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The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Difference between revisions
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Sometimes this is justified due to the [[Rule of Fun]]. Computers are often prevented from using certain tactics that are open to the player, either [[Scrub|because it's "cheap" when your enemies do it]] or [[Artificial Stupidity|there's no freaking way that a computer could manage to pull it off at a crucial moment]]. In order to make up the gap and still present a challenge, cheating is required. Ironically, players often think the AI is cheating when it isn't, such as strings of [[You Fail Statistics Forever|good luck from a RNG that is actually perfectly fair]], while not noticing at all the subtle and behind-the-scenes ways that the computer is ''actually'' cheating. In fact, some games deliberately manipulate the RNG in the player's favour just to avoid the appearance of cheating.
See also: [[Fake Difficulty]], [[Rubber Band AI]], [[Nintendo Hard]], [[Random Number God]], [[Computers Are Fast]], [[Gang Up
''Note: Since [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]] is so ''incredibly'' common, only [[Egregious]] examples should be listed below, otherwise this entry would take over the entire wiki. Aversions or subversions should probably be left out as well, since that's (hopefully) the default.''
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* [[Contractual Boss Immunity]] <br />Any overpowered or instant-death skill will be useless on big bosses.
* [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules]] <br />Where the AI players break the explicitly laid-out rules of the game.
* [[Not Playing Fair
* [[Rules Are for Humans]] <br />In a computer adaptation of an existing game (e.g. chess), the AI may have the ability to pull off moves which are against the rules of the game.
* [[Secret AI Moves]] <br />Where a character (generally in a [[Fighting Game]]) has some crazy move when played by the computer which human players can't do.
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{{quote| Note: These are ''generic'' examples. They give ways the [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]] trope manifests, not specific instances in specific games. See the "Specific Examples" section further down for case studies.}}
* In [[Real Time Strategy]] and [[Turn
** ... builds faster, or just has new units magically appear out of nowhere.
** ... [[Not Playing Fair
** ... has [[Computers Are Fast|effectively infinite cursors]], and can command all of its subjects at once.
** ... can [[The All-Seeing AI|always see the entire map]], and is not affected by the [[Fog of War]].
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** ... can see through obstacles/cover of any kind.
** ... works in a hive mind.
** ... [[Gang Up
** ... has grenades which roll towards you like heat-seeking missiles, while yours avoid foes as if magnetically deflected.
** ... is [[Friendly Fireproof]], even when you're not.
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* In the ''[[Civilization]]'' sequels, the game manual actually details exactly how much the computer cheats and in what areas at various difficulty levels.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI Here] is a video that explains the AI cheating of Civilization 3 and 4 in more depth (25 minutes in), as well as the reasons they were designed that way.
*** There's also an example of [[Hoist
** You can't see strategic resources on the map in Civ 3 until you have the skills to use them. The AI can see them all right from the start of the game though, and will make an effort to build cities next to them to give itself an advantage later on.
*** Often, the AI will have building towns in the middle of the desert for oil as a very important priority during the expansion phase.
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== Mario Kart ==
* [[Mario Kart]] 7 is the biggest offender yet (Which is saying a lot honestly). There was an exploit that has been discovered in the Maka Wuhu track that allows you to skip one section of the track. Pull it off, and the CPU pack is no less than 5 seconds behind you when you are ferried onto the upper section of the course, rendering the entire exploit moot in 1-player mode.
* In ''[[
* In Mario Kart: Super Circuit, whichever AI racer has the most cup points at the time will get their special powerups more often. Luigi and Bowser will always start with "champion" level skills, but if you attack them and cause them to lose to other AI racers, the new points leader among AI will take up the "champion" mantle instead. If Yoshi or Mario get this points lead, they'll start to spam consecutive Super Stars from nowhere and finish races 5 seconds ahead of the rest of the pack. Conversely, since poor AI Wario always starts in the back of the pack, he's rarely seen using items at all and is doomed to finish last every race.
* Another ability the computers have in ''[[
* Choco Mountain. The final part of the track involves a few item crates, a 90 degree turn, and then three "hills". You better be lucky and get a mushroom from those crates, else once you jump from the first hill, you'll collide with the second and third ones, while the CPUs that are right behind you (thank you rubber-band AI) magically have enough speed to jump both. Not getting a mushroom in those crates indeed makes the difference between being first or fifth in this race.
