Demonic Spiders/Video Games/First-Person Shooter

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Make sure you've got plenty of ammo and med-kits before you take on these Demonic Spiders.

  • In the PC game Killing Floor, Fleshpounds are the strongest enemies in the game besides the boss. They have spinning maces for hands, and can activate a "rage mode" after taking damage in which they run fast as fuck and kill in 1-2 hits, all while having the highest health of any normal enemy. While the game has the mercy of holding off on spawning them until the final waves, it often spawns 2 or 3 of them relatively close to you, which have a nasty habit of coming around corners and raping you. That roar that signals their ragemode will haunt your dreams.
  • Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on the N64 was a great game, but it was killed by one simple enemy: the Wampas.
  • Due to its unforgiving gameplay and lack of saves, nearly anything in the marine portion of the original Alien vs. Predator game was a contender for this category. Extra special mention goes to facehuggers, which were nearly impossible to see or hear and only had to make a successful touch attack against your knees to kill you. Hitting a tiny and swift object at an acute angle is very difficult. Doing it in the dark while being attacked by bigger enemies is beyond frustrating.
  • Left 4 Dead:
    • One could say the survivors themselves are demonic spiders in VS mode, for the bots anyway. Some can keep shoving you, almost Cherry Tapping you to death while you sit there unable to do anything since each shove is a knock back. And then there's their godlike accuracy with the guns. If you want to see survivor AI "hax" skills, observe one in first person mode while you are a spectator. If the bot knows there is a special infected somewhere, their crosshairs will practically lock onto it, even if the zombie is very far away or behind something that a human player cannot see through.
    • Hunters are opportunistic little bastards known for their ability to pin down a survivor, not letting up until either it or the victim is dead. That usually isn't a problem when it's AI-controlled, as it tends to pounce survivors in a group that's not distracted, which makes it an easy kill, and even on Versus, if you don't give it a chance to pounce productively. However, on higher difficulties, its normal claw attack, which is double that of a common Infected, can hurt quite a bit. And when they're standing, a behavior they adopt frequently in Advanced and Expert, they don't emit their telltale growl. Mix one up with a horde, and you can have serious problems even if you're a competent player.
    • Smokers also have the annoying habit of attacking from places where they're impossible to see; the only way to find them is to look at where the tongue is coming from. And when the other Survivors are going to be breaking the damn tongue about .05 seconds after you see it (if you're lucky), you've gotta be fast to spot where the attack came from. It doesn't help that the tongue left behind disappears in seconds.
    • The Jockey in the sequel. Its damage per second output is rather low, but it has the ability to control your movements. They can and will steer you backwards in the map to force your team to go back and save you, move you into Spitter acid, steer you into any fires you created, and even move you towards any nearby Witches.
    • The last thing you want is a Charger coming at you like a runaway bus. It's not simply its charge that's painful, but its knock back can throw you and the other survivors off the edge in high places, which may result in you being incapacitated out of reach of other survivors, or in case of water or very high places, you get an instant death.
    • Spitters aren't so bad on their own, since the acid spit is pretty easy to escape before it does much damage. But if they attack alongside a horde, or worse still, a different special infected, it's almost guaranteed to deal some pretty nasty damage: you probably won't be able to get out of the puddle before it's evaporated, and have a huge chunk of your health lost. It's even worse in sections where you have to run from the horde, because the puddle can easily cut off escape routes.
  • In the Call of Duty series, on the higher difficulty settings, any German with any kind of automatic weapon becomes a demonic spider. Most commonly they carry StG44 assault rifles, which fire quickly enough that if they catch you at close range for even a second, you die. Its even worse because of the difficulty you have in returning fire, as getting shot turns the screen red, throws off your aim, and jerks your vision around wildly, giving the goddamned Germans enough time to finish you off.
    • In Call of Duty 4, they have all those traits, but they also respawn. (In some places up until you've killed enough of them, in other places they're truly infinite.)
    • The guard dogs in Call of Duty 4 would also qualify. They are extremely fast and have an instant-kill attack that is effectively unavoidable if you don't shoot the dog before it jumps onto you (in which case they are very killable) or react quickly enough to break its neck (a timed press of the Melee Attack button that fortunately is prompted) before the dog rips your throat out. They will very rarely grab your allies. Captain Price, at least, is capable of shooting an attack dog off of himself after it has latched on.
      • Then there's the human equivalent in World at War: The Japanese Banzai charge, in which a soldier will charge at you with his bayonet, and you have to use a carefully timed button press to block his bayonet and stick your own knife in his throat.
      • In a similar respect, the 7 kills without dying reward on World at War in Multiplayer was a pack of guard dogs. On the normal mode they're not too much of a problem, but on Hardcore difficulty there demonic hell hounds of doom. They WILL sneak up on you, you WILL miss them with your gun, they WILL kill you with one bite and the guy who called them WILL cackle maniacally as his kill count skyrockets.
    • World at War brings something new to those who play for achievements: grenade spam. Take the full-auto bastards mentioned above, add guys carrying bolt-action rifles who can peg you through soft cover without benefit of line of sight, and four guys who think it'll be funny to drop two grenades in your lap and one in each direction through which you can escape cover while the rest are just waiting for you to run.
    • Can't forget Modern Warfare 2's Juggernauts and ghillie snipers. Juggernauts charge and unleash a hail of bullets while soaking up yours, and ghillie snipers are bastards who always know exactly where you are, even when being stealthy, get headshots with ease, and are practically invisible until they move.
    • In Black ops' newly released map pack, there is a new zombie level named ascension, in which you are at a russian space facility. And instead of having demon dogs appear every few rounds, you get space monkeys. Tiny, difficult to hit, ammo wasting monkeys that come in swarms and blur your vision when you hit them. Oh, did i mention that if they jump on the machine you bought your perk from, you lose it? Oh, and did i mention that they specifically go after these machines? On the bright side, though, if no monleys steal your perks, you get a powerup that grants every player a random perk. Sweet.
    • Also in Call of Duty Black Ops are the riot guards at Vorkuta, who can just wade through entire magazines of AK fire thanks to their bulletproof vests. They have one-hit-kill shotguns (which are fortunately more lethal against them) and, if they reach you, will melee you for another One-Hit Kill. Explosive weapons, miniguns, and shotguns will usually do the trick, but damn if they're not annoying.
  • The Bloodsuckers from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl are mutated human; tall, hunched-over and naked, with mottled green skin and a bunch of tentacles for a mouth. They're very fast and strong, make creepy deep breathing sounds, have a devastating melee claw attack, and can turn invisible. They're still detectable, of course, but it's tricky, especially if the lighting is poor and one is facing them in an underground area. Finally, these Bloodsuckers insanely resilient; you can empty two or three magazines of intermediate-power rifle rounds into one and he'll just keep coming. A shotgun can take a Bloodsucker out quickly, but that weapon is one of the least tactically flexible weapons in the game.

    The expansion, Clear Sky, makes it worse: they're also invincible while invisible-- and their invisibility is total, meaning you'll probably end up shooting wildly towards the creepy deep breathing sounds, waiting for it to materialise right up in your face as it tries to circle behind you. They're more aggressive and damaging too, just to rub it in. And finally they gain a 'blood suck' ability they can use when they get behind you, paralyzing you and draining a portion of your health. And while they feed on your helpless character, you can hear them make sucking sounds...
