Zerg Rush/Video Games: Difference between revisions

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* Named for the Zerg in ''[[Starcraft]]'', whose main tactic is pretty much this in a nutshell -- overwhelming numbers of cheap, disposable troops. ([[Memetic Mutation]] follows usage of this term with "Kekeke", the Korean equivalent of "hahaha.") Though as mentioned above, the meaning of the name in [[Starcraft]] multiplayer is rather different than the above description. In single player, the trope holds true for the Zerg.

** Before the patch, some Alliance players built a town hall in front of the enemy town, and then swarm the enemy with an endless stream of militia.

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' has this with [[The Heartless]]. The [[The War Sequence|section in the second game]] where you have to fight off one thousand [[Mooks]] springs to mind.

* ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]''. Any enemy faction against the player character.

* Zerg Rushing is fairly common in ''[[Nintendo Wars]]'', including the classic "Mech Rush" tactic and its infantry-and-artillery variant in the AW2 and AW:DS era. Even in situations where foot soldiers are ineffective, it is usually wise to deploy multiple cheap units rather than fewer, stronger ones (copters instead of bombers is a prime example).

** One of the missions in the Crystalline Prophecy expansion involves 30 mandragoras attacking you in waves of about 5 or 6 each. They're comically weak and take an enhanced amount of damage, so it's part zerg rush and part whack-a-mole as the mandragoras die in one hit each.

*** However, if you leave these enemies alone long enough they can Zerg Rush ''you'' by performing a move that takes nearly all of their HP and turns it into about 300ish damage. This attack can be used by the entire crowd in quick succession if you let them, which results in a near-instant and humiliating death on the player's part.

* As fitting for a Blizzard game, ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' also has the zerg rush as an encounter in the Zul'Farrak instance.

** Many instances feature large packs of weak enemies that have to be killed by area of effect-attacks or they simply owerwhelm the players. Particularly notable are the ones like the boss encounter in Zul'Farrak where the enemies just spawn when an event is triggered and immdediately attack the players.

* Trying to [[Zerg Rush]] in ''[[Age of Wonders]] II'' against the CPU opponents is not typically a good idea as the CPU will try to keep construction pace with your own army size. Additionally, the size and strength of the opposing force units is a major factor in the CPU determining what kind of threat and response level it will assume but it focuses heavily on quantity.

** Generally the CPU will reliably fund three or four full stacks of units that stay together and defend its territory based around a Hero unit if given the chance to assemble the forces. This army descending upon you from out the [[Fog of War]] can be quite off-putting.

* ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]'': the AI has a soft spot for swarms of fighters and frigates. This tends to work well right up until the largest size of vehicle comes into play, at which point the path from [insert your homeworld] to [insert enemy homeworld] becomes littered with the husks of burning ships.

* The ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' megamod ''v1.13'' (named after the last official patch being 1.12) by default enables the "Drassen counterattack": if the player's team of mercs, I.M.P. characters (one-time-paid) and/or indigenous recruits take all three sectors of the city of Drassen, a cutscene plays which concludes with the Queen ordering an all-out attack to take the city, since it has both a valuable mine and an airport. In vanilla gameplay or with the option disabled fortunately she doesn't especially besiege the city although she may send several patrols to harass the town, but with the option enabled (as v1.13 by default does), she will instead mass them together -- often at least sixty individual soldiers -- for a simultaneous attack on what's usually three to five tired mercs without prep time and possibly a smattering of militia.

** The game's combat being limited to twenty individual enemy soldiers in-sector at once means that the player's mercs/recruits and militia will only be facing twenty simultaneously, but that simply means that those first two soldiers are ''continually'' replaced with every death, as are their replacements.

* [[Terraria]]'s goblin army works like this. They're fairly weak, but there's at least a hundred of them every time they attack. They're quite difficult when they first appear, afterwards they're a joke. The [[Christmas Mode|Frost Legion]] works similarly, but they're a LOT tougher.

* [[Mega Man Star Force]] 3 has a multi-part minigame in which you try to fend off hundreds of cheap Omega-Xis clones for a certain amount of time. The mechanic is repeated during the endgame, but that's not a Zerg Rush so much as getting rid of random projectiles.

* Pokémon Rumble Blast, in one of the types of battle, has you send all your Toy Pokémon (including the one you sent out) to take out a army of Toy Pokémon. Another one has you fight a bunch of Toy Pokémon trying to defeat your 3 Toy Pokémon and defeat the boss.

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[[Category:Video Games]]