Best common enemy from any game?

I'd like to talk about common enemies, which means moving and AI-controlled enemies commonly confronted with the player in a given computer game. Not bosses, minibosses, main villains and NPCs, not enemies that are both static and attack-less, and not PLAYERS. (that would be too easy)

I'd also like to talk about the best ones. Not the most frequent ones, or most overused ones, or most unusual or unique ones. Best generally means fun to fight against, well designed from various perspectives (gameplay, theme, visuals, sounds), and well memorable.

All and any computer games that have common enemies can be considered: 2D, 3D, action, strategy, even some logic games use enemies, whatever.

Which common enemy do you consider the best from any game and ever?


I nominate the Archvile from Doom 2. He's memorable for his unique attack mechanic and the whole interesting gameplay dynamic he makes, and he's threatening and menacing not only from the gameplay perspective, but also by his looks and sounds.

Post your thoughts and suggestions!

Would the Orcs from Shadow of Mordor be cheating?

Storm Troopers from the various Star Wars games, maybe even also including the Sith Troopers from KotOR.

FEAR's clone soldier. Satisfying to shoot at, versatile in their strategies.

Not sure if this counts but Ozma from "Final Fantasy 9". It's a single superboss but he was so hard the first time I kept re-entering battle with him many times. Took a while till' I finally took him down. I'm kind of surprised he isn't more talked about, including FFIX itself.

Phml said:

FEAR's clone soldier. Satisfying to shoot at, versatile in their strategies.

Yes, they have great AI. Also the marines from Half Life and the special forces commandos from the expansion!

Those awesome clashes between the player and his marine squad versus those commandos .... unbelievable action and tension!

Games' AI has not really progressed from that.

Captain Red said:

Would the Orcs from Shadow of Mordor be cheating?

Why would they be? I've watched a couple videos from the game, they seem legit. They can be considered 1 enemy type, because they're all similar looking, similarly behaving brawlers, or aren't they?

The houndeyes from Half-life are very well programmed :
Taking Naps from time to time in some situations

Curios for some objects

Sonic Attacks has different damage strength, in some situations

scifista42 said:

Why would they be? I've watched a couple videos from the game, they seem legit. They can be considered 1 enemy type, because they're all similar looking, similarly behaving brawlers, or aren't they?

It's because the much praised nemesis system makes them all potentially minibosses. If a lowly grunt manages to land a killing blow on the player they get a name, a title and a set of strengths and weaknesses and the player has to put a bit of strategy into taking them down next time they cross paths. Fun as heck, but possibly out of the parameters of this thread. Mind you the nemesis system isn't the only reason the Orcs are so darn lovable in that game.

All of the Hard Head regular enemies.

Vortigaunt as you can see, it was a little bit harder in earlier versions of game (When chumtoad existed >_<) It was able to resurrect other vortigaunts,this feature was restored by Svencoop team and still exists in SC v4.8 ..

Honestly? The basic Doom zombie. Whenever I think Doom I think of them. They are just fun to mow down and they have the most iconic death scream of any video game enemy ever.

Siths in the Jedi Knight games were pretty cool, many fights with them felt like serious business and gave me some trouble.

Some basic infantry in the old C&C and Red Alert games would explode violently on death, like the flamethrower guys and possibly the grenadiers in C&C1 IIRC. It's always extra fun targeting them first in a group of enemy infantry.

hardcore_gamer said:

Honestly? The basic Doom zombie. Whenever I think Doom I think of them. They are just fun to mow down and they have the most iconic death scream of any video game enemy ever.

Lining zombies up to get as many kills as you can with one shotgun blast turns into a fun kind of metagame.

Even though they're also the most frequently encountered, the basic Zombie in early RE titles is what I consider to be the 'best common enemy'. They're slow, they're stupid, they're vulnerable to being one-shotted by anything more powerful than a basic handgun, and they're fairly easy to bait and (literally) run rings around to avoid if ammo is a concern... but getting too cocky and overconfident around a handful of them can result in a painful mauling, particularly in the original game. There's also something just unquestionably satisfying about the various opportunities presented when it comes to wasting these rotten sacks of fodder with your increasingly destructive firepower as a game progresses; from expending 4-6 low-damage handgun bullets to just callously blowing the bastards up with a grenade launcher, I'll always stop to put them out of their misery for my own entertainment.

GeckoYamori said:

Some basic infantry in the old C&C and Red Alert games would explode violently on death, like the flamethrower guys and possibly the grenadiers in C&C1 IIRC.

Grenadiers were/are notorious for being extremely volatile on death in early C&C games; the AI generally seemed to far more often avoid the catastrophic chain-reaction that players frequently suffered whenever a group of these infantry were utilised.