    • Call of Pripyat's Burers are an interesting case; if fought traditionally, they are almost invincible. They have a shield that kicks in immediately after receiving damage (meaning you need to pack as much damage as possible in one attack), can cut half of your health down in one attack that also makes you drop your weapon and can psychically throw crates at you without even seeing you. However, if you drop your weapon, take out your knife, charge at them screaming like a maniac and stab it in the face repeatedly until it dies, you can kill one without even getting hurt, turning one of the most powerful enemies in the game into a low-level mook.
    • Controllers also count. Their attacks make it nearly impossible to aim (that is supposed to imitate psychic powers). They are also reasonably tough. The best tactic against the seems to be throwing grenades from behind the corner. That is, if you can find said corner fast enough. Like the Burer, Controllers are most vulnerable to being charged and shot/knifed point blank in the face.
    • Pseudogiants soak up ammo, can inflict a One-Hit Kill, and have a stomp attack that stuns and damages you.
  • The first Half Life has its own fair share of dangerous enemies, in particular the marines. Imagine someone back when Half-Life first came out, fighting enemies with relatively simplistic AI, and then suddenly running into the marines, who could (and would) utilize cover and flush you out of hiding with grenades. Add in the part where they're incredibly tough, always fire faster than you (and often more accurately), and usually come in groups of three or more, and you've got a frustrating chain of quicksaving and quickloading at almost every single corner until you get the crossbow and the tau cannon MUCH later in the game.
    • Black Ops Assassins. You only encounter them twice, and that's all you'll need to remember them. They're fast, fast, fast, can jump over almost anything, and will quickly cut down your health with silenced pistols and grenades. When you hear patterpatterpatter, you'll quickly learn to hide in a corner with a crossbow and let them come to you.
    • The expansion pack Opposing Force adds several nasty ones. Shock Troopers in particular are fast moving, smart, and come armed with shock roaches and spore grenades, neither of which you want to mess around with. On higher difficulties, Pit Drones become these as well, being fast, tough little bastards that whittle away your armor with ranged attacks and circle in to kill you with melee attacks.
    • Episode 2 gives the Antlion Worker/Acid Antlion. Not only do they constantly leap around making them difficult to hit (and often landing so that they're just hidden behind something), they also have a rather nasty acid-spitting attack, which can take a good chunk of health away. Not only this, but upon the death the beggers explode, which also hurts you if you happen to get caught in it! A direct spray from an Antlion can outright kill you even at full health on Hard. Oh, and they momentarily drop your health even lower than the actual outcome because of the acid's poisonous effects, which are similar to the poison headcrab's attack (weaker, but without the same restoration from the injected antidote). Good luck at the mines.
    • Hunters in Episode Two are pure Boss in Mook Clothing if one isn't aware of their crippling weakness to things hurled by the Gravity Gun, but even then they are still plenty deadly, especially at close range (and they just happen to almost always be encountered in a confined space). This becomes most apparent when they serve as escorts to Striders at the end of the game, one or two ramming and firing at the player while concentrating their own fire on a third.
    • The AR 2's secondary fire and the Rocket Launcher will both kill a Hunter in one hit. You rarely encounter Hunters in groups larger than three at a time, and you can carry three AR 2 secondary shots and three rockets at a time. As log as you make sure to pick up ammo in between houses while traveling down the road, you should have no problem with these guys.
    • Don't forget the Poison Headcrabs, which even look like literal demonic spiders. Although not very tough, they can be hard to avoid when they jump suddenly at you out of the darkness - and their attack instantly reduces your HP to 1, leaving you extremely vulnerable if there are any other enemies in the vicinity - and you can bet there will be.
  • In the Command & Conquer FPS Renegade, snipers and enemies with rocket launchers can often kill you in a few shots before you figure out where they are, or even that someone is shooting you.
    • Rocket-users on the Commando difficulty will unerringly fire their rockets at you the second you enter their line of sight, and almost invariably kill you in one hit. They are the most dangerous in close quarters (which rather begs the question why they don't also blow themselves up in the process), as they don't give you any time to dodge their shots. Coupled with the tight quarters meaning they can run right up behind you without you knowing they're there, and your only warning that the rocket trooper is there is when you hear the bang-whoosh sound of a launcher going off and then fall over dead a split-second later. Fortunately they are not particularly tough and the Laser Chaingun chews them up quite fairly thanks to its long range, but they're still incredibly cheap. The Snipers generally have the decency to miss and not do all that much damage when they do hit (compared to rocket troopers, at least).
    • Black Hand Stealth Troopers are almost as bad. Unlike most enemies, who will open fire the moment they see you, it is not uncommon for a Stealth Trooper to hold fire and follow you until you're alone and not expecting an attack, and then leap out of nowhere and drill you with a dozen laser bolts. Once the Stealth Troopers start appearing, you are never safe.
    • Flamethrower troopers are more annoying but can be terribly dangerous if they catch you off guard. Unlike most enemies, they have fire-retardant suits, which meants that flamethrowers not only don't do much appreciable damage, but that fire weapons will not stunlock them like they do everything else. This is bad enough because your flamethrower is one of the most useful weapons in the game, but later on you'll be relying heavily on the laser weapons, which also stunlock enemies by setting them on fire. Flamethrower troopers will run right through laser fire to burn you down.
    • Tiberium-based enemies by themselves are not bad. However, because tiberium weapons heal them, they have a tendency to shoot each other (or themselves) to heal damage. And late-game tiberium-based soldiers will be intermixed with regular soldiers, which will make any effort to use tiberium weapons a case of rapidly juggling guns to fit the situation.
  • Rocket-launcher-wielding Flood combat forms from Halo: Combat Evolved were the bane of gamers everywhere. At its conception, weapons like the rocket launcher were designed so that ammo was sparse to balance the sheer power of the weapon. All AIs in the Halo franchise aren't limited by ammunition. This alone would be bad enough, if it weren't for the fact these rocket carrying enemies are usually mixed into a swarm of Flood.
    • Halo 2 had the Jackal Snipers. Not only could they get a head shot (an instant kill on Heroic and Legendary) from 300 hundred yards away while facing the wrong way, but they come in huge numbers, so even if you can out-snipe one (hard enough in itself) there are usually a bunch more about to insta-kill you. And they can richochet their beams off walls. "Sniper Alley" in the second level has at least eight (enough so that on harder difficulties there's virtually no chance the marines following you will survive, even if you can get past them), but what really takes the cake is an open area in the third level that has fourteen snipers all hiding behind things waiting to kill you when your head is turned.

      Luckily, Bungie heard the complaints and toned down their cheapness in the third game: they're easier to spot because they basically wear flashlights on their helmets and they can't shoot before they're directly aimed at you. Even the ones armed with the less-lethal carbines are still quite a threat, though. And in Halo: Reach, Bungie cut the beam rifle entirely. Snipers now use the Focus Rifle (which won't kill you by itself unless you don't know how to move) or the Carbine-Expy Needle Rifle.
    • Flood Ranged Pure Forms in Halo 3, especially on Cortana. They have incredible aim, prefer ceilings and high walls, and are nearly impossible to hit due to Master Chief's visor resetting to 1x zoom whenever he gets hit.
    • Almost any form of flood is a demonic spider on Legendary. Flood combat forms in the second and third games jump on you from random corners of the room, make short work of your allies, have enhanced AI thanks to Gravemind, and their melee attacks are now instant death. The shotgun and SPNKR ones spell instant death as well, the latter will always fire undodgeable homing missiles. And Flood Infection Forms, which kill you instantly if they even touch you while your shields are down in the second and third games.
