The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Cheating Computer 9567.png|link=Hearts of Iron|frame|Most games aren't [[Difficulty Levels|this honest]].]]

 

 

The computer player is a cheating bastard whenever the "rules" differ between you and AI-controlled opponents. This can be a quick-and-dirty method of achieving a "level" playing field against a skilled human player (especially in older games, where hardware and AI capabilities were limited and prone to [[Artificial Stupidity]]), but can also create [[Fake Difficulty]] when the computer has access to moves that a human player (in the same context) clearly does not.

** In ''[[Mortal Kombat 3]]'', Kano and Liu Kang could pull their special charging moves almost instantly, sometimes several times in the row. Liu Kang could do several bicycle attacks and then finish you with a combo. Kano could do his spinning attack twice, and sometimes when you were in mid-air.

** One textbook case vessel of the trope and a bane to most players is Jade in UMK3 who activates her invincibility technique ''the instant'' you throw a projectile at her. It doesn't help that when she activates this, she actually runs at you in the instant she does without any warning whatsoever and devastates you with her uber-long combo with no resistance and does so with impeccable timing.

** ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'' (2011) lives up to its predecessors in cheating bastardness. Enemies can counter your moves the INSTANT you throw them and can seemingly block EVERYTHING you throw at times, but that isn't the worst part. The worst part is the bosses. If a boss throws an attack of ANY kind, he becomes immune to being stunned. You jump kick Kintaro in the face while both of you are airborne? Too bad he just started his air throw, so you're getting slammed in the ground. And in Challenge tower levels where there are random powerups being dropped you can almost guarantee that they will be dropped behind the CPU, ESPECIALLY if the CPU is near death.

*** Not to mention, the absolute pain in the ass that is [[Big Bad|Shao Kahn]]. Most of his attacks are unblockable, though he can block the player's attacks without actually needing to block with his arms. He is capable of unleashing health-bar killing attack strings that are unavoidable, unbreakable, and unblockable once started, and his X-ray attack can take out half of the player's health-bar. Add the fact that he is ''ridiculously fast'' and barely registers your character's attacks, and he's a boss who can take you out in a manner of seconds!

* ''Super [[Godzilla]]'' for the Super Nintendo did this against, well, pretty much everyone. Your own fighting spirit (a measure of how strong your techniques are) rises pretty slowly, compared to the UFO which is nearly permanently at maximum, or Mechagodzilla, who can go from nothing to max in a heartbeat, and teleport-body-slam you in the process. He will then use eye lasers just to mess with you.

* [[TNA]] iMPACT! the game. Anyone who is an established wrestler will automatically be twice as good as you, no matter who you choose. Certain matches in story mode can consist of you spending 90% of the match beating the hell out of them, only for them to come out of nowhere with enough counters to use a special move, hit it once, and win.

* In ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'', the AI also ignores equipment and accessory rules. Every piece of regular equipment (swords, shields, etc) has a level requirement that your character must meet in order to equip it, but almost every AI opponent will be wearing at least one item above their level. Accessories work somewhat differently. They are ranked from D to Star. The higher the rank, the fewer of that accessory you can use at the same time. Many AI will have three or four of the same Star-ranked accessory.

** The [[Expansion Pack]] adds to the cheating—if the game wants to play a character like an [[SNK Boss]], it will—dodging will be instant, attacks will be instant (even if you're playing the same character), their priority will be scores higher than yours, etc.

* In ''[[Bleach]]: Blade Of Fate'', the human character can only [[Flash Step]] or use RF Special Attacks when they have enough Spiritual Power to do so. The AI opponents have infinite Spiritual Power.

** Nu on her own is bad enough, she has projectile swords that basically fly out of the air. Many characters, particularly Hakumen and Tager, have no way at all to approach Nu in her NORMAL state. Based on tournaments, they have around a 20% chance of winning a match against a Nu player of equal skill. Unlimited Nu is Nu, except she summons 3 swords with every attack instead of 1. Yeah. It's hell.

*** Don't forget she has little recovery time on these attacks, and can (and will) combo any and all hits into her Distortion Drive, which hits for about 50% life. Bear in mind, this will happen if you fail to block ''even once'', while you will require about 40 minor miracles in a row to beat her.

* On higher difficulty levels, the bots in ''[[Quake|Quake III Arena]]'' can [[The All-Seeing AI|track your character through walls]] and can one-shot kill you via Railgun the moment a single pixel of your hitbox is exposed.

* Enemies in ''[[Call of Duty]]'' love to automatically shoot you ''just'' before you pull the trigger and throw off your aim so you miss your shot, especially when you're using a bolt-action rifle and have to wait a full second before you can fire again.

 

=== Puzzle/Board Games ===

* The yellow car from ''[[RC Pro-Am]]'' exhibited signs of [[Rubber Band AI]] during certain races. Well, not exactly... the rubber band outright ''snapped'', making that car move nearly twice as fast as all of the other cars on the track (including your own, even if you collected all of the upgrades). When you heard that tell-tale high-pitched squeal around the beginning of the second lap, it was your ''ass''.

