would be, all of sudden about 5 grenades land at your feet.

Whoever cited Halo 3 though, really? I find the AI in Halo 3 to be OK. A bit dumb actually. The difficulty only ever comes in the numbers overwhelming you, or getting caught off guard by a sniper, etc.

He was more listing glitches instead of AI behavior.

I love the AI in Halo 1. It was a huge part of why the difficulties were so brilliantly made. Smarter, faster firing enemies that forced you to play the game and approach each battle in different ways. The later games fell into that "laser fire eats away your shield really fucking fast" cheapness.

I dunno, the boss fights in the first couple of DoA games were cheap but you could sometimes win them by spamming the same move over and over at them. I never finished Wu-Tang Taste the Pain though. I filled pretty much every character's chamber board up with not too much difficulty but could never beat the motherfucker in the straw hat (Second to last boss). The one time I almost did it, getting him down to his last energy bar having only lost one myself, he suddenly went apeshit and basically fucked me with one long combo and endless cheap power moves. I used to love that game but damn was it unbeatable.

I never had a problem with NFS Underground though. I always felt that if you lost that it was because you'd fucked uop by hitting something, not because the computer was using magic catch-up powers.

I take your point. I think at least once I did exactly that in desperation. I was so surprised to finally land a kick combo that I just kept spamming it for the rest of the match. What annoys me is that the perfectly good tactics for every other fight in the game are no good against the boss.

The thing about the computer cheating in fighting games is that it's possible to fake out the computer by putting in fireball motions then not following through. Likewise, instead of opening yourself up to attacks that the computer is just going to anticipate before your character has even started the animations, it's better to just play a pure punishing game and poke all their vulnerable attacks.

This still blows, though, because you're forced to adopt completely illogical fighting strategies because the computer doesn't fight even remotely like another player. We should be well past the point of having to let the computer cheat so much due to crappy AI, and I really don't think fighting game players should have to develop two different skills sets.

The best cheating computer example I've seen, though? I believe it's King of Fighters 2002, where the second to last opponent is the last boss from 2001 whose name I forget, the guy with the bladed coat. He has no super combo bar; he can use them at will. Worse, when he's winding up his black hole thing, he goes invincible from the very start of the animation and the cheap ass computer even uses it to escape damage. At that point, the only way to win is literally if the computer deigns to LET you, because otherwise it can just spam supers all day long.

Super Smash Brothers Melee and Brawl computers annoy me with some of the crap they pull off on you. It's not so much "cheating" as it is "Ok, I know that no human player--not even someone from SmashBoards--is capable of doing that". This is stuff like catching you in a throw out of practically any attack of yours, putting up their shield just in time to reflect whatever's thrown/shot at them CONSECUTIVELY (in Melee anyway, it'd be powershielding everything in Brawl), etc.

And come on, they air-dodge the second kick from Ganondorf's down-smash after getting hit by the first? I don't care what people think of Ganondorf as a character in Brawl, that's just total BS there.

Indeed. Facing Zero, Rugal, and the likes is a very trying exercise which I also feel like the computer lets you win randomly at whim. They even give you the continue service, and even with infinite super, or cpu at 1/4 health, it just won't happen sometimes. You'll be eating cape twirls or genocide kicks and there's not much you can do against the timing of them :x

Quoted for absolute truth. They nerfed many fan favorites, mine included (Talim), and everyone was, when controlled by the AI, a bunch of spam-blocking faggots. Now, I did manage to beat single-player, but only with the characters I was really good with. Spam-blocking begets spam-throwing. And even then that didn't always work.

So fighting games seem to be a popular genre in this thread, but both Virtua Fighter 4 and 5 are kinda the antithesis here. They've got great balance, and I've never felt like the computer just blatantly cheated. Maybe the endboss (that weird almagation of fighters all wrapped up in a single, shiny robot-thing) was overly difficult, but it wasn't a cheater.

Some of the conditions for unlocking the special characters were ridiculous also. Especially for Olcadan.

Follow a pre-determined path of buttrape, and then face Olcadan. You lose to him, start the whole shit process over again.

They changed Xianghua too much in that game also. I was pissed. :mad:

God Rugal in Capcom Vs. SNK 2 is horrificly cheap. Always. And always saving his level 3 super when you have 0 health just so you know its coming. Arggg.