    • Tying into the Jackal Snipers above, we also got Flood Combat Forms using human sniper rifles in 2. They're just as broken as the Jackals-- maybe moreso. The differences: a) they appear in darkened levels so you can't see them until they've fired at you, and b) the hypothetically best weapons to engage them with (sniper weapons) are the same weapons that are notoriously ineffective against Flood.
    • The jetpack-equipped Ranger Elites are quite cheap and deadly in pairs or more, which they most often occur in on Legendary.
    • On Legendary, the Drones' rapid plasma pistols and swarm tactics will mow you down in seconds. A particularly egregious That One Level is the "Off The Rock, Through The Bush, Nothing But Jackal (read: trouble)" chapter/sublevel of Delta Halo, where you face both several waves of Drones and a dozen well-camouflaged Jackal Snipers, with few hiding places (especially with their propensity to flank you). They come in much bigger swarms in Halo 3.
      • If you happen to be in a vehicle, especially a Chopper, you can't disembark the vehicle if you are boarded and a single Drone can kill you by hitting you. This is coupled with their swarm which is likely shooting at you from the air.
    • Stealth Elites; in the first game, although they lack shields, they are nearly impossible to see if they are carrying a ranged weapon (as opposed to a sword, which gives them away), and are quite fast. Even though the energy sword equip ones are easy to spot, their weapons are one hit KO, and they close extremely quickly. In the second game, although they can be seen easier, they have shields, are still fast and evasive, and still can't be tracked with homing weapons such as the plasma pistol. The second game's Spec-Ops elites, although rare, can also voluntarily use stealth camo to hide in corners and ambush the player. The third game has Brute Stalkers, their equivalent of stealth Elites.
      • Reach upped the ante with the SpecOps Elites; although they can be be killed with one round from a Sniper Rifle (this is on Heroic, btw) they have a tendency to dance around--and don't even think about putting on Grenade Spam-- er, Catch Skull (or any other Gold skull, for that matter) or you'll never get a hit in edgewise from all the dodging you'll be doing.
    • Normal grunts are Goddamned Bats, but Ultra grunts, the Elite Mooks of the grunt ranks, are a definite threat, particularly on Legendary. They most frequently wield needlers, sometimes Fuel Rod Guns, and use grenades far more often than others, at long distances with lethal accuracy.
      • And then there are the kamikaze grunts in 3.
      • In Halo 3, with the Thunderstorm Skull used, all grunts are Ultra Grunts. This can make them very dangerous. With other skulls enabled, kamikaze grunts are more common. It is not uncommon with these skulls activated to be swarmed with three or more kamikaze ultras while being pelted with an endless hail of grenades by the other Grunts and Brutes.
      • It's also common (again on Legendary) for them to kill you by Cherry Tapping en masse, like on Gravemind and certain Halo 3 levels.
    • Banshees are the bane of vehicle combat in Halo 2's Legendary campaign. They sneak in behind you and blast your tank into molten slag, and you don't know they're attacking until it's too late, and they can take 2 or 3 tank shells before falling.
    • Brute Choppers, on Legendary, are really cheap too, they can kill you and your vehicle instantly by ramming, and their shots quickly tear (read: chop) your teammates to shreds. You pretty much don't stand a chance using the 'Hog against them. Best to jack that Wraith in the canyon. The now-Grunt-driven Ghosts are very dangerous too.
    • Halo: Reach amps up nearly all of the above examples to eleven. Special mentions go to Elite Generals, who often wield homing plasma grenade launchers, thankfully they are easier to dodge as a player than it is for the enemy, and the Hunters that have gotten their durability upgraded a lot, one-hit-kill-you, run almost as fast as you do, and eat rockets for breakfast. You really do have to For Massive Damage to fight them effectively, although even just in Heroic they can take multiple shotgun blasts to the back, which is pretty challenging if you don't have anything to occupy their attention but you. A Sticky Bomb to the back removes their armor, leaving you free to shoot to kill. However, that alone is near-suicidal.
    • Grunts that carry Fuel Rod Cannons in Reach. They can be hard to distinguish from their grunt brethren which means they can easily sneak up on you. On Heroic and above they will one shot you and they love to spam their gun. Say goodbye to your killstreak.
    • Hunters are a joke in the first Halo, since they're slow, their shots are easily avoided by jumping around and throwing their aim off, being easily avoidable in melee range, and if you had a pistol, you could shoot their weak spot in the back and 1-shot them. Then they gradually get tougher and tougher in each later installment, so that they can't be 1-shot killed anymore, and they also have a back-attack now, so if you try to dodge them again, they can simply swing their shield backwards on you. While they're not impossible to kill, you almost always fight more than one at a time (often while fighting off other Covenant forces), and if you're playing solo (or trying to take one on by yourself in multiplayer/co-op), it's almost impossible to hit their weak points since they cover up from the front, and don't give you much time to shoot them in the back. Or their buddies are shooting you while you're trying to kill one.
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein has two big examples: the "Loper," a half-body monster which can jump across entire rooms while spewing electricity in your face (and probably avoiding your attack), and the "Proto-Soldat," which not only needs insane quantities of bullets to kill, but can also assure instant death if carrying a rocket launcher (the upgraded Übersoldat version is even worse; think the same thing, but magnified 2x in every respect).
    • Meanwhile, Wolfenstein has the Rocket Troopers, jetpack-equipped Nazis who often pop up out of nowhere and start bombarding you with incredibly powerful homing missiles. It's often difficult to strike back at them, since they not only stay far away from you at all times, but also have the ability to quickly dart back and forth through the air to dodge your gunfire. The Despoiled can also prove troublesome, since they can appear from anywhere as long as Elite Guards (who create them) are present, and are very tough to get a bead on, since they'll constantly hurl energy blasts at you whenever you're within their line of sight.
    • The original Wolfenstein 3D had the mutants. For starters, they don't have an alert sound so they can easily ambush you; in addition, they fire their pistols faster than an Officer and will keep firing at you mercilessly. Secondly, there is no delay for their attack animation, making it possible to open a door and get hit by their attack potentially instantly. Thankfully, they only show up in Episode 2 (and the secret level of Episode 6) in the original game.
  • Trigens in Far Cry. The primate types are fast, usually attack in groups, and are capable of killing you in only two hits, even if you have 100% health AND armor. They are the easiest to deal with, being easy to detect by sound and having relatively low health. But then you have Trigen engineered from humans: one type jumps around like a flea on meth and can pick you off from the other side of the map; other type is permanently cloaked and almost impossible to detect without the night/thermal vision goggles you probably hasn't even considered using inside buildings; and finally, the Fatboys, gigantic mutants as tough as they're big, toting rocket launchers 9 out of 10 times you encounter them, in a game where damage from explosives usually means instant death. And they're remarkably accurate with them. You better start saving your flashbangs after the sun first sets...
  • Doom 3, The Tentacled Zombie Commandos. They are very fast, have long range and deal a great amount of damage, and tend to show up in very dark areas, so you don't know they're onto you until it's too late.
    • The Chaingunner Commandos are even worse. Their gun deals A LOT of hurt, it disrupts your aiming, and is more accurate than your own. The Commando itself rarely flinches, and is tough enough to take a rocket to the face and ask for seconds. Get ready to hurt when you see three together.
    • The Pinky Demons can take quite a bit of punishment for the first time one appears, and disrupt your aim when they attack, potentially trapping you in a Cycle of Hurting. To make it worse, you usually fight them in tight hallways that are barely wide enough for the monster to fit in, so no dodging for you.
    • The Cherubs. Those things are terrifying. As if what they are isn't scary enough, they can leap long distances, chew through your health, and are usually found in close quarters and cramped hallways. The only hint you get that they're near is their creepy gurgling baby talk.
