Enemies that ruin games

[Tactical Pause]

Generally robot enemies in any shooter. Be they robot turrets, flying robots, or robot aliens (looking at you, Crysis), I just really, really dislike them. For whatever reason, no matter what game they are in, they seem to not fit quite right with the existing mechanics. They screw with the way you've learned to play the game, but not in an interesting way, always in a dull, tedious way.

On top of that, robots just aren't fun to shoot. They rarely flinch, and sparks don't carry nearly the same weight as blood spray.

 

[aozgolo]

Cliff Racers.

Seriously if I hadn't played Morrowind on PC where I could turn these damn things passive, I probably would have flipped, they were soooo annoying with the most egregiously terrible hitboxes in a game KNOWN for terrible hitboxes.

 

[Stu35]

Purge troopers.

I found Force Unleashed to be a rather fun little game with the exception of two things:

1. Quick time events which made what should have been kick-ass finishing sequences into a tedious "Press 'X' to kill the AT-ST (which means that I can't ENJOY the damned sequence, because I'm busy looking for the next input command).

2. Purge. Fucking. Troopers.

Why give me the powers of a fucking god, capable of bringing down a Star Destroyer, if you're going to give me a slightly-taller-than-average enemy who is more or less immune to all my god-like powers except one.

In fact, same goes for a few games on that front - I'm okay with boss fights where the bosses are mostly immune to powers, but I dislike it when you're given a power/skill, and then every (or most) subsequent enemy you encounter is immune to it. It just negates the whole process.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Unimportant enemies which are no particular threat but a pita to get rid off and/or can apply an annoying status effect.

Like the stupid flying insects in blighttown. Depending on your weapon + their pathing you can't reliably hit them, they deal no damage but can poison your ass.

Full-Heals are okay if they serve a combat-strategic purpose and can be prevented. Good example: Undeads in DkS, which sometimes take a sip from a healthpot too. Bad example: Pokemons restore-fest. In that particular case it doesn't even do anything except prolong the fight. You hit them, they drop low + heal themselves, you hit them again - rinse repeat until they've no full restores.
Changed nothing in the fight, couldn't be prevented, just utterly pointless.

Hp sponges are boring too. Artifical difficulty and all that.

 

[Racecarlock]

Racing game AI seems to have magical nitrous just to not even let me win legitimately and it really pisses me off.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Definitely HP sponges and enemies that can heal faster than you can damage them, particularly if combined.

But you know what's even worse than those? Enemies that spawn faster than it is possible to kill them.

Spoiler: Like this guy

If there are fewer than 3 enemies on the screen, they will divide. While dividing, they cannot be hurt. Dividing does not cause them to lose HP. It does create two fresh ones while denying you the XP from the original. And these things are the easy version! They poison on contact. The red ones light you on fire (like poison except you can't move or act and are completely defenseless) and the blue ones freeze. Tsunamis are the same way in the final dungeon, but at least they have a serious elemental weakness you can exploit.

Captcha: You can do this.

No. No I can't. Not against these smiling jerks. Just run, and never look back.

Apparently one of the Dragon Quest games had a similar problem with an enemy called Evil Master. They can summon a copy of themselves that immediately gets to act, and may well summon another copy which summons another copy which summons another copy...

 

[ryessknight]

Two pop to mind. That damn succubus from devil may cry 3 , she made me ragequit that game until the virgil special edition came out and they made her less broken. Also the final ramsus and miang gear battle in xenogears, my god are they a pain in the ass. Ive had xenogears since it first came out on ps1 and ive only beaten those two maybe twice in all my playthroughs.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The slimes in Odin Sphere. It took me forever to realize you had to napalm the motherfuckers to kill them.

 

[Elfgore]

snip

Yeah, fuck those assholes. I'm glad I always use neon power and can easily fill my orbital drop meter, so I can just tear them apart. Those mini-guns are just so OP and ungodly accurate. They've hit me from about 100 meters away, while running in neon mode. The ones who have a barrier, can be annoying in massive fights as they will nail you to the ground for five seconds. The last ones you meet are the easiest. Even then they have that long range concrete wave that hurts like hell.