As for a newer game, Crysis is really cheap. Not that its particularly hard or anything, but the enemy AI (tanks, soldiers) will just shoot you as soon as you enter the draw distance of the map. There were a ton of occasions when i'd be getting shot and have to back up then slowly move forward and take some shots before i could even figure out where they were coming from.

It's bad enough in Unreal Tournament 3 in single player how on some maps you already have the odds greatly stacked against you and have idiot bots for your teammates. And then on top of that, I seriously feel like the bots on the other team single me out all the time. They could be busy in a vehicle trying to take out my retarded teammates, but as soon as I show up, they drop everything they're doing and focus fire me. Which..only takes a second, if that, with some of the vehicles in that game.

Frickin' hate Warfare. :cussing:

Talking about maps being stacked against you has made me think of another one: Worms on XBLA. Fucking single player missions get ridiculous, where your one team goes up against three AI teams that all go after you, and all the AI characters have flawless pinpoint accuracy with the weapons (no matter what the wind conditions). That pissed me off to the point that I just gave up after a few attempts.

Mario Strikers Charged ~ Damn you Petey! Not just Petey though, the AI throughout entire Striker cup is pretty tough. A mistake such as falling prey to your won item, ill-advised going for steals/hits, or missing a defensive assignment will may cost you a goal. Manageable though, since that's the game, but the worst is when the AI's captain is charging up a Mega-Strike.. while s/he's doing this, the teammates proceed to big hit you to prevent you from getting to their captain, something you can't do yourself playing solo. You can with a P2, but playing the game is so much harder to coordinate. However, I reached a point in my Wii-mote dexterity where I can stop the orange-zone shots, but there's still no stopping the charged skillshots/powershots the players can pull off if the others are hitting you in the meantime. In fact, I'd rather allow the mega-strike instead of the skillshots.

Strikers also has that similar complaint like racing games. The match is 3 minutes, and in the first 1.5 minutes is where you wanna do most of your scoring damage. Now, the AI gets noticably tougher as time progresses and as your lead increases (though it also seems to reach a point where it seems to have given up if your lead is really large). It gets pretty damn hectic in the last 20 seconds where if the AI gets possession of the ball, you're pretty much not getting it back unless they score. Hundreds of times, I could be up by 2-3 goals with 10 seconds left and LOSE before it even goes to Sudden Death. x_x

Strikers pisses me off because if you lose in the finals, it boots you all the way back to the beginning, no way around it. Maybe I'm spoiled by the "save anytime" functionality of today's games, but the least they could do is not make me play through the easy-ass round robin again.

There's always the SD-card "trick." I wish I had known about it before I spent 50+ tries getting through the Striker Cup. But if you really wanna just get by it, after you get to the playoffs, just quit out of Strikers and copy your data to an SD card. Get back in and play. If you lose, overwrite the system data with what you copied to the SD card, and try that match again. You'll lose your WFC information like records/ranks though. =/

I'll just also mention that I've never thrown my controller in frustration until I played Strikers.

They had that in SC II. Back when conquest mode was popular, I uh, abused the AI of Ivy a lot. If you go against the stupid set of AIs(Mostly those who you knew thier moveset/or they sucked) and as well played one of the nub comps/low win people as your last battle.). You could easily get the 8 way turn + approach enemy and hit A + B for that god like grab. Or even use foward + a + B to grab them and as the move is finishing you could do that 8 way rotate and do teh A + B grab like that as they come out of it.

Basically my Ivy was so cheap, she could guard impact then do that special grab. It was rather funny to me to see how cheap you could exploit the AI cause the Ivy with AI, they don't have to put the inputs for that grab, all they have to do is just grab.

I really never had a problem with UT3 but I do know what you mean about the bots stopping only to take you out. Then again, the reason UT3 was easy to me is cause I hated 2k3 and 2k4. The orignal UT was the best and I am glad they made UT3 a bit more like UT. Though some of the gamemodes I was unhappy with + the veicles. I rather miss the good ole days of assault of UT. Mostly of taking over a battleship, taking over a castle and etc. Assault in the first UT was the best just because the objectives were a bit easy unless the defenders REALLY knew what they were doing.

I might have to try that, since I've only played a few times on WFC, and I don't think I have any wins. Still, what happened to the Mario Tennis formula, where you can save after every set?