  • Doom II had the Revenant, which, while having only 300 hitpoints, ran very quickly, and possessed two deadly attacks--a homing missile that did immense damage and in open areas requires some know-how to dodge, and a punch that could kill you in three hits at 100% health. They tended to come in larger numbers than other heavyweight demons, as well.
    • The Arch-Vile is really a Boss in Mook Clothing. While it is indeed dangerous, it is also mercifully rare. The Arch-Vile is very fast, tough to kill, has low pain chance, has an undodgeable line-of-sight flame attack that can kill you in two hits, resurrects dead monsters, and other monsters can't get angry at it. Demonic indeed, since if there is more than one in a room littered with dead monsters, you're in a for a nasty fight. The flame attack is a pain, but if you can get behind cover and out of the Arch-Vile's sight before the attack finishes, you won't take damage. Otherwise, your only option is to kill him before he can let loose. While you're taking cover, the Arch-Vile will be resurrecting minions. Really, you're fucked either way.
    • Chaingunners, also known as Heavy Weapon Dudes. Even a single one can grievously injure you if it starts pumping you full of lead before you notice it. And once they start shooting at you, they don't stop until you move away from their line of fire or make them flinch with fire of your own. They can harm you at a very long range to boot. It doesn't help that level creators love to put them into watchtowers or hard-to-see windows. A bunch of HWD's up close will kill you. (The Plutonia Experiment makes this even more fun by introducing HWD squads helped by an invisible Arch-Vile, which resurrects them from behind a fake wall. In practice, this means you're facing an indestructible array of deadly turrets.)
    • The Realm667 Beastiary for zdoom (as well as a stand-alone mod, Scoredoom) has a more than plenty of these, tougher baron, and other miniboss variants, And bosses that make the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind look wimpy in comparison. To know if each of these enemies is one of these (by Doom engine standards), they have to have two or more of the following criteria (listed below) for them to qualify:
      • Throw hard-to-dodge homing projectiles that, like the revenant rocket, deals a large amount of damage.
      • Can throw/shoot a single projectile which can cause splash damage and can kill you in one direct hit.
      • Can shoot bunches of projectiles in a tight, tough-to-avoid spread pattern.
      • Can turn invulnerable at any time (in one case, every time after the particular enemy flinches), bonus points if said enemy deflects projectiles while invulnerable. (heaven help you if you fire homing projectiles at it during that time.)
      • In the case of hitscan enemies, can deal just as much damage (or even more) than the standard chaingunner, and won't stop firing until you leave their line of sight.
      • Conversely, hitscan enemies that can deal major damage with one shot, especially if up close. (for example, the super shotgun zombies from Skulltag)
      • Moves very fast and/or strafes a lot, making it hard to hit (particularly if combined with another of the above characteristics, promoting them from merely a Goddamned Bat).
      • Can detonate in your face for massive damage.
      • Has any projectiles that can rip through you to chop off large chunks of your health and come at you really fast. (bonus points if those home in on you wraithverge-style)
      • Are quick to get off their attacks with almost no warning, particularly when they have any of the above nasty attack types.
      • In the cases concerning melee-type enemies, can quickly hit/charge at you repeatedly (specifically if the latter kind can home in on you), ripping off large amounts of your health if you're not fast enough to shake them off.
      • Is quick to retaliate against you in the cases of infighting, and/or is slow to retaliate against other enemies in addition to one or more of the other characteristics above.
    • On Nightmare!, demons. They move and attack at least twice as fast, making them the absolute fastest enemies in the games. Remember those sweet times you could easily mow them down, Leatherface style? Better forget about that and pull out the plasma gun.
  • In Marathon, the lookers have low health, are small, hard to hit, and explode in the faces of players who don't notice them, dealing heavy damage. Did I mention there are invisible variants which are nearly impossible to see?
    • Invisible S'pht Compilers, especially the Major variation, which is almost literally invisible and has homing projectiles. The Wasps also struck fear in the heart of many players, being hard to hit, coming in swarms from multiple directions, and bombarding the player with spit gobs.
    • A Game Mod, Marathon: Evil, has two examples:
      • Devlins, large monsters with huge talons who hit you with a rapid-fire melee attack. They are extremely fast and can absorb a lot of ammo before going down. You usually encounter them in cramped tunnels and dark spaces, which when coupled with their dark character sprites makes them nearly impossible to see before they're right on top of you. The worst thing, however, is that you enounter the majority of them early in the game, when your arsenal is small and your ammo pitifully low.
      • Cyborg Drones, similar to the Pfhor's defense drones and just as hard to hit, but with more powerful and deadly fire blasters. And the green ones are Action Bombs that silently sneak up on you and explode in your face, worse than the Lookers.
    • The tank-treaded Cyborgs have a ton of health, and explode when killed, which is bad enough, but the truly demonic ones are the version with homing bouncing grenades. The bouncing bombs deal significant damage, travel fast and are extremely hard to dodge, especially if you're caught unawares. Particularly common in EVIL.
    • Much of the bestiary of the Nintendo Hard Game Mod Marathon RED consists of demonic spiders.
  • Most of the enemies in Soldier of Fortune II become Demonic Spiders on the higher two difficulty levels. They have near-perfect accuracy even at long distances while your guns are screwed over with prodigious recoil, take cover in near-impossible to see or hit locations, made worse by shoddy collision detection, never seem to miss with their One-Hit Kill grenades, and apparently have x-ray vision, as they can see you through underbrush, smoke and fog, and sometimes even behind hills or walls. Worst examples occur in the Colombia (jungle camouflage, which you can't hide in), Hong Kong (fast enemies that attack in groups, deadly accuracy and all), and Kamchatka (lots of fog, yet again nowhere to hide) missions.
    • In the first Soldier of Fortune, Unfair difficulty has a much more sensitive PADD meter, resulting in larger groups of randomly "teleporting in" enemies when you make just a smidgen too much noise. Then when fighting that group, you tend to make even more noise, causing even more enemies to spawn, getting you stuck in a vicious cycle until you die. Not to mention that the enemies are smarter as well.
      • The outdoor level of the Siberia mission has heavy fog, which effectively turns the snipers, tanks, and gun turrets into demonic spiders on the harder difficulties. As with Soldier of Fortune II, the soldiers seem to have infrared vision, although they have no visible enhancements. Doesn't help that they have armor-piercing bullets(the snipers were Nerfed in the second game). At one point you face a group of multiple snipers in the pea soup with nowhere to hide, which tends to be a Luck-Based Mission.
  • Red Faction: Guerilla's EDF. Coming in infinite amount of Humvees, APCs, and Tanks, they won't even stop coming until your alert is down to yellow. Oh, and instead of just coming out of their car before swarming you, they RUN YOU OVER while shooting you with their turrets, then come out and swarm you! The only good news is that if you have an Arc Welder, their strength becomes their weakness and they end up getting slaughtered as you hijack their strongest vehicles and turn their weapons on them.
    • Masako's elite mercenaries in the first game tend to soak up more damage than your average soldier, have godlike accuracy, and are often armed with the Rail Driver, which can kill you in one hit, and have a scope that lets them see through walls. Have fun.
  • F.E.A.R.: The Assassins, aka ninjas or watchers (after the level they first appear in), at least on the Hard and Extreme difficulties. Like most ninja-type enemies, they are very fast and jump all over the place, making them very hard to track. Even worse, they have stealth camouflage, are almost completely silent, hide out in dark places, and have a lethal melee attack that can easily kill you before you can react. If you thought the stealth Elites in Halo 2 were bad...
