[General Discussion] 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?

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Originally Posted by Elmoogle

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.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Soluzar

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by juanzen

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.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

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).

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