Cheating/speedy combo AI is pretty much what made me stop playing video games so much. And it doesn't help that I have horrid hand-eye coordination to begin with.
I actually threw a controller in rage playing MGS3 of all things. (Last boss fight)

I'd also like to mention, when the AI suddenly decides to go super saijan, it's usually when there's something time-sensitive going on in the game, in my case.

I've played them all, and I agree I do miss Assault from the first one. It just didn't feel the same in 2k4. UT3 does seem more like the first UT for which I'm glad, but man, some of those single player maps are just plain ridiculous when you combine stupid bot teammates with the enemy team wanting to gangbang you on sight, mostly with the Warfare maps and some of the Vehicle CTF maps.

Here's a second for XBLA Worms.
I just gave up playing when I reached about mission 15 or something like that. No matter how many AI worms was standing on top of each other, they'd much more use the most devastating attack on me. Often so mines went right across the map and exploded, flinging my remaining worms into the sea.
Jesus...

I remember the SNES Worms AI would always shoot pinpoint accurate volleys at you no matter the wind or your location. The only way you DIDN'T get hit was when you were underground, and even then the computer just kept shooting at the ground above you till it got through. The only way I could survive against it was to handicap with enough life bar difference and hope to get lucky water kills.

Unfortunately, unless I missed it, there's no option to turn down to alter handicaps in the XBLA Worms title. You're just stuck re-trying. I went with the tried and tested 'dig underground' strategy on the mission I got stuck on, but in a move of sheer brilliance the game crashes two seconds from when the time is about to run out meaning that I don't ever survive the mission (after that happening three times I gave up with the game).

Another entry in the cheating games list would have to be the recent Sega Superstar Tennis. The last couple of characters to unlock, notably Alex Kidd, are right fuckers to beat. I cruised through the rest of the game, but there were two games that proved quite tough purely because the final against the character you were trying to unlock was ridiculous. The AI had the amazing ability to turbo boost across the back line and get in seemingly impossible returns. It was quite blatant too, because in order to get the character in position the animation is visibily sped up.

Prime for sega superstar tennis, just pick eggman, honestly he can beat anyone, truly broken character(if you don't believe me, get friend that knows how to play even a little bit, play him using eggman and then using any other character... the difference is abysmal) there are few things that he can't return. That aside one of the cheap AIs I haven't seen mentioned is from Oblivion, you could sneak into the third floor, be alone in a room and steal a fork, some guard will hear you from a different city, run to where you are and bust you. I know a lot of mods fixed this, but I was impressed with the superhuman ability of these guards to detect felonies.

Edit:

Zip reminded me in chat about another thing, yes I am aware of the level up, system in oblivion, but I still hate how even the shittiest thug got the best gear in the game just because you levelled up, it was pretty lame that some random thug destroyed all your gear, that's worse than his even if you were a master repairing it, it was a pain.

Erm, right, thanks, but I've managed to beat the game as any of the characters. The question here isn't about my personal ability, it's about the AI cheating like a little bitch to artificially make the game harder. The number of times that little shite Alex Kidd would near-teleport across the court to reach a ball. At least if it was Eggman I was playing I could understand it, because he's got quite a long reach, whereas Alex Kidd is possibly the smallest character in the game.

Tekken. 5.

Jinpachi and his goddamn STUN.

Seriously. I swear to god that once the fight went like this:

Stun, FIREBALL~! Stun, FIREBALL~, KO!

The stun is a counter move. You can also just sidewalk his fireball and kill him. If anything is cheap, it's his i11 WGF and his unblockable hug that sucks your life.

Riding off of what some people said about Mortal Kombat, but did anyone else find the Endurance Matches kinda hard to beat?

Quoted for the truths in this post I had the same problem with SF (only replace Guile with Blanka) Zangiefs reach of his throws compared to other games was pretty cheap too. I'm also 100% certain in the later games they also increase the cpu's attack damage rather then actually improve the AI, (best example being Shin Akuma on cvs2... dead in two moves? That is one big pile of bullshit right there...)

It's either lazy programming like that or insain programming where it develops a counter for a move milliseconds after you performed it, and in the case of games like SoulCalibur beats you down making your time in that attempt at getting unlockables worthless, pisses on you and tells you back to the start with you.