    • Goes double in Project Origin. Also in that game, the Replica snipers. Or the Abominations.
      • They are much easier to see, having the nearly transparent moving shape aspect replaced with a big rainbow bloom and they appear in areas with much more space and better lighting. The most vexing part about dealing with them is making sure that you don't waste too much ammunition.
    • Scarecrows in Perseus Mandate. Aside from giving you one of the most shocking character deaths in the series, they lie in wait where and when you least expect them, and most of the time you're low on health because of other enemies. When you recover from the scare of being pulled into the earth by one, it's probably too late.
    • In FEAR3, the Phase Troopers are tough, have an accurate gun which makes quite a mark, and spawn a lot of Mooks. However, you normally don't have to take them head on; they bring the gameplay to a halt and are content to camp away from the action and just summon enemies. Once the supply of mooks dries up, they die.
    • Extraction Point has two examples which might be the worst of the worst. The first are these heavily armored elite Replica soldiers with these huge shields that soak up bullets. They have a lot of health. Their fronts are protected by these huge shields. Their miniguns can reduce you to full health and armor to dead in less than a second. Thank god there are only three in the game.
      • Another Extraction Point example is the Shades. Did you like the Replica Assassins? Well now have them as permanently invisible supernatural phantoms that whisper and growl. Get ready to face quite a few swarms of these things in the underground section of Perseus Mandate. At least they aren't nearly as acrobatic as the Assassins, keeping to the ground during non-scripted events, and their glowing red eyes give their positions away in the dark.
  • The old-school Macintosh First-Person Shooter Sensory Overload had the dreaded "shadow ninjas", which were invisible to radar, resided in dark rooms, were extremely fast, and threw deadly shurikens with deadly accuracy.
    • And there were the machine-gun-wielding Elite Mooks and the security droids in the later levels.
  • In System Shock 2, there are the huge, nearly-invisible, poisonous god-damned biohazard spiders from HELL ITSELF. There is a fan-made patch which removes them for those who seriously could not proceed past that point, but at least a few players installed it just to remove the absolute hatred factor. At least they make a very distinct chittering sound that alerts you to their presence and you normally encounter them in areas where have plenty room to backpedal away from them while shooting at them or smacking them with a wrench.
    • Cyborg assassins are extremely quiet, throw very fast projectiles at you, are very mobile and can take a bit of punishment. Unlike the spiders, you can end up with several shuriken buried in your spine before you know they're there.
  • In Blood, there are the Choking Hands. They always appear suddenly and unexpected, are too small to be easily targeted, grab and choke you, essentially neutralizing you until you manage to shake them off (or die), and do a hell of damage when choking. As they choke you to death, your vision dims and eventually goes black, so you can't even run the hell away from other monsters effectively. And some versions of the game are glitched on the "removing" aspect, meaning you don't get to dislodge the damn things no matter how much you try the correct method[1]. If you can fight them without getting the heebie-jeebies, you have nerves of steel.
    • All the facehugger-type creatures in Blood II are candidates for this, as some versions of the manual didn't tell you how to remove them (and it's not obvious). If you don't know the technique to remove them, any encounter with a Bone Leech/Thief/Hand is fatal[2]. At least they're slower than the original Choking Hands from the first game and make a lot of noise, so you can pinpoint their locations before you see them[3].
    • The more evolved Drudge forms. The Drudge Lord has a vicious variety of melee attacks (the most powerful of them, a scissor-like slash with both claws, being almost instantaneous) and a three-fireball burst at range that hits HARD (each is basically a shot from your own Napalm Launcher). It normally has to stand still to perform this, but a glitch may make them slide towards you while firing them, even around corners. And there's absolutely no weapon in the game that can make them flinch before they launch at least the first time. The Drudge Priest, its evolved form, also throws these fireballs, but only one at a time and from much farther, so you can dodge. What you can't dodge is its streak of three nasty hitscan lightning bolts if you get too close. Oh, and the Priest also spits out Bone Leeches whenever it feels like it. At least the Priest's rare.
  • Seems that the Quake series love these:
    • Quake featured the hated Spawn enemies, purple blobs of hyperactive goo that bounced around in an infuriatingly fast and random manner, buffeting you for visible chunks of damage in the process. Best of all, they would detonate when slain, easily gibbing the incautious player. They also made some of the Most Annoying Sounds in the game.
    • Just as the manual says, the Fiends are organic buzzsaws, rife with pummeling (and slashing) power. They can take quite a beating and normally jump at you from long distances, which, considering you usually run around with low health, are often a one-hit kill. On top of that, in certain versions, mods and/or Source Ports, they are able to insta-kill you (regardless of health) if they land on top of you after they jump, adding to the threat.
    • The Vores, because of their deadly homing attacks, particularly the two-Vore battle at the end of Episode II. Also because of the horrible high pitched screeching sounds they made.
    • Somewhat of a precursor to the Berserkers of later games, the Death Knights are fast, durable, and damaging Lightning Bruisers that tend to appear in close quarters, preventing you from using explosives.
    • Ogres become this on Nightmare difficulty, due to their rapid-fire Grenade Spam.
    • Quake II has the Parasite, a cybernetic quadripedal creature that's Made of Iron, fast and stealthy, often appears at close range, and quickly drains your health with its unavoidable tentacle attack. When you hear it's footsteps nearby and you're low on health, you know you're about to get owned. Lord help you if two or more attack at once unless you're outside their attack range, in which case they'll send off the tentacle anyways, making them perfectly still targets.
    • The Gladiators, who are also Made of Iron, and have a hard-to-dodge railgun that chops off 50 health points. They were upgraded to Boss in Mook Clothing status in IV.
    • The Brain Beta Class. The original totes an energy shield that makes it almost invulnerable at the front, and has a tentacle attack that rips off a good chunk of your health and sends you flying away faster than Team Rocket blasting off, which generally causes fall damage when you land. Fortunately, it's the slowest enemy in the game and it doesn't have any ranged attacks. That changes with the Beta Class - it now has an optic laser beam that can roast you inside your armor if you face it for over two seconds.
    • Berserkers in Quake IV. Faster, tougher, and more damaging than their Q2 counterparts, tend to spawn behind you, get up in your face quickly precluding the use of explosives, and on Harder Than Hard difficulty, where they can One-Hit Kill you and Gameplay Ally Immortality is removed on certain characters, they make certain Escort Missions a royal pain.
    • The Heavy Hovertanks from Quake 4. Made of Iron, hard to hit in spite of their massive size (they can be damn fast), and possess extremely damaging weaponry.
    • The PSX version of II has an exclusive near-literal demonic spider, the Arachnid, who has dual railguns.
  • Given its reputation for frequently delving into Nintendo Hard territory, the Serious Sam serious is bound to have these:
    • The Kleer Skeleton is undoubtedly the franchise's quintessential Demonic Spider. They ambush in Mook numbers with un-mooklike health, taking multiple double-barrel shotgun shots to kill unless you fire point fucking blank and enough abuse from tommy/minigun fire to distract you from all the other Kleers surrounding you. Their attacks include jumping at you with 100% accuracy and almost 100% speed, with enough distance to land well out of shotgun or flamethrower range, giving them ample time to make another barely strafeable jump, and a flying ball-and-chain projectile that gives you two things two dodge, often straight into the other. In casual encounters they are sure to shave off HP from all but the most experienced players, and when combined with large numbers and tight quarters create a Bullet Hell/Cycle of Hurting hybrid where the is player into borderline luck-of-the-draw turning and strafing using whatever rapid fire weapon is available (god help you if you don't have one), praying whatever movements (s)he makes will slow down the inevitable health drain from 360 degrees of light-speed attacks enough to survive.