* Apparently, the computer player chosen to be the first-placer in Mario Kart DS always has a maxed-out speed stat, regardless of what the kart they're driving should have. This makes characters that drive karts with already high acceleration {{spoiler|(Dry Bones)}} nearly impossible to beat. This may be because the designated top 3 are given boosts in top speed with the first placer given the biggest boost. If it happens to be a kart with high acceleration, your only chance of winning is to snake, simply put. <br />CPUs in Mario Kart DS will also move back into place if another kart knocks them away in midair.
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** In Street Fighter: The Movie (the game of the movie of the game), when fighting M. Bison at the end, there was a fairly high chance that if the player was winning, Bison would stop taking damage from player attacks, or insta-kill the player with a weak attack, or the player would take damage from his own attacks.
** Another from Street Fighter II: AI opponents could deliver a barrage of crouching kicks at lightning speed. Fortunately for the player, the AI will usually only connect once, which sends the player's fighter flying away from the opponent.
** Hyper M.Bison of ''[[Street Fighter Alpha
* In the ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' arcade series, the computer player often blatantly cheats.
** In the original ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', computer characters ''ducked and slowly slid across the floor'' to counter a barrage of player fireballs.
** Here are some gems for ''[[
*** On ''any'' match after the first few, you cannot throw the computer unless it's stunned or immobilized. It would ''always'' throw you instead. In early revisions, it would even throw you when ''it'' was incapacitated. You could freeze the CPU solid with your ice ball, but if you tried to throw it, it would throw you back '''''while still looking frozen'''''. An opponent dazed for "[[Finish Him!]]?" If you accidentally did a throw, he'd ''still'' throw you back. And if that took you to no life, ''you'd lose''. Absolutely hilarious, unless you are the one it happened to.
*** Whenever you did Scorpion's screen side shifting teleport, the computer would turn around and send a projectile your way... before you even left your side of the screen. Humans can't do this, but actually have to wait for you to wrap around before they turn around. However, if your screen wrapping teleport failed because you were backed into the corner...it would ''still'' turn around and fire the other way! Unless you were playing against a character with a really fast projectile recovery, this resulted in you getting a free chance to harpoon the computer. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
*** Also, Heaven forbid your feet leave the ground. You want to jump forward? They ''will'' jump kick you out of the air. You want to jump back? Prepare to eat a projectile. (Though those who could warp attack like Smoke and Scorpion could jump back, cancel into the warp and smack the computer silly when they inevitably fireballed).
** In ''[[
** 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.
** Onaga is notorious for this in the final boss fight of [[Mortal Kombat Deception
** ''[[
*** 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!
* ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' games have the bad habit of allowing the computer controlled opponent to recover or receive random power-ups in a duel...where there is no feasible manner in which they could have obtained these items, as there are no boxes or dead enemy soldiers in duel mode.
* ''[[
* [[Soul Series]] has their moments of blatant cheating, but ''[[Soul Calibur]] III'' has the most notorious examples.
** The AI will suddenly block every throw, land their throws on your character despite being theoretically out of range, block or counter every move the player has used so far in the "set" of battles (even if the CPU character's back is turned, and it's ''not Voldo''!). Read: ''The computer opponent will read your controller inputs. Every. Single. Time.''
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* [[Battle Capacity]] had major issues with Pyroak in the past. Pyroak has a lot of HP, excellent projecile attacks, and a useful anti-air attack which comes out quick at adjustable heights. He is slow, however, and suffers against most characters close up. When the AI was using Pyroak, there was literally ''no'' slowdown between launching projectiles and using his anti-air, making him all but unapproachable.
* This one is easy to miss, since you usually fight against human opponents in [[Rumble Fighter]]. However, in Survival Mode, the enemies can use the [[Desperation Attack|Panic Attack]] an unlimited number of times, whereas players are limited to using it once per round.
* ''[[X
* [[Smackdown vs. Raw]], particularly when the [[Rubber Band AI]] breaks. The CPU will become a [[Perfect Play AI]] who [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules|ignores the rules]].
** In WWE 12 at least, and probably earlier games as well, it seems like matches are predetermined. If the player is meant to lose then counters are ignored to the point that blatant cheating will occur. If the CPU is slated to lose on the other hand then the game is a cheating bastard for the human character, with the computer all but lying down for the pin, and you really have to work to even drag a match out of them.