Other great game ai bullshit examples include computer based board games rigging the dice in their favour... actually fuck that make that anything in a video game where luck plays a big part, case in point Mario Kart power ups... you know it's true on the hard difficulties guys don't even try to deny it! :gonk:

I guess I'll jump on the whole fighting game cheapness bandwagon.

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum - King Leo: SNK is notorious for programming their bosses to take full advantage of the whole "computer knows what you're gonna do" thing. This fucker has King Upper. A insanely high priority super that does half life on counter hit (which he will probably get because he only does it when you try to jump at him). Jumping at him when he doesn't have a super doesn't help much either since he has a godlike counter move. Then he has Beast Blow "DYNAMITE!" to hit you when you try to stand still and block. Nice chunk of damage for a low hitting move that also has crazy priority. Think you can block low? He'll do that mid hitting kick move that he will just about always super cancel into King Straight. That's another half life right there. This is one of the only SNK bosses where I couldn't find a consistent winning strategy. Most of the time he might fall for a quick low into a combo on wake up, but not always. SNK bosses having three health bars in one didn't help much either.

Yeah, out of all the Battle Coliseum bosses, King Lion was the most annoying for me as well. There I was happily Haohmaru C+D spamming to easy victory until this fool ruined it. Mizuchi and NeoDio were nowhere near as scary even with their projectile spam and speed, respectively.


Before, I would be tempted to add Magaki from King of Fighters XI to the list, but apparently he is consistently beatable, despite SNK endboss syndrome. He can fill the screen with a slow moving blue sphere, a fast moving pink sphere that comes from awkward angles, and use his anti-air exploding sphere which does massive stun damage. If Magaki evens starts up one of these things, then he can fill the screen with the other two very quickly forcing you to just sit and block for entire rounds. You can't jump anywhere or one of these things hits you and pushes you all the way back. You can't block or you'll be guard crushed in less than 3 seconds. While you are in blockstun (which can be very long against Magaki), he can teleport behind you and make you drop your guard to take full damage. In addition to this, he has an instant LDM that hits you anywhere on the screen and can be chained from a sweep of all things -_-; Sometimes it was just not feasible to beat Magaki.

Magaki is definitely a prick. I find that well timed hop grabs (Tizoc's dp+A/C or Gato's grab out of one of his stomps) work really well on him. You can also bait the pink explosion and have a opening for a second.

Here's a example of my typical strategy vs King Leo working.

YouTube Video

I know exactly what you're talking about with luck. Monster Rancher is another perfect example. You can have 95% chance to hit yet keep missing repeatedly while the CPU character with only 45% chance to hit will never miss.

Playing Double Dash, my brother and I observed that, without fail, the computer player in 7th or 8th place would get a free lightning bolt on the last lap almost without fail, to the point where we started anticipating the surprise lighting bolt.

Which is the other annoying part about cheating AIs. In many cases, they don't actually make the game harder. They just force you into illogical strategies so you can fool the AI in a completely different way. Essentially it just makes you play the game the wrong way, and I don't like that at all.

I have fond memories of beating Shin Akuma at the end of SFA3's world tour mode, using Dan. I just used jumping middle kicks over and over and over, disrupting everything Akuma tried to whip out. Took a hell of a lot of timing and focus, but that doesn't change the fact that no opponent, computer or otherwise, should be beatable by spamming jumping middle kicks. The computer banked so heavily on Shin Akuma's broken attack priorities that it couldn't deal with something so stupidly simple.

Something I noticed about Mario Kart games. The farther you are behind, the higher chance you have of getting better items. I found that I got lightning bolts very often when I was in 7th or 8th place.

That's cause first place does not deserve good items. In ANY Mario Kart game, regardless of how good you are at turning or whatever. Comps will drive faster then you(Aka seeing Bowser get hit by a item and drive off like it was nothing.) and so much more. I didn't even bother beating DD all the way due to it being stupid. MK64 was cheap cause if you didn't see someoen 'fall' off or 'get hit' by an item. They automatically recovered.

Yeah SC games were bullshit in that, espeically gotta love the prediction moves in weapon master mode. I basically had to spam/keep away from the comp using Klik/Ivy just so I wouldn't get hit.