Flamethrowers were/are even worse!

scifista42 said:

I nominate the Archvile from Doom 2. He's memorable for his unique attack mechanic and the whole interesting gameplay dynamic he makes, and he's threatening and menacing not only from the gameplay perspective, but also by his looks and sounds.

I was with your post right up until that point. I find the archie a horrible, unfun, map-spoiling annoyance most of the time. Very often, when finding one on a map, it gives me a sudden and significant dip in how much I'm enjoying playing it. Often, it's enough to make me quite or dive for the button I have bound to the ZDoom cheat MDK (which kills whatever the crosshair is pointing at) precisely for the purpose of getting rid of map-spoiling archies.

Archviles can be used well and they can be good fun to play against but, for me, more often than not they ruin a map. I guess that's as much to do with mappers than the monster itself but, in my mind, archviles are inseparably linked with that horrible feeling of sudden disappointment in an up-to-that-moment fun map.

The headless kamikaze. No other game enemy has caused me to hear their voices.. after stopping playing. Also it was fun to gather them into a group, then kill one and they all go BOOM!

Volge from Defiance, they make for some intense incursions.

@GeckoYamori: No no no, you have it wrong. It's much more fun to line up a bunch of zombies and fire a rocket and see how many you can gib :D

Quake reaperbot:
http://www.quakewiki.net/quake-1-bots/

They're fast, accurate, and relentless. I used to spawn a handful of them when I couldn't find a populated server with decent ping (250-300 ms was the best I could expect from my 28.8K modem). It was most hilarious when they screwed up and fell in lava. But mostly they were kicking ass constantly.

Enjay said:

Archviles can be used well and they can be good fun to play against but, for me, more often than not they ruin a map. I guess that's as much to do with mappers than the monster itself but, in my mind, archviles are inseparably linked with that horrible feeling of sudden disappointment in an up-to-that-moment fun map.

It doesn't help that they often shove the poor guy at the very end of the map, sometimes quite literally in the exit room.


One of my favs are those assassins in Nuclear Throne. They are melee enemies that run at you and try to whack you with a pipe or whatever. Unlike the other melee enemies, they do burst damage (and a lot of it) in a big swipe, like how you do melee weapons. They are also faster than you, so you need to do something before they reach you and swipe. They can also 'play dead' while inactive, looking like a dead assassin.

Obsidian said:

http://files.gamebanana.com/img/ico/sprays/buddy1_257.png

I liked the psychos but only when they were in the first game, the quotes they have are so lame in the second game.

Maybe it's just nostalgia talking but I swear the basic Perfect Dark guards still have some of the best human AI I've seen in a game. GoldenEye's was groundbreaking at the time the game came out, and PD just built on it, got rid of the exploitable flaws, and made it deadlier. I remember picking up Half-Life and thinking it's soldier AI (which people always praised) was a complete joke in comparison, running round randomly dropping grenades...which half the time they parked themselves on top of and died.

Nowadays the enemies just seem to do less, even if they do it more realistically/sensibly. The sheer amount of stuff the same guard could do differently in PD based on randomness is still impressive to me.

Arkham series human soldiers. They're all capable enough to grab knives and guns. They can shoot you, brawl with you, throw stuff, shoot at you, break your cover and find you. There's not many other types of enemies, but these are so good and diverse that nothing else is really needed.

Even the standard soldiers in the Uncharted series does the same thing, brawl, shoot, throw grenades. Since its a shooter, they roll and jump out of cover, hide and throw grenades.

Both common enemies are just so engaging (Arkham + Uncharted). Any of them have the ability to kill you, no matter how easy they are.

Half Life 2 has some great enemy design. So does Meltdown, an isometric shooter. But it feels like there's an enemy for every tactic, situation or weapon.

"We are, We are, We are"
"Silence the dissscorrrd"
"Is there.....another?
"Your song is not ours"
"They see you, run, ruuuunnnnn"
"Your flesh betrays you"

Goombas from Mario

Zombies from Doom

The quintessential death goons

The cultists from Blood are another, I just love those bloody screams they make when you kill them, and the screams from setting them on fire.

I always liked the Gran from Dark Forces II. Their big gravelly voices when they die and the satisfying sound they make when they hit the ground. There was also a nice variety of them too: Some with guns, some with thermal detonators, some with their bare hands, and some who used both of the latter weapons at the same time. For having come so far from the Gran in Dark Forces, it was a shame there was only three levels with the Gran. Thankfully Mysteries of the Sith featured more of them for about four lengthy levels.

Koopa Troopas from Super Mario World! You can use just one shell to take out a a bunch of enemies at once.