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As of late, I've been trying out a few new action games and checking out various new action titles for the next generation consoles. As I'm getting quite impressed with graphical advancements, I'm noticing that there's quite an increase of well, very bizarre looking resistance (in layman's terms, enemies) that populate the game and attempt to take down the player's virtual manifestation, basically the character. I’m sure many of us have remembered the simple looking enemies from Mario Brothers, such as the Goombas. These little guys looked menacing enough to a six-year-old gamer with their distinctive scowl-like “mad-eyebrows” and under bitten fangs.

As games have progressed from simple side scrolling “plat-formers” to first-person-shooters” and third-person action games, so have the detail of the enemies and their sophistication of their attacks. Rarely now does a player’s character “die” simply from making physical contact such as running into the enemy, but enemies now possess a form, if not multiple, forms of attack that can be witnessed by the player.

One particular field of games where I’ve felt I’ve lost quite a bit of interest is the first-person-shooter type games. I find the driving reason for this lack of motivation to immediately want to jump into this field of gaming is the type of enemies that seems to predominate the “battlefield” are well: very un-human, grotesque, bizarre, and basically out of this world. These are just two enemies encountered in the upcoming PC shooter Prey.

Spoiler:

While this game looks absolutely gorgeous with realistic effects and “wall walking” and “spirit walking”, the enemies just don’t really make me want to have that zest to play it, also partially because I’m using a crappy computer.

I’ve seen all the screenshots for this particular game and these two baddies, along with a few others, just seem to deter me from wanting to play it. Maybe it’s the absolute freakish nature of these types of enemies that I just don’t like looking at and would just rather see minions of undead cannon-fodder. Please note that this is only my personal point of view, while other gamers might garner interest in the virtual opportunity to blow these baddies into smithereens. So if you do find yourselves somewhat vexed at my statement, you have your own choice of playing these games

With this in mind, I try to stick to titles, especially in the FPS genre, to more realistic or perhaps more “plausible” scenarios, such as the war based games, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and even the Counterstrike like games. This doesn’t mean that they must be modern or realistic, but I like enemies that generally embody the physical aspects of a human. Most enemies of Half Life/Half Life 2 are pretty okay, and I find those targets okay to deal with.

My number one favorite FPS that I’ve had the delighted opportunity to play is Deus Ex. This was a wonderful game that combined both FPS and some RPG-like elements to the game play. What I recall now that I liked is that most of the enemies that I fought made sense. Most of them had humanoid features such as a torso, arms, legs, a head, and were either human beings or cyborg/android type entities which just made the game more believable and playable. It did have it’s share of non-human like enemies, however those, such as the lizards, seemed plausible in that particular world. Deus Ex was more based on technology rather than dealing with the truly bizarre.

I find that I don’t mind such “wild-things” in other types of games, namely RPGs and third person action games. For example, most enemies in the PS2 game God of War resembled your basic zombie/undead/fantasy like creatures such as the minotaurs, centaurs, medusas, familiars and gargoyles, Cerberus, and the like. I personally don’t have too much of a problem hacking and slashing at them, actually. They’re pretty much the stock stuff from various ancient European mythologies, and in that particular context, such enemies seem pretty plausible.

One big genre of gaming where I have a pretty big lee-way in terms of appearance of enemies are role playing games. For these games, I like the nice variety of enemies, and some are just funny looking. Anyone had a nice laugh at first seeing a Final Fantasy flim-flam? These monsters, amongst the other types of enemies add that certain “fantasy” element to RPGs, so I tend to let basically most to all enemies slide and just tread them as baddies. Sometimes you can get some pretty interesting looking enemies in both western like RPGs such as Diablo (also can be considered an action type game) and JRPGS which I’m sure many of us are familiar with. Even special enemies such as the Ultima/Omega weapon and dragons and more bizarre enemies seem to cohesively mesh with the flow of most RPGs, adding to the overall experience rather than subtracting it.

One thing I find missing in most RPGS are quite the same of what I’m looking for in FPS, that is, human-like targets. Amongst the throngs of wolves, dragons, snakes, and vast array of monsters that populate the battle field, I always seem to find the fight against human opponents the most fun. Quite interestingly, the last dungeon in Aesir in Valkyrie Profile consists mainly of all human like enemies, making for a refreshing fight from killing dragons and undead and the like, save for Bloodbane.

In this thread, discuss:

1. What type of enemies you generally like to see in FPS/RPGS/action titles/adventure, and the like.

2. What games had some enemies that just turned you off from enjoying it, either by it being too “fake”, or too “scary”, or the like.

3. Whether you would like to see more human like enemies in FPS/RPGS and other mainstream game genres. As well, if you find yourself drawn in or repelled by playing a game based on how "far out" the baddies look like, take Prey for example.

4. Other pertinent comments about enemies you see and can share your thoughts in this thread.

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Originally Posted by speculative

Interesting.



In fact, I would like a game where you truly play a "hero" type, where aliens invade or something, and instead of just shooting everything that moves, you run across pockets of resistance and interact with them, and also rescue people. Half-Life 2 had some of this, in that you encountered resistance. I am also fine with HL2's idea that some humans might join forces with the "enemy," and if this is the case then I am fine with them being the enemy in a game.

From what I've seen so far, you might be interested in Resistance: Fall of Man for the PS3. It's set in the 1950's where it seems Aliens are invading Earth, while the US and Britain join forces to combat them. This game looks alright so far, as its an alternative history/sci-fi type shooter, and I might consider picking it up. Don't get me wrong that I don't like alien like enemies, as sometimes I find them more creative to fight instead of human enemies. It's just that I prefer the enemies tend to have characteristics similar to that of a homo sapien ie, 2 arms, 2 legs, a torso and a body. One thing that helps a shooter featuring alien like enemies is that you can get more creative with their attacks and defense ratings. If you were to shoot a human and basically have to unload multiple clips on the human, it'd seem pretty fake, however, with the bodies of alien like species, they can have greater and more creative attacks and defense abilities. If an alien can survive multiple clips, perhaps it's still in the realm of possibility, as we have no idea of how durable such creative resistance can be.

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Originally Posted by Summonmaster

I would like to see more variety in human types in RPGs, and I mean for regular enemies. We all know that Sephiroth and Ultimecia can hurl planets at you, and that Exdeath and Kefka have grotesque amalgations, but poor grunts and soldiers can only do so much as swing a sword at you.

Same I'd like to see more humanoid guys. For example, you just get the regular Shinra soldiers in FFVII and the Galbadia soldiers in FFVIII. Those I found quite fun to fight, despite this was their really only form. As well, I found fighting Rajin and Fujin was quite fun, and a nice change from the monster type bosses.

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Resistance: Fall of Man is a PS3 title.

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