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* Up until ''Vegas'', ''[[Rainbow Six]]'' seemed quite unfair in that the AI could somehow detect you even if you couldn't figure out where it was. And a major problem with the first games was that being spotted once, even if the guy didn't alert his comrades, meant [[The All-Seeing AI|everyone knew where you were]].
* 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 ''[[
== Puzzle/Board Games ==
* Most versions of electronic Monopoly will use this as a fake difficulty depending on what the ai difficulty is set at, most Monopoly games are meant to have smarter AI that makes better investment decisions when the AI is increased but most also increase the [[A Is]] luck when rolling and getting chance cards. As a result it's not uncommon for the AI to never get a negative card during the game and always skip past human players properties, but the harder the AI is set at the more likely it is that the computer will sabotage human dice rolls and make sure the human lands on tax or high value owned property turn after turn.
* A certain [[
* All ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' games have a list of restricted cards, just like the real card game, and usualy matching the official one when said videogame came out. But computer opponents were not bound by it. The computer could have 3 copies of [[Game Breaker]] cards that you were only allowed to have one of (many of which would later be outright banned with the introduction of the real-life game's "Advanced" format used in official tournaments). This was probably to make up for AI [[Artificial Stupidity|so stupid]] that it often seemed like it was ''trying'' to lose.
** In ''Tag Force 3'', F.G.D. and all other dragons on its side of the field deal piercing damage (Their Atk - the target's Def) when they destroy a defense position monster, and no trap or spell cards can be activated when F.G.D. attacks, unless you're the one controlling it...
** And the trend has continued in Duel Transer, the game will always follow the March 2010 Banlist even if you change it to the September 2010 Banlist. Sure, you'll be able to use Dark Hole and Monster Reborn when your opponents can't, but they get Heavy Storm, Brain Control, Rescue Cat, and Substitoad in exchange. Oh did we forget to mention the post-game content where the game doesn't even hide that it's cheating. Multiple Pot of Greeds, Graceful Charities, Harpies Feather Dusters and RAIGEKI's abound
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*** One other place where you'll see cheating (or just really, really good planning) is in the Limitation duel against Joey. In this duel, trap cards are banned, and almost all of the monsters he has in his deck have at least 1900 ATK. So you summon Gora Turtle, which prevents anything with 1900 or more ATK from attacking. Within two turns of summoning this, guaranteed, he'll summon Spell Canceler, the only monster he has with less than 1900, and it still has 1800. It's also a card he never uses in any other duel.
* Even old handheld toys based on game shows like ''[[Wheel of Fortune]]'' and ''[[The Price Is Right]]'' had the computer cheat. If the game was based on luck, you would be screwed over quite often. If you went against a computer opponent, they would always know the answer to the questions very early in the rounds or simply be much luckier than you.
* In [[Yakuman]] DS, a [[Mahjong]] game from the same people at Nintendo who make the [[
* In ''[[
** The computer can rotate the ball shooter ''off the top of the screen'' to make shots. No joke.
* This is the whole point of [http://blahg.res0l.net/2009/01/bastet-bastard-tetris/ Bastet], a ''[[
* In the NES game ''Anticipation'', computer controlled opponents can guess the string's length of letters and can screw up as many times as there are letters in the word(s) while humans only get two chances to guess a letter before their turn is over. On the hardest difficulty, the opponents buzz in the instant the die shows the number of spaces they want to move and can guess the answer correctly without even knowing what the category is, how long the word is, or even before anything is actually drawn.
* In the Dokapon game for DS you can the computer will get the exact roll it needs 99% of the time.
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** That isn't all. All the bosses would have an unlimited ammount of weapons after passing through the first crate. (Or "Passing by" the first crate area, if you jump ahead and take the crate they would, they would still get the items even if they didn't break a weapon crate.) The only advantage is that they would only use one weapon type and would always fire behind them. The Final Boss uses weapon types of every other boss in the game!
