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I was playing through dead space 2 and was reminded of a few generic enemy types that crop up in games all the time. Some of them are fun to fight others are a chore depending on your preferences. So here is my list of the stock types so far:


Brute/Ram: Charges player character, if not dodged usually leads to a 'stagger' or 'stun' (Or in rare cases Instant death; see gears or war ref. : 'Bezerker'). Glaring weakness is there propensity towards banging their heads against walls/pillars and knocking themselves out.
Further notes: Hit dorsal 'glowing weakspots for massive damage!'.

Quick sneaky sniper: Runs around from one cubby to the next, high damage ranged attack. Said attack usually leaves players stunned so the sneaky sniper may escape. Often given away by an audio cue.
Further notes: Tracer is your friend.

Sneaky sniper/mine-man: Essentially a suicide unit who usually sticks around long enough for one devastating attack, if allowed to attack twice generally leads to player death. Often given away by Lense flare or audio cue.
Further notes: Restart at checkpoint? Yes please!

Quick sneaky Hitty/Chargey: Usually encountered in intentionally confusing environments, often comes packing stealth/wall climbing abilities. Will reveal self only to make devastating attacks. Often comes packing player stunning/staggering abilities.
Further notes: Is known to display an adverse reaction when exposed to Buckshot.

Crawley-then-chargey-explodey: A slow, dumb, suicide enemy known for his distended glowing sack. Comes in various speeds and sizes, generally has 1 HP. Hit glowing weakspots for massive (splash)damage.

Swarmy-grabby/shambly-grabby: Tiny bugs/imps known for there deceptively fragile appearance/shambling husks known for moaning. Avoid close proximity, any grabby worth his salt will instigate a stick waggle/button mash 'QTE' (if you dont know what a QTE is by now, go home). Depending on developer kindness you may or may not be damaged by other attacks during this process (DAMN YOUUUU TEAMMMM NINJJJJAAAA!!!!).
Further Notes: Ninja Gaiden, level 11 i believe, challenge room.... Nuff said)

'Johann Gasmask'!: Known for his Minigun and welll.... his... Gasmask. Is a bullet sponge and often requires a 'creative' means of destruction ('Why; that is a nice poorly secured turbine above your head Johann!')
Further notes: Do not be surprised if this 'miniboss' style enemy appears a dozen or so times in the final level... Yawwwnnn....

Shieldey-Coward: Smash his shield! Derphead! In a 'Zelda-trope' game you will be given a tool able to smash it. In a shooter you must flank him: I know this because the NPCs often give you this tidbit, TWENTY TIMES A MINUTE!!!
Further notes: Shield is often described as being made from 'an unknown alloy' in the game manual/tutorial.

Rechargey-Bastardey: You must kill him a certain way or he will just get back up. Yet again don't be surprised if an NPC tells you this 100 or so times.
Further notes: Comes in glowey, satanic or zombie flavour.

Squishy-powerball: An interesting one, is generally a capable enemy but has one or more special attacks capable of causing massive damage. Said attack is often accompanied by a 'charging up!' period, at this point he is vulnerable.

Chandelier phobic: Can have a combination of the abilities thusfar detailed but has one glaring weakness. You see such a beast must have a lovely lair and such lovely lairs demand decor, decor of the sharpest, most lethal, poorly fastened, glowing weakspotey variety. Replace chandelier with Power generators, brood sacs, Taproot tendrils etc where appropriate. Actually a rather considerate guy, far too polite to remove any means to get brutally slain from the player.
Further notes: As rule expect to orally insert a large household object into his brain, violently.

EDIT:
Jrpg Optional bosses: So you Gaijin think you can roll with the big boys?! Your slow Western brains and Reactions are no match for us! An excuse for developers to throw playtesting and game balance out the window, not even FAQs will help you, here be monsters.
Further Reading: 'Weapon' series of bosses in FFVII.

Fodder not counted. One man's Russian Ultranationalist is another man's Orc Warrior.

RULES:

state your least favourite type from the list and which games they appeared in + anything else you want to add

If you wish to volunteer a new type, feel free. If it's good enough i'll add it to the list above.

I'll start things off:

Quick Sneaky sniper- Flood pure form (lets face it the other thing it changed into was a piece of cake so doesn't count), Halo 3.

Cazadores from Fallout New Vegas. Fast, poisonous, come in groups.

stoopid NPCs...

Yet again don't be surprised if an NPC tells you this 100 or so times

....really so many games have these in abundance...

and mostly in gameengines you are forbidden or it is straightly not possible to get rid of them...

and then as i tend to play eiter roleplay (fantasy mostly ) or strategy games (of the older dendecies) dumb enemies...the ones that came rushing no matter waht you just chucked at their buddies...