    • The third attack of the Final Boss in The Second Encounter launches bomber planes which are hard to hit and which will carpet bomb the player when not shot down.
    • Arachnoids in Serious Sam 3: BFE become a major threat in higher difficulties. Unlike arachnoids in Serious Sam I, they tend to move sideways a lot, making them harder to hit with rockets. They also don't flinch as much as the ones in the first installment.
  • Guard dogs in the Medal of Honor series, which take off 20 HP per hit on Normal difficulty, more than most bullets. Doesn't help that they tend to teleport in behind you or otherwise offscreen. Also, the snipers, particularly in Allied Assault, take off half your health on hard difficulty, have greater visual range than your scope (even without one of their own), and can see and shoot through dense foilage, which is sometimes impenetrable to your bullets. Their rifles actually shoot at a higher rate than the standard rifles as well. Just wait 'til you get to the "Sniper's Last Stand" level, and the subsequent Escort Mission. And let's not forget the MG42's, especially where there are Respawning Enemies. And the grenade spammers that first appear in the aforementioned Snipertown.
    • The 2nd level of the bonus mission "Panzerknacker Unleashed" from Medal of Honor Underground had "zombies" that were impossibly good shots with their machine guns. Oh, and they explode when they die.
  • Enemies in Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2. They have an Instant Death Radius where if you encounter them at near point blank range, they will headshot you first. Their Demonic Spider status is more prominent in the terrorist hunts, where you are placed in open-ended maps with lots of tight quarters (Instant Death Radius galore). In terrorist hunts, the enemies spawn as you go and their first instruction is often to move to the player, which leads to enemies pouring through doorways with little sense of self-preservation. This is made worse by the inconvenient locations of the spawn triggers where enemies may easily surround you and even come from areas you just cleared. Forget using a standard loadout, you need two machine guns because you can't spare the time to reload while you're being overwhelmed with bad guys with lightning reflexes.
    • This is made slightly less chaotic for those with keen eyesight. Whenever more terrorists spawn, there will be a very slight skip/lag in the game, short enough to be easily missed, but long enough to be noticed. When you spot this skip, get the hell outta there.
  • The Exploding Cultists from Clive Barker's Jericho. Fast, possess highly damaging close-range attacks... and, as their name suggests, they like to explode. Preferably while they're close to as many members of the Jericho Squad as they can possibly get. They can be killed by shooting out all of the pustules on their body, but this is much easier said than done (especially when you have swarms of them to deal with). Thankfully, a much more effective way to deal with them is to use Church's Blood Ward spell against them, before running right up to them and give them a good, hefty slash with her sword. Of course, since they also explode upon death, it is recommended that you run like hell after doing this. Another effective way is to unleash Delgado's Kill It with Fire abilities upon them.
  • Most enemies in the Alien Resurrection FPS for the PlayStation, but worst of all are the facehuggers. They are really dodgy and hard to hit before they latch onto you, and if there isn't an Autodoc nearby, it's game over man, game over.
  • Operation Body Count has one big nuisance and one blatantly cheap enemy. The nuisance is the sewer slime monster, which can come dangerously close to 1-hit-killing you on Hard Difficulty (and takes out around half your health on Easy) in addition to covering up part of the screen, including the map. The cheap-as-hell game-breaking enemy? The shock drones. Sure, you can one-shot them, but they can kill you in under half a second without you knowing they're there until after you're dead. ON EASY. WITH FULL HEALTH AND ARMOR. You can all-but-expect them to be one-hit-killers on HARD!
  • Crysis has a particularly godawful version in the attack helicopters that show up after a few levels. They have near instant kill weapons, are invincible to anything other than two direct rocket hits, and, worst of all, if they see you no matter what you do they always know exactly where you are making them completely unavoidable once you are spotted. This sometimes persists even after reloading a save game. Always carry a full rocket launcher just in case you are spotted by one of these bastards.
    • The best part about knowing exactly where you are? Basically, if you're not in stealth mode, you're being shot into tiny little pieces. You could be under a thick canopy of trees, about 300 meters away, but they'll know exactly where you are. To make matters worse, if you stay still for too long (say, behind a sturdy tree or rock), they have a tendency to start spamming missiles over the area. Also, they're not invulnerable to bullets, but they do take a lot of punishment to take out. Certainly takes longer to kill one than one to kill you.
    • The sequel has the Ceph Heavies taking up the spider mantle. They are huge and slow, but that's about their only downsides. They are almost immune to bullets, taking multiple rockets to the face and entire mags from chainguns in stride, while tossing their own rockets and chaingun rounds at you, which you will not shrug off anywhere near so easily. The only thing that makes them manageable is if you sneak up behind them and toss two packs of C4 onto their backs. That is, if they don't release an EMP burst that drains your energy and disables your cloak first. And if you can survive long enough to get out of the blast radius, because they will notice you once you throw the explosives. And if you have C4.
  • Will Rock has its share of annoying monsters, including:
    • Minotaurs: they're not very tough, but are fast, throw axes at you and if killed they'll spawn two smaller Blood Minotaurs with the same abilities. A special gun is required to prevent this.
    • Centaurs: really fast, hard to hit, move erratically, take a lot of damage before dying and can send you flyong if they hit you. Oh, and they can still attack you from far away with their stupid tridents.
    • Orthuses: They're quite fast, they can and will maul you and they have the stupid habit of spitting acid and fireballs non-stop at you even while running
    • Cyclops: have a lot of HP and they're spit attack is a pain in the ass and hard to dodge.
  • Call of Juarez has a cave full of spiders in a late episode. It it dark. They are camoflaged. They move erratically, with pauses, leaps, and freely scuttle up and down the walls in their path. Your only weapon at this point is a whip, which inflicts no area damage, has a mediocre rate of fire, and poor range. They seem to be large enough that collision detection won't let you pass over them easily (no Goomba Stomp for you), so trying to run through, say, this little lot will result in you being surrounded and nibbled to death a few hitpoints at a time while they dodge your attacks. Wake them up, then backtrack and jump over a chasm? They'll jump it too, or follow the wall or ceiling around. Oh, and they make scuttly (and, bizzarely, hissing) noises.
  • Painkiller has a few, although on any difficulty besides Trauma mode they're rarely a huge problem if you conserve your Freezer ammo. Throughout the series we have:
    • The first game had the following especially-painful enemies in alphabetical order:
      • Hell Bikers, particularly the chaingunner and nailgunner variants, tend to be very accurate with their fire, and they can quickly destroy your health.
      • Maso Commandos have flamethrower/grenade launchers that can deal immense amounts of damage and requiring continuous attacking in order to die-- and they literally LAUGH at you when you fail to kill them.
      • Skulls can they use Hell Bikers as meat shields as well as dish out a crapton of damage with their shotguns and light their heads on fire, making them temporarily invincible.
      • Finally, Templars have shields that block all attacks except lightning and explosions, and their bolts can be difficult to dodge, especially in the "Babel" level where they each fire THREE bolts at once and appear in swarms.
    • Battle out of Hell had several contenders as well:
      • Bossmen had dual cannon weapons that can hit you from one side of the room for a ton of damage, with the cannonballs being very tough to dodge. Bonus points goes to the later versions who are much tougher and can't be frozen.
      • Voodoo Priests have an unavoidable voodoo attack will drain your health and armor quickly, even if they don't see you.