* Abused to a bizarre end in the Super Nintendo game ''Super Off-Road: The Baja''. Each and every one of your competitors had their own preferred place in the lineup, and Heaven forbid you should attempt to take that place from them. For example: Should you take third place from the AI driver who typically came in third, he would become a super driver fueled by rage; he would gain speed, cut corners, ram your truck mercilessly, and pretty much suddenly become the Uberdriver in his efforts to dislodge you from third place. Once you dropped back to fourth place, though, that driver would return to normal, and never challenge Mr. Number Two for HIS place. (Of course, then Mr. Fourth Place would have ''his'' turn at harassing you.) Coupled with the tendency for the AI in first place to absolutely obliterate you should you dare violate his sacred position AND stage last-minute comebacks at speeds approaching those of a low-flying jet fighter, winning any race at any difficulty level became far more based on luck (and your ability to keep from being rammed into oblivion) than skill.
* ''[[
** ''Wipeout Pure'' is guilty of rubberbanding, starting the player in last place in every race and of unlimited item use - in the first lap of every race, every NPC racer gets unlimited turbo boosts, making a first place after the first lap a matter of pure luck in obtaining a Quake weapon in the first two or three weapon pads. Even if you do, you still have to contend with turbo boost-powered rubberbanding...
** ''Wipeout 3'' is nice enough to prevent the AI from even getting the two most powerful weapons available. Somewhat justified in that said weapons are extremely destructive, one of which is an instant kill. Given some thought, thank everything holy and sacred the AI can't get that. It would be too much, as instead of rubberband AI, they just have god-like skills all the time.
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** The same is also true in all other games in the Carmageddon series. ''However'', the computer cars cannot make use of their "no clipping" cheat-ability when the player has the main map-screen up; their location is always shown and they move much more player-like.
* ''Cel Damage'''s AI players can make sharper turns than the human player. This can be seen when the player is killed, and for the brief seconds until the respawn, the computer player (most likely the assassin) can make some incredible curves, even while standing on the same place.
* ''[[
** Try this (At least on the PC version): Play Test Drive 5 and use the "nitro boost" cheat, race on a track with a lot of straight roads so you can boost your top speed way past logical top speed like on the Sydney track, and take a look at the racer stats at the end of the race. If you've logged a top speed of around 400mph, then the AI will log a top speed of around 800mph just to keep up with you. Granted you would be cheating yourself in the first place, this is still an amusing way to prove the audacity of the rubber band AI under magnified proportions. And also shows you can't cheat a cheating opponent since it will just cheat more anyway.
* [[Midnight Club]] 3 seems to be malevolent and benevolent at the exact same time. In races, your opponents are always in better cars unless you have an A tier car(to the point that races can play out with you in a D tier and your opponent in a B tier BEFORE you've completely upgraded it.), you're opponents always have more nitrous shots than you (or in the case of bikes, HAVE nitrous shots.), and, somehow, obey the copenhagen interpretation, because even if you overlapped a car, if you are not watching him on the minimap, he will warp right behind you and be able to put you back into second place. However, you can outrun them on straight-aways, they cannot use slipstream turbo, and cannot use any special abilities.
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** Made even worse when you're on the Lunar Base, where practically ''every'' card rule is in effect.
*** There is a way to limit the ruleset, involving initiating and then canceling card games until your opponent offers to play by a different set of rules. Do it enough, and you'll spread favorable rules from earlier in the game to a new area. However, it took a disassembler to find the mechanics of this, making it something of a [[Guide Dang It]].
** The ever-hated Random rule. [[Exactly What It Says
* The big battle at the end of ''Tales of the Sword Coast'' (the expansion for the first ''[[
** Various NPCs have stats that should not be physically possible within their class. For example, Minsc's wisdom is too low. His case is justified in-story, however; Minsc is described as having gone insane following a head wound. Several characters suggest to him he get restorative magics for it. [[Story and Gameplay Segregation|Don't ask us why the head injury never goes away despite how many Heal spells you throw at him]].
** From ''Baldur's Gate II'' and onwards, all high-level mages (and there are a lot of these) get something called a 'tattoo of power', which is a spell trigger that can activate any number of defensive spells instantly and without any action from the user and stacks on top of existing spell triggers and contingencies. Oh, wait, did I say 'all mages'? Silly me, I meant 'every mage except you and the ones you can have in your party'.
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** In ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' your previously [[Bottomless Magazines]] became [[Forgotten Phlebotinum]] and you now need ammo for your guns. But nobody told the AI, so it still has infinite ammo. Luckily, so do your squadmates.