For the other games, only Infamous 2 had bad ones. Luckily it was only two. Those bastards who crawl underground and you can only kill with grenades. And those big ice bastards that take a thousand hits to kill. I can't recall any from Infamous one, as once you got the massive lightning strike the game became piss poor easy.

I still love the games too, but sometimes I just gotta turn of my system before I smash it to pieces.

 

[Nickolai77]

I'm going to jump on the Ceaser's Legions from New Vegas bandwagon here.

When you first encounter Ceaser's Legions they leave a fairly...distinctive impression on you, so much so with me that I decided to kill them. Recognising I was outnumbered, I followed the route they take out of the pillaged settlement, found an ambush spot and lobbed down several grenades on them when they were tightly packed together and went in guns blazing. My grenades were about as effective as potatoes, because of course I was something like a level 3 n00b at the time.

Undeterred, I re-loaded my save file and this time went to my ambush spot, laid down all my landmines in front of their path and rained down grenades and dynamite from my ambush spot. The legions were basically enveloped in a death cloud of fiery explosions and shrapnel but they absorbed it all like a sponge and came out of it all charging at me.

That's when I gave up, and I was absolutely fuming. I realised that with New Vegas was that the enemies don't level up with you and you're supposed to play it like an RPG, not an FPS. The downside of the way these sort of games are designed though is that it it can lead to immersion breaking situations like what i've described above (no human video game character should be able to survive grenades, landmines and dynamite simultaneously exploding at their feet)and it punishes the player for trying to play outside the game's rules in what is a sandbox, open world game.

 

[Headsprouter]

This one's been a pretty recent gripe of me and my friends. In Mann vs. Machine, the Giant Rapid-Fire Demoman is OP. For one thing, high-damage, explosive shots, second, "rapid-fire", third, they explode on contact and hang about a bit if they miss, fourth, the AI has impeccable aim. It's virtually instant death when engaging one alone, and when in a group, it finishes off your friends in an instant then turns face you! Ubercharge is necessary if you don't take it out by the time it's halfway up the map.

 

[Saltyk]

snip

SNIP

Well, when those guys try to lock you to the ground, all you have to do is use your movement skill. You can avoid being caught or break free by doing that. So locking me in place was never an issue. At most it stalled me for a half second.

But that barrier was very annoying especially in large groups. My usual strategy was to focus on weaker enemies and kill them before going after the bigger foes. But those guys with the barrier made that a real chore. I found that using the dash take-down was really effective at those moments on my evil playthrough. The Stealth Mode take-down was also good in those situations.

Still, the chain gun foes were my bane. As you said, they could hit you like they had a sniper rifle. They didn't seem to be as mobile as most of the others, though, which was about the only way I could really beat them.

I remember the giant foes in Infamous 2 being a bit of a pain. Mostly as you fought one as a boss, and they they would just be around like the normal foes immediately following that. Which made them a real chore. They did get slightly easier in time, but they were never what I would consider easy.

Honestly, in the first one, my biggest challenge was learning that just going in guns blazing was a bad move. Enemies on buildings would quickly take you down with gun fire from every angle.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

- Enemies that stun-lock you.
- Enemies that have the ability to insta-kill you.
- Enemies that fully heal themselves right when you've almost killed them.

Applicable to a lot of games.

These. Also any incarnation of the Goddamn Bats [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoddamnedBats] or indeed any other enemy that's incredibly small and hard to hit.

Apparently one of the Dragon Quest games had a similar problem with an enemy called Evil Master. They can summon a copy of themselves that immediately gets to act, and may well summon another copy which summons another copy which summons another copy...

I know the Muddy Hands and Bloody Hands from Dragon Quest VIII do that. You have to hit them with attacks that hit the whole group otherwise the battle would go on forever. I remember being stuck in a battle with them for like 10 minutes because they just kept summoning more of themselves.

 

[demoman_chaos]

-snippedy do da-

-snipety a-

-My oh my what a snipedty day-

I believe those explody cunts are called Undead Citizens and they come in all shapes, sizes, and status effects. There are regular ones, fire ones, ACID ones, and even petrification ones (they are right by Straid). From KNEW these guys were pricks, and stuffed them everywhere because they themselves are pricks (but I love them for it).