    • The much-maligned Overdose, of course, had its share of nasty foes, not counting the ones that were already in the original Painkiller and Battle out of Hell:
      • Chopper Women move very quickly and can quickly shred your health should they reach you.
      • Devil Monks come in larger numbers than in the first game, only in two levels; the ones with the staves can either poison (red) or slow you down (blue) if you get too close. And they WILL flank you if you're slowed down enough by the ones with the blue staves.
      • Electricians shoot giant "fuck-off lasers that can hit you from across the goddamn map", in the words of LPer Null Set, and have a melee attack that can stun you and take off a lot of health.
      • Leper Monks can bounce you around a lot, leaving you at the mercy of other monsters.
      • Masters would be merely lesser contenders if they didn't have a quick slash attack and teleport about.
      • Rocketeers leap around like ninjas, shoot instant-hit bullets, and deal nasty damage with their rocket blasts if you get too close.
      • And finally, Tentacles move about underground then try to sprout up from underneath you, and can hurt you with their slap attacks before the animation plays out.
  • Compies in Turok 2 are small and hard to shoot, and they come in swarms. Getting swarmed often means Death of a Thousand Cuts. The Purr-linn Juggernauts are Made of Iron, have hard-to-hit weak points, surprisingly fast for their size, and have a beam-shooting BFS that also generates ground shockwaves. The Lair of the Blind Ones has literal spiders. The Mantid Hive has the Drones, who are airborne, have supreme dodging skills, often attack in pairs or more, and fire highly-damaging plasma cannons. The Lords of the Flesh in the Oblivion Portals are also extremely fast, frequently block your shots, and have beam cannons similar to the Mantids.
    • Turok 2 has a large number of Demonic Spiders, but the Blind Ones archers probably take the cake. They have long-range crossbows that are far more accurate than anything that's blind has a right to be and is easily one of the highest damaging attacks in the game. The arrows are also surprisingly quiet, though still audible. The archers' only real downside is that the Blind Ones' breathing is quite loud and can alert you to their presence, though the short draw distance of the N64 can cause you to be attacked from where you can't see them.
    • Manuguera bugs in the remake have the honour of being Demonic Spiders and Goddamn Bats. They fly, attack in huge swarms, are small, fast and hard to hit and just happen to have an acid spit attack that can kill you in three hits.
  • Duke Nukem 3D:
    • Octabrains are frequently encountered in groups underwater, often near Protozoid Slimer eggs, can take alot more punishment than normal enemies, and have a deadly psychic energy blast.
    • Protozoid Slimers, which constantly jump between ceiling and floor, and block off the entire screen if they latch onto you. In the normal game, you have to shoot it off your face. Normally this is done by reflex, so not much of a hassle, but since the enemies present usually require you to be carrying the RPG, and the projectile explodes in contact with the Protozoid, well... At least you can kick them with the Atomic Edition installed, which makes cutting through infested air vents a breeze. It doesn't detract any from their creepy factor, tough.
    • Sentry Drones, which are highly agile and evasive, attack by explosive ramming, and usually come in groups.
    • Assault Commanders. Airborne, Made of Iron, usually appear at distance making them hard to hit, and attack in groups with deadly rapid-fire rockets.
    • Protector Drones, possibly the most dangerous Mook in the game. Extremely fast, can take a beating, and are armed with deadly claws and a Shrink Ray. And worse, the Final Boss has an infinite supply of them.
  • The Harder Than Hard Insane difficulty in the Descent series turns most of the enemies, particularly those which are already Goddamned Bats, into Demonic Spiders, for example the Internal Tactical Droids are now very swift and nigh-impossible to hit, quickly draining your health with their near-perfectly accurate vulcan cannons. And the Red Spiders in the first game, especially with their ability to split into smaller spiders.
    • Class 1 Drillers in the first game. These guys will quickly shred you to bits with their vulcan cannons. Plasma Drillers too. And Missile Hulks, especially the homing type. Both appear in great frequency after the first seven levels, and launch Macross Missile Massacres on the higher difficulties.
      • Fusion Hulks, Class 1 Drillers, and several other robots (such as bosses that fire Smart Missiles) use weapon data designed for the player, instead of using robot-specific weapons which have scaled-down damage and velocity for lower difficulty levels. This makes them disproportionately more dangerous at easier difficulties, since their weapon shots are just as quick and hard-hitting as they would be on Insane. The Fusion Hulk is a big offender in particular, as its attack will take off half the player's shields in one hit.
      • Cloaked Hulks. Same as brown hulks, but with stealth camouflage. Stealth Drillers too.
      • On any difficulty the following are: Class 1 drillers, Cloaked Drillers, Fusion Hulks, and Heavy Drillers. On anything higher than Trainee, Medium Hulks in general, Spider Drones, and Missile Platform Robots. Hotshot, a few bots join the list. Ace and Insane? Pick a bot, it can bring 200 shields down in no time.
    • Second game: Lou Guards (a slightly Nerfed Expy of the first game's Red Hulk), Diamond Claws (similar to the Goddamned Lifters, but with returning homing plasma), Seekers, Red Hornets (especially in swarms), Spiders and their Spawns, BPER Bots, Seekers and Boarsheads (Heavy Drillers on steroids with Smart Missiles).
      • The Vertigo Expansion Pack brings back the Missile Hulks and Drillers from D1, as well as introducing the Class 2 Heavy Driller, the Sniper NG, the MAX, armed with the same Homing Flash Missiles as That One Boss from the main game, and the SPIKE, which has the deadly undodgeable Omega Cannon.
  • Star Wars: Republic Commando has Demonic SBDs that require concentrated fire from your whole squad to kill, this wouldn't be so bad if 1.) You didn't fight so god damn many, and 2.) they didn't have Mook Makers. Surprisingly, knifing them to death works (as crazy as it sounds to attack a large robot with a knife instead of a laser blaster). Two of more and you use EMP grenades to take them out quick.
    • Spider Droids are also humongous pains in the ass.
    • Jedi Outcast has the Shadow Troopers, lightsabre-equipped Storm Troopers with saber-resistant armour who hop around with incredible speed and agility, are immune to just about any Force attack, and can perform just about every attack you can, but better. Dealing with more than one is damn near impossible. And no, Force Speed does not help; they just counter it with their own.
    • Outcast and Academy feature AT-STs. Sometimes you have added firepower (a walker of your own, or a gun emplacement) to take them out, but when you don't, your options are: (a) spend a few minutes throwing your saber at it (for some reason you can't just throw it at the legs to disable the thing in a single strike, and if you get too close, it steps on you and kills you); (b) shoot at it with the guns that you never use after you get the saber, until you run out of ammo (long before it dies), leaving you to spam the repeater's alt fire for quite a bit; or (c) play tennis with its blaster cannons where one mishap can kill you (and it STILL takes a decent amount of time). As it stands, they are arguably harder then the actual bosses in either game.
    • The Dark Troopers in the original game are Demonic Spiders for two different reasons; the Phase 1 for deflecting projectile weapons and forcing the player to use explosives, and the Phase 2 for having the ability to fly and shoot at the player with the equivalent of the best gun in the game, as well as taking quite a bit of damage (The Phase 3 Dark Trooper is the final boss).