** This trope is hilariously invoked in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. Legion's online gaming profile indicates it has been hit with multiple infractions because it was so skilled the game designers thought it was cheating. While it later challenged and overturned those relating to superior micro-management, reaction time, and tactics, it accepted a suspension for taunting its inferior human opponents during an event.
* Surprisingly enough, ''[[
** This becomes especially critical in the final fight, in which the only way to get the "True Ending" is for elements, either yours or your enemy's, to be cast in a certain order. Invariably, the AI will cast an element to mess up your order if you try this on your own without doing it the "proper" way of using your opponent against himself. Players who don't figure out the somewhat obscure system of how to get past this will never be able to get the "True Ending", and it is never explained at any point during the game.
*** 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 ''[[
* In ''[[
** 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.
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** They also micromanage their trim and engine settings much faster and more precisely than a human can possibly manage and can outclimb aircraft that normally climb much faster than their own.
* The "enhancements" to the Sentinel remake ''Zenith'' include fog, which can be so thick as to make it difficult or impossible for the player to see what's happening; the game can be totally unplayable because of this. Of course, the Sentinel and any Sentries are totally unaffected by even the densest fog...
* The [[
* [[White Knight Chronicles]] gives players strictly set ranges for melee weapons, bows, and spells. Get outside the range, and you can't use that attack. The computer characters, using the same attacks, have no such limits.
* In ''[[Persona 3]]'' the computer cheats ''in your favor'', which is quite welcome [[Nintendo Hard|given the kind of game it is.]] Most bosses are immune to [[Enemy Scan|Fuuka's scans]]. However, even if the scan shows the player nothing, scanning will still cause the CPU to [[The All-Seeing AI|whisper in your teammates' ears]] to make sure they don't use attacks that will reflect or heal the enemy.
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'', you have to beat Ingo in a horse race in order to get a horse. Thing is, while the player is limited in the number of times he can whip the horse to increase its speed, Ingo can beat his horse mercilessly and effectively maintain top speed throughout the race.
** This may be justified when you remember Malon saying that Ingo treats the horses very badly, something Link would presumably restrain himself from doing.
** Because his actual purpose was [[Dummied Out]], the "Running Man" in Hyrule Field always beats you by at least 1 second, even if you use cheats to finish instantly.
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* Tecmo's ''[[Captain Tsubasa]]'' is [[Nintendo Hard]] because your oppernents have infinite Gut, meaning they can keep spamming special moves while you're struggling with saving your bests of an offensive tactic. Their overall stats overpower your, and their [[The Ace|aces]] usually have superior shooting power that it doesn't really matter if your team has a goalie. Even when you have the famous [[Red Baron|SGGK]] Wakabayashi, some really powerful strikers can still easily blow him away. Characters that used to be powerful like Matsuyama and Tachibana Twin, by the time you get them in your team, can barely get their shots past a keeper.
** 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.
** [[
== Simulation Games ==
* In the ''[[X (
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* Cartoons often have games cheating to exaggerate how hard they are. Especially if they're coin-guzzling arcade machines.
** In [[The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]] when Grim complains about a game his is playing cheating, the character actually calls him a wimp and shoots his score, resetting it to zero.
* Teal'c encounters this trope in a season 8 episode of [[Stargate SG
** 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 Doujin game Mikuman which is a parody of Mega Man. Rin faces against the boss of the second stage, {{spoiler|Mario}}, who literally cheats, by using SAVE STATES each times you hit him. In truth, [[Hopeless Boss Fight|you are supposed to lose]], until Miku saves you.
* And of course, there would be the time when the computer is on the recieving end of a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] and decide to just blatently cheat by freezing, glitching and crashing the game. Not even Michael Jordan is that sore a loser.
* [[A Nightmare
* [[Wii Sports]]- usually changing the path of the object in question, Baseball has to be one of the worst offenders. How do you get a foul ''more than 20 times‽''
* In Anti-Idle: The Game, the Stadium part of the game, the AI opponents will not only accelerate in growth much faster than you can but can also go over the cap allowed for stats. Trying to beat an opponent with a top speed you can't even approach is frustrating.
* So you are playing the poker mini-game in ''[[
* Infamously, [[Metal Gear]]:Solid had Psycho Mantis, an in-game example of [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]] who not only reads your button input to perfectly dodge attacks, but also reads ''your memory card'' in order to mock you. To defeat him you have to move your controller to the second port, which bypasses his "psychic" powers. Being a [[No Fourth Wall]] series, if you attempt this same trick the second time you meet him he mocks you for trying the same old trick.