** To be fair, in this game you can be a cheating bastard too. You have [[Secret Player Moves]]: Weapons. Even at super turbo speeds, if the yellow car eats a missile or bomb, it goes boom and loses its super turbo for a bit. What's worse is the late game tracks where EVERY car does this the instant they pass you up. If you don't blast them out of the starting gate, you can't win!

* ''[[Burnout]] 3: Takedown'' features broken one-way [[Rubber Band AI]] in many of its events. When you're in the lead, driving perfectly and constantly boosting, the AI will be, as a helpful yellow pop-up caption exclaims, "right on your tail!" no matter how many times you wreck them. The moment you crash, they start to take an insurmountable 30-second lead that is nearly impossible to catch up to.

** In ''[[Burnout]] Paradise'', the computer drivers will always get a head start in race events, allowing them to boost past you before you even get control of your car.

*** All things considered, though, only a handful of Chrono Cross bosses were unfair. The secret boss from whom you obtain the Mastermune is the only character in the game that will instantly counter literally any element you throw at him, based on his own system of preset counters that will *always* immediately follow any element you use. Not knowing this ahead of time and attacking normally is a very speedy return to the main menu, but you are given no warning whatsoever of this unique ability a single enemy in the game has. On the plus side, once you figure out what he's doing, it's very easy to [[AI Breaker|game the AI]] and turn it into a cakewalk.

* In ''[[Golden Sun]]'', some enemies can use Psyenergy, and generally have huge amounts of PP. Now, you have an ability called ''Bind'' that seals it off and a Djinn that can do the same thing, but this only stops attacks that start with the word ''casts'', and not with ones that start with ''used''. Not to mention that attacks that start with ''used'' are more frequent that ones that start with ''casts'' and aren't tied to PP. Did I mention that some enemies can seal off '''your''' PP and you have no abilities that can be used after that?

** At the same Tournament, the mechanics mean that the player must maintain a small range to use power attacks, wait several seconds between using them, and execute slow, ponderous turn after one of said attacks. The AI can execute pinpoint turns (on HORSES), to execute both attacks at the same time while outside of attack range and immediately stop to attack you again.

** The Faction Champions encounter of the actual Argent Tournament raid pits you against 6-10 randomly-assigned race/spec combo NPCs that typically adhere to a set of [[PvP]]-ish aggro rules (ignoring threat to focus-fire people with lower health/armor, etc.) While this would be fine on its own, to drive the point home, you are subject to the rapid diminishing returns on crowd-control spells typically employed in player encounters... and they are not. It's not uncommon to have such a spell last 2–3 seconds if its target hasn't already been rendered outright immune, while people on your side can be locked down for 30 seconds or more at a time by the enemy's spammage of the same skill.

** Mobs have a tendency to use moves that a player of their equivalent class can't use at that level. For instance, the naga mages in Blackfathom Deeps can use the spell Blizzard at around level 23 or 24. Player mages don't learn Blizzard until ''level 52''.

** Mobs can also be race-class combinations that are not available to players, for instance, the human shamans in Stranglethorn or the undead paladins found in certain areas in Lordaeron.

* The RPG ''[[Metal Hearts]]: Replicant Rampage'', is just this trope incarnate. When the player gets to the first part of civilisation they will note the following: By moving, the PCs will be penalised and completely lose their dodge bonus to range attacks, and when the guards are moving, the player will almost never hit. Small scorpions with poison at the start are easier to hit lying down from about 10 metres away with a handgun than point blank with a shotgun, SMG, or Sniper Rifle. Allies with firearms are less likely to hit than the players, but they tend to have weapons and gear that give bonuses to marksmanship, have the weapons strong enough to hurt evil guards. The players can't use those weapons due to stat requirements.

* Whilst technically not an RPG, the ''[[UFO]]'' series use RPG mechanics for pretty much everything in the first 2 games, ''UFO: Aftermath'' and ''UFO: Aftershock''. The computer cheats when it comes to pretty much anything explosive. Grenades in Aftermath are chancy but if the character's Throw skill is high enough it can clear entrenched hostiles, but the character is still going to be using the shotgun as the grenade throws fail in spectacular ways. Most often the player's soldiers will fumble the grenade and drop it under them, throw it behind them into the civilians being evacuated, overshoot the target by half the map, Lob onto a higher floor inside a building behind them, with no windows or doors on their side. This applies to rocket launchers, unless the user is in a heavy exo-skeleton, which is a waste as there are better Machine guns that can only be fired with those suits and don't run the risk of failing the mission by destroying the objective and entire team in one shot. In Aftershock, these effects are applied 2 at a time and also to rocket launchers and grenade launchers (Actually by adding an underbarrel grenadelauncher to any weapon the player will have corrupted the savegame their running, and also result in a more explosive fumble when the character drops it from a fricking launcher). Needless to say the aliens, mutants and cultists from the second are immune to this and can be reliably expected to incapacitate if not kill at least one character a shot.

