Things We Hate About Gaming: Enemies

Sometimes you just have to take a step back from a game that you’re playing and say to yourself ‘œWow. That might be the worst decision anyone’s made since Shaq decided to pursue a career in music’. This is generally the response that a lot of enemies get from me. Sometimes I can see what the developer was going for; maybe it was decided that the game was too easy and so a cheap, frustrating enemy was pumped out to try and keep the player on his or her toes. But most of the time I’m completely miffed as to why anyone would let some of these terrible designs get past the drawing board. In the interests of both science and journalism I’m going to run down the basic ways that developers can fail when it comes to enemy design. Kind of like how the LAPD might run down a member of a visible minority in that neither of us really needs a good reason to do so.

Aesthetics

Now there’s a fine line here between looking ugly to terrify players in order to immerse them in the game and terrifying players by making them think that somewhere out there development houses are forcing mentally disturbed blind children with parkinsons to design their enemy models and skins. Just look above and start crying for those poor children.

Size

The issue of enemy size can be permanently fixed by adhering to one simple rule: there has never been, nor will there ever be, any reason good enough to make an enemy that is equal to or smaller in size than your characters head. I need only point to the incredibly annoying fleamen from the Castlevania series to prove this point. Throw in the ridiculous and needlessly difficult to hit cyber frogs from Daikatana (a special case since the entire game was equally fucking re-donk-you-lous), the ineffectual and pointless bats in Ninja Gaiden (XBox) and the goddamn tiny flood from Halo and we go from scientific consensus to natural law of the universe. SCIENCE!

Attacks

Unblockable? No warning as to when it will happen? Comes from off-screen more often than not? Yeah, that sounds like a great idea for an attack. Unfortunately there are plenty of games where one or more of these things is common if not the norm. Throw in massive damage and you’ll be flinging your controller across the room faster than you can say ‘œFuck you spider ninjas and your cheap-ass exploding sparkly kunai.’

Sound

The sounds attached to a particularly tough enemy can really add a layer of tension to a game. Just play Left 4 Dead a few times and you’ll begin to loath every sound associated with the Tank (or you’ll begin to love them if you’re playing as the zombies in versus). That’s all well and good for a well designed and balanced enemy like the aforementioned Tank, but when a sound is attached to a terribly designed and frustrating enemy, all it does is kill your fun before you even see the fucker. This problem is compounded when those sounds also make you wish that the sound guy had just sampled some rusty nails scraping on a chalkboard or parts of a Dane Cook routine instead.

Baby Mario Crying

When baby Mario starts to cry in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, I consider him to be an enemy because of that noise alone. He also has the audacity to force you to do sometimes dangerous stunts to retrieve him, thus making him an extremely clever little double agent that manipulates you throughout the game trying to get you killed.

Animation

Ever play a game where it looks like there are frames of animation missing from one or more of your enemies (or even your character)? Few things can bring you out of a game faster than watching the targets of your unquenchable blood-lust move like marionettes (unless of course they’re the marionettes from Devil May Cry, then it’s OK).

Tonight on FOX: When a lack of animation attacks! This one has terrible (read: absent) animation for both the player and enemies. It’s like a two for one!

Conclusion

Whether they suck because they are frustrating to deal with, are offensive to the senses or just so weak and ineffectual as to be completely pointless; poorly designed enemies are everywhere. Anyone out there have a problem with a particular enemy?

More things we hate about gaming.