* [[Call of Duty: Black Ops]]' combat training bots. They can SNIPE you with a smg before you can even pull up your scope, and If you watch the killcam, they ADS and aim in for you. When you're behind a solid concrete wall. And the INSTANT you walk around they mercilessly gun you down.
* FIFA 07: If you're needing a goal in the last twenty minutes or so of play on a decent difficulty, it is virtually impossible to tackle the opponent, or to string together two half-decent passes. You're also much more susceptible to concede goals from nowhere, from players who usually wouldn't dare shoot in normal play.
* The classic Commodore 64 baseball game Hardball was virtually impossible to strike out in later innings as the AI would never swing at anything outside of the strike zone and would hit practically anything inside, racking up singles and doubles with ease.
* An enemy Navi in ''[[Mega Man Battle Network
* Played straight and lampshaded in ''[[Tron
{{quote| ''Sam Flynn'' (failing to duplicate his disk just like the AI): Aw come on, is that even legal?}}
* On space maps in ''[[Star Wars Battlefront|Battlefront 2]]'', computer-controlled fighters with fixed-forward weapons actually have about a 90-degree fire arc. Also, sometimes your own auto-turrets will kill you.
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** 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 ''[[
* A european sci-fi comic played an interesting inversion. The hero and his friends are trapped aboard a ship where the AI in charge decides to kill them all by cutting off the oxygen supply but offering the hero a chance to earn both air and freedom by beating him at chess. Stuck and on the verge of losing, ''the human cheats:'' he claims that the AI's last move is against some obscure medieval chess rule that he just made up, and thus that the AI has forfeited. They are all released, but the AI is last seen fulminating and grumbling that [[Madness Mantra|"nobody cheats against me... nobody cheats against me..."]]
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* Many video slot machines are programmed with weighted reels, so that some stops are more common than others. This is virtually always used to make "near misses" happen many, MANY times more often than an actual win, in order to make the player think he's close to winning and continue playing. For example, the [http://wizardofodds.com/slots "Red White Blue"] slot machine pays out the jackpot for hitting a red 7, a white 7, and a blue 7, from left to right. But for one configuration, each reel only has a 1/64 chance of hitting the properly-colored 7, a 3/64 chance of hitting the blank right above it, and a 3/64 chance of hitting the blank right below it - which means the proper combination is 27 times more likely to line up just above the pay line than it is to be actually hit, as well as 27 times more likely to line up just below the pay line. (And this is a milder case; it's not uncommon to make the adjacent blanks each the legal maximum of 6 times more likely than the jackpot space.) In addition, the white and blue 7's are 6-7 times more likely to show up in each of the other reels - red-blue-white is 49 times more likely to be hit than red-white-blue, and blue-red-white is 126 times more likely.<ref>Note that the law requires reels to be independent, so the odds of the blue 7 hitting on the third reel, for example, must be the same regardless of what symbols hit on the first two reels. However, it's legal to simply make the blue 7 common on reel 2 and rare on reel 3, and the white 7 common on reel 3 and rare on reel 2, which is how the game achieves these near misses.</ref>
* Japanese pachisuro (a.k.a. pachi-slot) machines spin until the player manually stops the reels, attempting to time the button presses to line up a winning combination. However, the machine is legally allowed to skip up to 4 symbols after each button press before stopping the reel; this is most frequently done to make the third reel skip past a winning combination. (The slot machines in ''[[Pokémon]]'' also do this, since they're based off pachisuro as opposed to Western slot machines.)
* Many argue that having [[Computers Are Fast|lightning reflexes]] when it came to buzzing in is how IBM supercomputer ''Watson'' managed to completely curbstomp ''[[Jeopardy
* A particularly glaring example would be the casino game tournaments in the otherwise above-average Hoyle Casino 2011 PC game. While the human player sits at third base, the human must always place bets prior to the AI bots at seats 1, 2, and 4 deciding how much they are willing to stake. You can change your bet amount, but the bots will then do the same. In real tournaments, you're at least given the option of making a secret bet by writing down your bet amount and handing it to the dealers, to prevent other players from basing their betting on how much you stand to win or lose. This option does not exist in Hoyle Casino because, frankly, of this trope.
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