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Most Impressive Game AI?
togelius asks: "I have the feeling that when developers make the effort to put really sophisticated AI into a game, gamers frequently just don't notice (see e.g. Forza). Conversely, games that are lauded for their fantastic AI are sometimes based on very simple algorithms (e.g. Halo 1). For someone who wants to apply AI to games, it is very interesting to know what AI is really appreciated. What is the most impressive game AI you have come across? Have you ever encountered a situation where it really felt like the computer-controlled opponents were really thinking?"
Personally, while enemy AI is something that's pretty neat to see in action, it's the friendly AI that gets my attention. Most games seem to put all their effort into the enemy, while you friends turn out to be schizophrenics with an IQ of about 40. I haven't played, but I have heard that something that people complained about in Gears of War was was the poor team AI.
I don't play many games any more, but Halo 2 was one that I thought pulled ahead of the pack a bit. Friends that can drive vehicles was pretty cool (albeit not always the safest drivers...) allowing you to man the gun in the back. They also seem better at not running right in front of you when you're in the middle of launching a rocket, and also do little things like take advantage of available cover (or in other cases jumping up on top of said cover and getting blown to bits). Halo 3 is supposed to have even better AI for both friendlies and enemies, and that's one of the things about it I'm looking forward to.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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GalCiv II has given me the worst beatings I've ever taken in a strategy game. Shogun: Total War managed to spring a tactical ambush on me once (although in fairness my grip on tactics was much worse back then). Both of those AIs gave me a challenging game experience as a player, which is what "good" AI should be judged by.
However, if we're talking about "impressive" AI, nothing I've seen in the gaming world can compete with Paradox's EUIII. Yeah, I know, each individual AI nation makes a lot of bonheaded moves. But the game is managing the armies, navies, economic, religious, colonial and foreign policies of up to 300 nations, every game day when a game year can go by in a minute or two, on a 1.9GHz processor. Considering the number of cycles and the amount of memory avaiable for each AI opponent, it's simply amazing to me. I really think that should be the basis of comparison, not so much the level of play the AI achieves, but the level of play it achieves with the resources available to each AI player. If nothing else, that standard makes it meaningful to compare old games against new ones.
That's why the "best" game AI isn't necessarily the smartest or most responsive - it's the most human.
Writing an AI that makes the occasional "human error", or responds in a reasonable time is harder than writing the "best AI possible", but makes for a more believable (and of course, enjoyable (since who likes getting beaten all the time)) game experience.
To be fair, the fact that patterns work simply means the AI is deterministic. Pacman could have extremely complicated AI but if there's no learning from a players past, random elements etc you're always going to be able to learn to find a patten which works.
To be honest, I've always thought that AI in computer games sucked. Games are usually made hard by having the bad guys have better fire power, shields, energy etc than you, or having loads of them against one player. It would have been a laugh, for example, to have a doom style game with one player against one computer bad guy, but have him be as smart as a human. Thankfully, online multiplayer games mean you are no longer restricted to whatever crap AI system the programmers manage to string together, although the problem has now shifted to dealing with people cheat - a problem which games programmers show no signs of being any less inept at dealing with than with AI.
Unreal Tournament.
It had the first bots that you could play against for hours and not even notice you were offline. I havn't encountered a more convincingly human AI in the dozen FPS games I've played since, including UT 2k3(which probably means that the UT maps were just easier to code for).
It's the only game where you can feel yourself increasing in skill over the course of a few days of playtime, and ratchet up the difficulty a bit and get the same kill ratio, without feeling suddenly overwhelmed by perfectly aimed headshots.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
Far Cry has great AI. I don't remember ever going "zomfg the computar is thinking!!!", but the enemies respond in a sensible, coordinated manner -- sweeping areas where disturbances are heard, covering each other, and using weapons intelligently. Far superior to Half-Life (and, credit where credit is due, several years after Half-Life), but also in a much more open-ended game world, where the mobs don't just have to navigate a room full of crates.
The really sad part was when, halfway through the game, they switched from "smart" soldiers, to Doom-esque mutants who just ran straight at you. Ruined that game for me.
Game... blouses.