Oh and note on UT series. You ever notice that around the 3rd hardest bots or higher, they tend to hack? I mean instantly know where your game is pointing/will shoot. Know where you are and get instant HS and all that jazz. Only in the first UT was Godlike actually balance were they were hard but not too hard. Though then again in the first UT, it was easy to play insta gib 1v7 matches on godlike and easily win.

Odd. But then, I absolutely SUCK at the game. I've seen a lot of people play it at the arcade, though, and they're pretty damn good at the game. I think that a few actually entered tourneys and did fairly decently.

The only reason I brought it up is because the thread reminded me of Jinpachi, lol. :eagletear:

I usually didn't play beyond 'Adept' difficulty in UT games, as that was usually around my level of ability to be challenging but still winnable.

As for Mario Kart, you know how in DD (though this isn't necessarily true of just DD) when you run a circuit that certain pairs are always the ones you're going to have to fight for the top spot(s)? The worst is when one or more of those are characters in heavier karts. You get anywhere near them and they will just swerve all over the place without losing any speed just to keep you from passing them. Stuff like that made playing with a lighter kart nigh impossible; you just get knocked around (or off in some cases) way too much.

About equally infuriating is how you can get hit by shells as much as four times in a row before you can even get moving again. I've had stuff like that happen, and then have insult added to injury by getting rammed off the course, hit with a lightning bolt, etc. I hate how you have hardly any defense in 1st with how frequently some CPU will pull a lightning bolt or blue shell outta their bum. It's not like you'd have nothing to worry about otherwise when the first few people behind you are chucking red shells.


EDIT: :o ....Wow. How on earth could I forget the NES version of Ninja Gaiden? There was enough cheap stuff in that game that most of you are probably well aware of that it could make Gandhi throw the controller. Some of the most annoying enemies in the world that would always be there no matter how many times you approached their spawn spot. And some places it's like, if you don't have the precision of a brain surgeon, you're going to miss hitting this baddie midair, get hit, and fall to your death. Fail enough and they'll throw you clear back at the very start of that level.

Most RPG games,I can get really annoyed at while fighting enemies,mostly bosses. I HATE IT when they go out of turn. Now I know some bosses are meant to go out of turn,but some aren't and still seem to. Once they've gone 5 times in a row then you go 1 time and they go 3 more times...that can get really annoying and most often spells game over. Sometimes you can get to the same boss, and he will act right. But I guess when he's having a bad day,he has to take it out on your party. ;(

Then there's those I HIT HIM I KNOW I DID times when I know for a fact I hit that stupid guy, but he just won't take damage! I was getting so fed up with fighting Dark Link in Ocarina of Time when I replay it recently. I know I hit him. I know I did.

I really only threw that out there as advice more than anything. Jinpachi is definitely a cheap bastard.

Now that I think about RPGS, one game comes to mind. I'm talking about Beyond the Beyond.

At first it isn't so bad. But then you reach a certain point (shortly after you have Samson added) in which the enemies just pound you into oblivion. I think it was a group of mages that are the best example. They pound my team with a spell that knocks half of them dizzy so that they need a turn to get some LP's to get some HP's. By the time they do that, the other half of my team is knocked dizzy, and heck, some of those who got some of their HP's back are also knocked dizzy. And it's not like I wasn't one of those who wouldn't spend time to build up his guys....eesh.

Add one to the list: Need for Speed: Most Wanted. If you're just behind someone heading into a 90 degree turn and they hit the brakes, you will be forced to a dead stop.

That's not really the AI cheating, that's crappy gameplay mechanics or a poor physics model. That'd be cheating if the AI purposefully/magically got in front of you then slammed on the breaks (which I don't recall ever happening in Most Wanted).

Yeah, but if you do that against the computer nothing happens, I mean I remember throwing a lot o shells to the computer and they do not stop, its like the shell disappears, not fair, cause if you are in 1st place you get loads of blue shells...shot at you :(

Heck I remember getting hit by a blue shell when I was in 2nd place because I was in the path of it hitting the AI that was in first place.

What? Yes they do. Watch the mini map. Fire a blue shell and WHAM. They get spun around and stopped.