** A dealer droid seen in the [[X Wing Series]] is mentioned having "cheater prods" that are used on, what else, cheating players. This may be more of an example of the Computer ''Stopping'' Cheating Bastards.

* In a season 3 episode of ''[[Lost]]'', Mikhail says that the computer cheats at chess.

*** Maybe the computer resigned, though this would be unusual for a computer. A checkmate would have been notated as Re1# (or maybe Re1++ ) instead of Re1+.

* This is part of the premise of Extra Mode in ''Phantasmagoria of Flower View'', the 9th game in the ''[[Touhou]]'' series. In Extra Mode, the AI opponent is invulnerable at the start of each stage, until a timer runs down to zero, with the timer getting longer in each successive stage. To compensate, it is also on an [[AI Roulette]] and extremely weak, so it will usually die within seconds of the timer running out.

** A common flaw in the ''Phantasmagoria'' installments is that the AI can literally dodge like the machine it is, meaning that barring the use of an [[AI Breaker]], a computer opponent can ''choose when to eat a bullet''.

** Can be inverted by the player, by refusing to start the race, walking onto the track and standing under one of the auto-boost star sitting above the track for 5 minutes, the auto boost effect stacks, and you can beat the race whiout ever doing a single trick. The ''Player'' Is A Cheating Bastard, indeed.

* In every [[Splinter Cell]] game, enemies alerted to your presence will ''never'' miss when firing at you with a pistol, even if the enemy in question is outside the range of the player's scoped rifle... Even if the enemy is far outside the range of the game's ''draw distance''. Oddly, they will occasionally miss if shooting with a rifle. Also, once enemies spot you they will never lose sight of you, even if you're in perfect blackness.

** CT-2 is very harsh. There's no offside, so if a goalie catch the ball you throw at him, he'll send it directly to an offside player that you can almost never catch up.

** [[MOTHER 1]] has this happen in [[Death Mountain|Mt. Itoi]]/[[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon Holy|Loly Mountains]]. There's a mook named Satania that, should it attack in threes, have a potential to cast [[HP to One|PK Freeze γ]] and another in the group that ''almost always'' attacks with PK Freeze Ω . You better hope Ninten and Ana don't perish from the area of effect attack, or you're pretty much screwed.

 

=== Simulation Games ===

 

 

** ... leading to {{spoiler|Megabyte-}}Bob encouraging Matrix to break the game rules when caught in a game parody of [[Pokémon]]/DragonBallZ and the user is clearly going to win. "You're a renegade! CHEAT!!!"

** ...and Matrix shooting the player from behind. In a miniature golf game.

* Cartoons often have games cheating to exaggerate how hard they are. Especially if they're coin-guzzling arcade machines.

* Teal'c encounters this trope in a season 8 episode of [[Stargate SG-1]]. He says a computer simulation is too easy and the computer takes him at his word. Hijinks ensue.

** Notably the computer cheats so blatantly and repeatedly that in the end they resolve the situation by doing what any self-respecting gamer would do: [[Good Bad Bugs|exploit a bug in the program]] to cheese the system, sending Daniel in to help while granting him tactical precogniton.

** The most hilarious (and by that we mean ''cringe inducing'') is the player having his ''blackjack'' beaten by the dealer's ''soft 17.''

* Sometimes in the [[Blood Bowl]] computer game, the AI does something no sane human would do (e.g, a hand-off and pass with dwarves past a high-agility intercepter, ''while'' it's possible to score another way'') and succeeds. Although the nature of [[Blood Bowl]] mechanics is such that actually succeeding on just about anything is certainly possible, especially with re-rolls, the computer seems to succeed almost every time it tries something so unlikely that only the most desperate human would dismiss the possibility out of hand. Furthermore, frequently the AI has set up so it can attempt this but then doesn't even try, so it's not like the AI has some bizarre preference for high-risk moves. The sequence of dice rolls in any given game is set before it begins, so the most likely explanation for the computer's overall behavior is that it consults the list of rolls then randomly decides whether to exploit that knowledge or to calculate odds like it doesn't have access.

** The most blatant use of this trope: Hostile planes in ''[[Ace Combat 5 The Unsung War]]'' can '''fly through the goddamn ground'''. It's rare, though.

* Similarly, AI planes in ''[[Tom Clancy]]'s HAWX'' can accelerate and maneuver at speeds that should be not only pasting the pilots but breaking the planes apart; they can instantly change direction 90 degrees or more if they're supposed to be fighting you, and your allies will instantly go to full speed when you give them an attack order.

* In ''[[Madden NFL]]'', the AI on higher difficulties will know exactly what play you called and respond accordingly. If you audible back and forth between run and pass plays, you can watch the defense react to them even though none of your players moved. And this happens early in the game, long before they could figure out a tell. Similarly, the AI can audbile into, out of, and within the Wildcat formation, which the player cannot do for Game Balance reasons. There are many, mnay more examples.

 

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Robot Roll Call]]

[[Category:Index]]