The mages in Amana were annoying, but the necromancers that hang out in Brightstone cave are even more annoying as their balls of dickishness chase you even more. They also cast it far faster, meaning you have less time to plug arrows into them. The Amana mages dropped Twinkling Titanite so you were rewarded for your troubles.

The Mosquitoes in Blighttown are just as annoying as the ones from the Valley of Defilement of Demon's Souls. I think in Dark Souls they respawn, which is a total dick move.

How can you guys forgot those fucking sickle shitheads in Huntsmans Copse and Harvest Valley? Those dicks that do damage around your shield, hit like a truck, and eat stamina for brunch while having gobs of health and often arriving in groups?

 

[Neonsilver]

I give some enemies from Borderlands 2.

-first badass pyre threshers
They have a powerful nova attack that seems to be impossible to dodge (maybe I just haven't found the right method to dodge it).
The nova is extremely powerful, it doesn't onehit you but you are left with very little health.

-second skeleton seers from the tiny tina dlc
They can get "invisible" and invulnerable (there is a small ball of lightning visible were they are, but in some areas it's very hard to see).
While they are invisible they move around and status effects disappear.
Finally they stay visible for such a short time that, unless you were able to follow that small ball of lightning, it is hard to get even a single shot at them.


Summary:
Enemies with unavoidable near death attacks and enemies that don't give you much of a chance to hit them.

 

[Alarien]

Cliff Racers.

Seriously if I hadn't played Morrowind on PC where I could turn these damn things passive, I probably would have flipped, they were soooo annoying with the most egregiously terrible hitboxes in a game KNOWN for terrible hitboxes.

This right here is the only answer that matters.

It's Cliff Racers. It's always been Cliff Racers. It will always be Cliff Racers.

Seriously, F@#% Cliff Racers.

If you forced me to give any other answers, I'd have to say The Flood.

 

[otakon17]

The twin archers of Anor Londo. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them, fuck them, fuck them, FUCK THEM! I spent four hours grinding to make a build capable of using either the silence or stealth spell while I wore the complimenting ring(I had a Ring of Favor and Protection on the other hand). Biggest roadblock in the game if you ask me, especially since at least Sen's Fortress was a challenge because traps and all. But those assholes, those rat bastards.

In general though, snipers/archers are the bane of my existence in videogames.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

In inFAMOUS you had these little flying bomb drones that had the most aggravating flight pattern, and absorbed a ton of damage before finally going down. They weren't even that tough, but the way they moved meant it was nearly impossible to hit them with a grenade or rocket. So all you could really use was the regular zap attack, which took forever.

The fuckers even show up in the final Boss fight, which is punishing enough as it is.

I remember those. The Precision Bolt power was a godsend

Any Pokemon with the Arena Trap or Shadowtag ability when I'm playing a Nuzlocke Challenge. They're an absolute disaster when I'm training low-level party members.

 

[Gaijinko]

Enemies in certain missions on Jak 2. I have just completed this on the vita and hands down it was one of the most frustrating and poorly designed games I have ever had the misfortune to play and some of the enemies made it worse. The ones that always get me is the crimson guard bad guys on the mission where you collect the amulet from the waterfront area. Give the enemies auto lock on? make them spawn indefinitely from all directions? make it so the ships they spawn on can kill you as well if you get too close? make it so you have to go down a narrow set of pathways and if you miss one of those infinitely spawning enemies they can knock you in the water making you start the whole mission again with LESS ammo? bloody checkeroo on all those.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Enemies with nova attacks in Borderlands 2. I guess they don't ruin the game because it's only on the super tough optional bosses that it's actually that bad.

They were introduced to fuck with people who were abusing the Bee shield since that plus pretty much anything was ridiculously overpowered. I'm not saying they were wrong to do it, but anything that you can't dodge seems like bullshit to me. I'd rather they have just reworked the mechanics of the Bee instead of giving everyone a headache. To this day, I still haven't beaten Voracidous