Monster hunter......and any wyvern on it. Anyone who has played ,I'm sure you've experienced the "toenail of death" from azure rathalos. That moment when he's turning around and a combination of dirt hitting your eyes and his toenail grazing you, that results in one hit ko. Stupid. I think that is one of the cheapest games ever at moments. I think every monster on there, can at any given time, decide they want you dead and cheat to do so. Like knock you down, wait when you're just about to get up, then attack and do that until you are dead. There is also those cheap combos you can get stuck with if you are unprepared: Gravios' Roar+beam combo. Rajang punch combo (I've had him completely miss me with the punches,then he decided to hit the ground at the end of it to stun me then one hit kill me) Anything involving Rathian's backflip and a wall behind you....the list can go on and on.

Again I think you're confusing bad gameplay mechanics with cheating. Proper cheating is where the computer completely ignores the limitations placed on you by the physics model or whatever in order to win. Guile doing insta-sonic booms is cheating as you have to charge them up when you do them yourself. Guile blocking every move you make wouldn't be cheating technically as you could do that yourself, assuming you had the reactions of a ninja master...

I'd cite Mario Kart again, but for a different reason.

Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's just Mario Kart DS, but when I first played the Grand Prix, once I got up to 150cc and Mirror Mode, there were always 2 CPU karts that were flat out cheating. Not even with the items that's been cited, these two karts simply had better everything than you. Light karts suddenly get ridiculous top speeds, and I've seen Bowser drift ridiculous hairpin turns (with a boost coming out of it, to boot). Speaking of boosts, the previously said CPU karts can do them nearly instantly. If you follow behind a CPU kart, you can see their boost on a quick turn, changes almost instantly from Yellow to Red with a split second of blue in between. Speaking of drifting, these karts also seem to break speed limits (as imposed by the kart and character) when drifting, usually somehow going faster than the big guys on straight roads, which has always confused me.

In order to beat the higher levels and mirror on cups like Special Cup (usually the one containing Rainbow Road), I pretty much had to hope to god that these two karts were heavy people (Bowser, DK, or Wario) or at the very least not light people. Even if these light karts spin out, they have crazy acceleration so hitting things have much less effect on them.

Has anyone even played Urban Reign?

Shit is so terrible. A hundred missions. Mission 20 things go batshit since enemies can beat you mercilessly, counter EVERY move you can dish and enemies outnumber you by what, sometimes 5:1.

And the worst part? You have to endure this shit for 80 more levels.

For some reason (temporary insanity) I tortured myself through 90 missions of that game and got utterly destroyed by that monkey, Golem. I couldn't even put up a challenge. I'd barely take off 1/4 of his health and he'd just slam me against walls and activate his goddamn super armor... ARGH!!! *bangs head on wall*

The icing on the cake is that you fight him 2 times earlier in the game, and one of those times he has 3 people with him. He hardly put up a challenge then! That fucker must've injected roids through his eyeballs or something.

Somebody mentioned Goldeneye, and I have to call bullshit on the AI in Rare's N64 game, Conker's Bad Fur Day. Whenever you try to play the computer in multiplayer death-match/capture the flag/etc..., they instantly grab one-shot kill weapons and head-shot the living fuck out of you for the remainder of the match. Their sniper-rifle accuracy is dead-on even on "average" difficulty. It's even more insulting when the shot is fired massively far away so that your character is out of ear-shot and voila, his head bursts into pieces out of nowhere.

GRID Racing Driver has some pretty heavy rubber banding going on. If you're out front, the AI cars tend to keep up-ish never really falling more than a couple of seconds behind. I believe this is entirely intentional though to keep the races interesting. GRID is all about racing other cars, not beating lap times per-se and the flashback feature means if you fuck up a corner you can always get another go at it. Also, the rubber banding is turned off completely on savage, extreme and ninja difficulty so if you're a decent driver you can win those races fair and square by quite a margin. Essentially the harder difficulties are for racing purists who want the challenge of other drivers taking a proper racing line and the easier settings are for people who want to see all the cars in the race get smashed up. The only time the rubber-banding becomes annoying is on the Le-Mans 24 races where because most of the track is so fast, if you fuck up, you're quickly left behind and the rubber-banding is pretty much one way only and you can never catch up. The Le Mans races can in fact be easier on the higher skill levels because you can lose the chasing pack, giving you more room for error. The downside is that you get fewer Flashbacks so mistakes can end in race over, rather than losing a few places.

That's the same shit with Burnout. You'll use your boost and think you're miles ahead but look behind you (with caution) and they're still visible. It's like they use boost when you do.