Films that made me feel violent

Crash: hokey and trite plot.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence: good film that imploded in the last 10 minutes. Worst ending ever.

posted by Edward @ 5:03 AM

I hate (A.I.) people

I really believe that most games are best experienced on the highest difficulty available. At this point, any flaws in the game design are magnified because the difficulty forces the player to use every available resource to overcome. Any present flaws will inhibit you while unbalanced gameplay elements allow you to unfairly overpower the enemy.

For example, I've never played Gears of War in multiplayer, but the single player is grossly overrated. The cover mechanic always bewildered me because you naturally take in most FPS anyways, so why the need for this gimmick? The game design strongly discourages fighting in the open. So when the enemy is pressing hard and you have to retreat, if you happen to be too close to a wall or any flat surface, you'll take "cover" against said surface instead of retreating. Usually this moment of confusion results in death.

Another Gears of War flaw: incompetent AI teammates. However, this flaw isn't exclusive to GoW and it extends to practically every game with AI teammates. Currently I'm replaying Half Life 2 on hard because I haven't played episode 1 and 2 and I want the HL2 story fresh in my mind. I just passed the Nova Prospekt section which is notable for antlions that assist you. The antlions attack targets that have been hit with the bug bait ball. The antlions and bug bait are in unlimited supply, so it's easy to simply overpower the combine forces with sheer attrition. However most of the time, I wish the antlions weren't there because even if you don't use the bug bait, the antlion spring out of holes and follow you mindlessly. Inevitably, I have to enter areas first since I can't directly command the antlions. When I encounter enemy fire and I can't safely strafe sideways, I have to retreat. Except the stupid antlions following directly behind me block my path. In the confusion, I'm usually cut down or badly hurt by the enemy fire. In theory, I could advance the antlions ahead by simply throwing bug bait ahead of me, but even then, in narrow sections, the advancing antlions will run into me as I retreat. Even in non-dangerous situations such as leaving a room after hitting a switch, the antlions will block your path. These incidents happens way too often

The enemy A.I. in HL2 isn't too bright either. Too many times when the enemy is aware of my presence, they'll charge in through the door or around the corner only to be blasted. "Hey I just saw my buddy killed by the player around the corner. Maybe I'll charge around the corner too!". Unbelievable. Is it so hard to have the enemy A.I. fall back and assume a defensive position? Then on some occasion, if you peek around a corner and start hitting an enemy solider, they'll just stand there until you kill them. The programmers couldn't add a line of code that alerts the enemy as soon as it takes damage? Simply inexcusable.

The GoW teammates are rendered with much detail than Goldeneye's Natalya, but the former is only marginally brighter than the latter. I'm all for improved graphics when it yields gameplay innovations (ie. Shadow of Colussus, the HL2 gravity gun, etc), but frankly, Playstation 2-level graphics are more than sufficient to support most genres. With the massive improvement in graphics over the last few console generations, why has artificial intelligence seen such meager improvements? Is it because it's extremely difficult to program artificial intelligence or are programming priorites misplaced? Some day I hope that playing with AI bots will be indistinguishable from the real thing.

posted by Edward @ 2:56 AM