I suppose with RTS you are fighting the AI opponent who always sends the same waves at you every five minutes. There are alot of games these 'types' dont apply to, like jrpgs and rpgs in general. Yeah they never learn, apart from the grunts in Halo who run away when you kill the boss.

my quarrel is more with tunrbased strategy games... favorite one i played till it hurts was
http://www.silentstorm-online.de/main.php?lang=en

really fun... the whole region was destroyable and you could shoot through walls and such things...and when you fire your MGs through some regions the poor sod came rushing even if they saw their chaps lying on the ground in heaps...nevertheless they charged regardless...

Yeah they still cant do morale in games very well at all.

Lucky - Causes you to die in more ways than you thought possible due to lucky killing blows from impossible angles of attack. Often occurs when you have just killed off what you thought was the last enemy and you are 1 shot/hit away from death or when you are only a matter of metres away from a checkpoint/the objective - Most games.

It's not really a common enemy but I truely hate ridiculously overpowered optional bosses. They range from being monotonous fights with tons of HP, to far stronger than the final boss/evil deity/great destroyer/main antangonist. (J)RPG's suffer from this quite a bit, especially all those "Weapons" from FF7.

asimo77 wrote:It's not really a common enemy but I truely hate ridiculously overpowered optional bosses. They range from being monotonous fights with tons of HP, to far stronger than the final boss/evil deity/great destroyer/main antangonist. (J)RPG's suffer from this quite a bit, especially all those "Weapons" from FF7.

I remember Emerald Weapon. Totally thrashed your ass unless you were high level.
My least favorite enemy is anything that is really able to defeat your ability to hit them. This includes any boss with either speed or stun ability.

I sorta "cheated" on the weapons, I used Caith Sith's Limit Break with the slots until I got an auto-win. I still bet I saved more time loading a bazillion times than actually fighting the damn things.

asimo77 wrote:It's not really a common enemy but I truely hate ridiculously overpowered optional bosses. They range from being monotonous fights with tons of HP, to far stronger than the final boss/evil deity/great destroyer/main antangonist. (J)RPG's suffer from this quite a bit, especially all those "Weapons" from FF7.

When you mention this, I think Cyber Akuma/Ultimate Rugal from Capcom vs. SNK 2. Amazing game, and horribly evil optional bosses. Thank God for Ken-best regular character in the game

About Hard Optional Bosses:

I am in Game Making Mode again, and I had an idea: What if I were to make a game that is specific to a certain holiday (Halloween, it's easiest), and make the game able to be "beaten" in 45 minutes, so that people could pop the game in, "beat" it, and then go tricker treating/spend time with their family. Now, because that would feel like I would be ripping customers off, I would also include ~12 hours (it's an arcade game) of actual content, allowing those who want to play the game before Halloween, don't want to go trick or treating, or whatever, so that they have a lot more content then the main story would need. So the "Main" boss would be beatable around level 5, but you can go around till you hit Level 50 fighting other bigger badder nasties.

Would that sort of thing fall under "Terrible, Overpowered Optional Bosses?"

I think only if it requires stupid amounts of grinding, chocobo breeding, card playing, mini-game hustling, or any other tedious activity in order to become powerful enough to beat.

asimo77 wrote:I think only if it requires stupid amounts of grinding, chocobo breeding, card playing, mini-game hustling, or any other tedious activity in order to become powerful enough to beat.

Fair enough, because honestly, who WOULDN'T want to see a RPG with Death, Dullahan, Dracula, and a Skeleton whoop up on Cthulu's clan. Storyline something along the lines of "We are the scariest things on the planet; we would like to keep it that way"

Green turtles: Initially walk from left to right. Change directions if they hit an object. Will walk into pits.

Red turtles: Green turtles: Initially walk from left to right. Change directions if they hit an object or when they touch an edge of a platform.

Added Jrpg optional bosses.

My top 5:

Medusa heads- Castlevania series

Psycrow- Earthworm Jim

Tonberrys- FF series

Pokey- Earthbound

The enemies from Wrecking Crew (nes)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

asimo77 wrote:It's not really a common enemy but I truely hate ridiculously overpowered optional bosses. They range from being monotonous fights with tons of HP, to far stronger than the final boss/evil deity/great destroyer/main antangonist. (J)RPG's suffer from this quite a bit, especially all those "Weapons" from FF7.

I had no issue with the side bosses in the FF series aside from OZMA ( or ASSHAT as I like to call him ) all due to the fact that I didnt find all the little creatures I had to and also never used freya nor quina

Oh yes, I forgot. Someone mentioned Medusa Heads.
Add anything that comes at you in a disorienting pattern and comes relentlessly. Notable offenders are Medusa Heads and pretty much any enemy off of Ninja Gaiden.

Slarg232 wrote:About Hard Optional Bosses:

I am in Game Making Mode again, and I had an idea: What if I were to make a game that is specific to a certain holiday (Halloween, it's easiest), and make the game able to be "beaten" in 45 minutes, so that people could pop the game in, "beat" it, and then go tricker treating/spend time with their family. Now, because that would feel like I would be ripping customers off, I would also include ~12 hours (it's an arcade game) of actual content, allowing those who want to play the game before Halloween, don't want to go trick or treating, or whatever, so that they have a lot more content then the main story would need. So the "Main" boss would be beatable around level 5, but you can go around till you hit Level 50 fighting other bigger badder nasties.