  • Breakdown. The basic(!) enemies of this game are human soldiers with ludicrously accurate machine guns. Of course, given that the Applied Phlebotinum present in the game leads you to A God Am I territory, you might think that they eventually cease to be Demonic Spiders. Oh how wrong you are. In gangs, they can cut you down in seconds. The actual MONSTROUS enemies are worse. Base-form T'lan are immune to bullets, incredibly strong and like to knock you down—and it only gets worse from there. The heavyweight contender for the Demonic Spiders title in this game are Stealth T'lan. Fast, invisible and they generally travel in gangs of two to four. In well-lit areas, you can see them well enough to divide and conquer. In darker areas, the net effect is something like being descended upon by naked, radioactive Freddy Kruegers who always knock you down, outpace you by default and can only be reliably tracked by their Audible Sharpness.
  • On BioShock (series), if you access a certain Power To The People machine in Fort Frolic, the standard (already demonic) Spider Splicers are replaced by plaster-covered ones, which are always running on full alert, and make absolutely no sound when moving on the ground or attacking, which will cost you a chunk of health every time you're not paying full attention to the game (i.e. spinning around madly trying to cover every possible attack angle). There's a reason most gamers consider said machine an unnecessary hassle more than anything.
  • Sauerbraten's various single-player campaigns have literal demonic spiders. They toss grenades at you that take out most of your health if you aren't wearing armor. If you see one, run far away. But as Sauerbraten is intended as an engine and the FPS bundled with it is just a demonstration, it's open-source, so you can "fix" the bug yourself with a little tinkering.
  • Pathways into Darkness has Ghasts, a suped-up version of the Zombies that cause earthquakes from off-screen, Oozes, who appear in large numbers and are major bullet sponges, the spider-like Skitters, who swarm you from all sides and later have a poisonous Palette Swap, and Greater Nightmares, who shoot nearly-undodgeable homing projectiles and can only be killed with armor-piercing ammo.
  • In Team Fortress 2, Engineers, mainly because of their sentry, which has absurd power, range, and firing speed, and can be leveled up to become even worse. At level 3, it's nearly impossible to take one on at front, because of its extreme firing speed and damage. Plus, if an Engineer has a constant supply of metal, the sentries will be nearly constantly healed and resupplied. Once an Engineer is firmly entrenched, very little can defeat him and his sentry. Last note, Engineers love to group together, forming a huge nest of sentries and buildings, healing and repairing together. In short, shoot the engineer first. Fortunately, the Engineer on his own is weak, but certain unlocks (the Frontier Justice) allow him to deal far more damage if his sentry is killed. The release of the wrangler has allowed the Engineer to take control of his sentry, which not only eliminates the sentry's original limitation of near-sightedness, but ALSO limits the amount of damage the turret can take by 1/3. Combine this with Engie camps repairing the wrangled turret and the occasional pyro providing anti-spy support, and you have an invincible rotary gun of sheer death.
    • Spies wielding the "Dr. Enforcicle" combo are nightmarish. Normally, Spies have to be stealthy because their health is low; Pyros can ignite them, revealing their cloak or disguise; and their weak revolver is supposed to be a last-resort weapon. The Enforcer can two-shot most classes in close range. The Spy-cicle enables the Spy to become immune to fire for two seconds upon taking fire damage with the weapon out, at the loss of the weapon for a mere 15 seconds. And the Dead Ringer allows the Spy to fake his death for a short time, taking reduced damage during the time. Final verdict? Powerful weapon that allows the Spy to kill most classes in two hits, temporary immunity to his main weakness, and if you finally catch him, he fakes his death with damage resistance stacked on.
    • Just about any class can become this, though there seems to be more hate for pyros, demomen, snipers, spies, and particularly good scouts. As those are, in order, bringers of flaming mayhem, massed explosions, gray matter splatter, instant death from behind, and obnoxious agility with firepower, respectively, their spider-potential is not hard to grasp.
  • Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter has rocket-launcher- and automatic-grenade-turret-weilding tangos in a few missions. They can see you from distances where you can only see them with a sniper rifle, they fire instantly when you enter their viewing cone, they have perfect accuracy, and it's essentially impossible to notice the explosive coming unless you're looking right at it - and naturally you die in one hit. Be prepared to step around a corner and randomly explode dozens of times until you finally spot the bastard-- and be damned sure your idiotic squadmates don't wander through the enemy's targeting area.
    • There are also a pair of machine gun turrets about a block apart on the same street in one level. They have big metal plates around the barrel so you can't shoot the gunner, they apparently have binocular vision and unlimited range, and they cover each other. Only coming around the right corners with perfect timing gives you a split second to shoot the gunner in the back before he swivels towards you.
  • Borderlands has several of these. The larger versions of the skags (especially those with an elemental affinity) can keep ramming you for good damage, sending you flying back several feet as their lesser brethren gang up on you. The spiderants are just as bad; the beetle versions can curl up and roll into you, sending you flying while the larger ones rarely turn around for you to hit their backsides for massive damage. The elemental spiderants are even worse since they can create a shockwave attack constantly if you get too close and use a long range attack if you are too far away from them. Running them over with a vehicle is usually the easiest way to kill them but the larger spiderants will damage your shields if you run over too many of them. Enemy turrets are difficult to approach as they will shred you to pieces, have high defense, and can shoot either bullets or rockets at you. The Eridians towards the end of the game come in two flavors; one that moves and attacks fast, making it hard to hit them, and one that can hover high the air while attacking you with a long range beam attack, forcing you to use either a weapon with a scope or Mordecai's Bloodwing pet just to be able to deal consistent damage to the bastards.
    • The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC has its own flavor of demonic spiders. First there are the defilers that vomit on you, doing high damage, blinding you, and slowing you down, leaving you open to attack from other zombies. Then there are the suicide zombies that throw an Explosive Barrel at you, doing high damage and causing massive knockback. Oh, and they also explode when killed. The takenstein is practically the worst of the bunch since he is Made of Iron, has the explosive barrels like the suicide zombies but isn't limited to one, and attacks with other zombies.
    • The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC also introduces new demonic spiders. Badass lance troopers have powerful guns and have a really freaking huge shield that makes attacking them a chore unless you go for headshots. Badass shock/chemical/pyro troopers are Made of Iron, have an elemental affinity, and their backpacks tend to explode even after you killed them, which can put you into cripple status. Then there are the Omega Assassins that move as fast as the Eridians or even faster, attack in groups, and their movement makes it difficult to hit them, similar to the assassins fought in Half Life.
    • The Claptrap's New Robot Revolution DLC to continue on with the game's cheap enemies. The Kamikaze Claptraps approach you and explode, usually crippling you instantly. By themselves they are of little trouble, but they also tend to blend in with the group of the non-suicide Claptrap enemies and come out in full force when you do the Boss Rush portion of the final mission, including during the battle with the Final Boss.
  • The shield-equipped Ravagers in Resistance 2 will run directly in your face with their quasi-impenetrable forcefields (which damage you on contact), and are usually escorted by some Mooks hiding behind said shield. Your only chance is to back up and wait for them to lower the shield... except they have a nasty habit of showing up right when the terrain prevents you from retreating.
  • In Brink. enemy medics can be very hard when they come in pairs. Put one down, he gets revived. attack the other, same thing.
    • And let's not forget the fact that a Medic at Rank 5 has the ability to revive themselves (granted that they have the perk for it) if they're incapacitated. Fun!
  1. ↑ fortunately, this was patched
  2. ↑ at least the developers were a little kinder this time-- these "grabber" enemies fall off if you run around too much, in addition to the old way
  3. ↑ not so much for the Hands, but they take the time to flip you off before approaching you, so you may just run past them without noticing them, or even kill them while dealing with other enemies present
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Demonic_Spiders/Video_Games/First-Person_Shooter?oldid=1959642"