Would that sort of thing fall under "Terrible, Overpowered Optional Bosses?"

Guildwars?

corpsesarefun wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:About Hard Optional Bosses:

I am in Game Making Mode again, and I had an idea: What if I were to make a game that is specific to a certain holiday (Halloween, it's easiest), and make the game able to be "beaten" in 45 minutes, so that people could pop the game in, "beat" it, and then go tricker treating/spend time with their family. Now, because that would feel like I would be ripping customers off, I would also include ~12 hours (it's an arcade game) of actual content, allowing those who want to play the game before Halloween, don't want to go trick or treating, or whatever, so that they have a lot more content then the main story would need. So the "Main" boss would be beatable around level 5, but you can go around till you hit Level 50 fighting other bigger badder nasties.

Would that sort of thing fall under "Terrible, Overpowered Optional Bosses?"

Guildwars?

No, Guild Wars had Horrifically un-OP'd bosses and a very hard campaign. I made a fortune running people through levels.

The enemy who you cant ******* kill!!! I.E. Oblivion, Wraith, I'm level one, have only a single spell, and OH GREAT, I can't hurt the damned thing!

Grunts from Halo 3 and Halo Reach, I kill your leader, and you go EXTREMIST on me...

However, my most hated enemy, of all time, is... THE CREEPER, sneaky suicidal, and oh so full of hate.

Those god damned Cliff racers. Carried a flame shield 50pts in 10ft just to wear when I heard that sound

Ugh cliff racers, they would always make resting a hassle.

Now that I think about it it's kinda funny that your character was running around unable to sleep in the middle of nowhere because giant birds were going to eat him. That makes the PC sounds like a crazy homeless guy.

"Can't sleep cliffracers are after me!"

Those things ALWAYS made you break you "ok Im not going to cheat and use the construction set. Not gunna do it, this time, its all skill baby" and then a few hours later "ok so Ill make THIS enchantment and stick it on THAT ring because its cool. And name it CLIFF RACEA KILLA! RING....maybe a couple more !!! in there"

The Cryer- crys like a baby because he believes that he gets a +2 invulnerable save for his army because he is young.

An Idiot- Sends his forces straight into your trap that you said would kill him, and he swears at you for being able to easily outwit him even though he told him your plan.

The Guy in the corner- Really quiet and his ability to play is questionable.

Conservative player- Immediately pulls his forces back when your forces near his...

Ocarina of time- those hand things that fall form the ceiling and send you TO THE BEGINNING OF THE DUNGEON.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?

In COD:

Quickscoper - Why, why?!? They see you, zoom in, and headshot you before you can re-act.
The Camper - Only I should camp... it gets annoying when someone else does it
The n00b-tub3r - Really, I see you for a milla-second and I go *boom*
The Painkiller N00b - I unload a clip onto you and you are alive?
The kid with a high voice screaming through their mic - Self explanatory. Really, this is why there is a mute feature in every game.

The snake in the grass. Just as you THINK you are done killing a small group of enemy forces, when you are at your weakest. The damn snake will slowly creep in to your line of sight, and before you can do anything about it boom you're dead.

The Bringer wrote:In COD:

Quickscoper - Why, why?!? They see you, zoom in, and headshot you before you can re-act.
The Camper - Only I should camp... it gets annoying when someone else does it
The n00b-tub3r - Really, I see you for a milla-second and I go *boom*
The Painkiller N00b - I unload a clip onto you and you are alive?
The kid with a high voice screaming through their mic - Self explanatory. Really, this is why there is a mute feature in every game.

OH MY GOD YES! I havnt figured out how to mute that on my PS3 when playing team fortress 2. I want sound, but not those annoying little bastards shouting stupid things at me.

Which brings me to

The guys that play ANNOYING music through their mics for all to enjoy. I stopped playing TF2 once because a kid kept playing that damn rick roll song.

KingCracker wrote:

The Bringer wrote:In COD:

Quickscoper - Why, why?!? They see you, zoom in, and headshot you before you can re-act.
The Camper - Only I should camp... it gets annoying when someone else does it
The n00b-tub3r - Really, I see you for a milla-second and I go *boom*
The Painkiller N00b - I unload a clip onto you and you are alive?
The kid with a high voice screaming through their mic - Self explanatory. Really, this is why there is a mute feature in every game.

OH MY GOD YES! I havnt figured out how to mute that on my PS3 when playing team fortress 2. I want sound, but not those annoying little bastards shouting stupid things at me.

Which brings me to

The guys that play ANNOYING music through their mics for all to enjoy. I stopped playing TF2 once because a kid kept playing that damn rick roll song.

Have you heard some of the TF2 appropriate songs? You know, the ones actually based on TF2? They actually heighten hte experiance, in my humble opinion:





Just to name two.