Most impressive use of A.I. in a game?

HL2's sidekicks did insane things at times, though the NPC behavior was generally impressive (bar the final level's line-running anti-climax). I found HL's AI more cohesive, from a mimicking human behavior standpoint. Kingpin's thugs were damn good at hunting you down, ledge-jumping up collapsed spiral stairs and what not, I'd say that gets best pathing, or player tracking.

Haven't tried FEAR or STALKER. Far Cry had good AI.

Though its a turn-based game, and makes cheaty concessions in so far as the opponents roaming the map the same way the player does, XCOM Enemy Unknown's maps never plays the same twice, which is saying something towards desired gameplay AI.

For gameplay flavors, I'll always prefer roaming, dynamic AI to scripted, static AI.

For those interested, here's a paper on FEAR's AI (PDF) that's well worth the read.

Why do people believe Half Life 2 has good A.I.?

Perhaps I'm missing something but when I spawned A.I. in say, Gary's Mod I then saw how basic they really are. Crouch / stand randomly, gradually head to player's direction while shooting at bursts. I do however see them run side ways to cover but not tactically, it seems more based on random chance regardless if it improves their situation.

While in the campaign you find most A.I. work very well which has me suspicious of how much scripts work around them to make sure they work exactly as intended and having us believe it's the A.I.

Oh and wasn't there a University somewhere that has self learning A.I. playing a game like Atari's Super Breakout? It took about 300 turns in before it decided accumulating points should be a goal and about 600 turns in to start accurately hitting the ball often and eventually used an aged old classic move of sneaking the ball in the above corner to have it hit all the blocks without the risk of falling down. I'm impressed with that.

Chezza said:

Why do people believe Half Life 2 has good A.I.?

Perhaps I'm missing something but when I spawned A.I. in say, Gary's Mod I then saw how basic they really are. Crouch / stand randomly, gradually head to player's direction while shooting at bursts. I do however see them run side ways to cover but not tactically, it seems more based on random chance regardless if it improves their situation.

While in the campaign you find most A.I. work very well which has me suspicious of how much scripts work around them to make sure they work exactly as intended and having us believe it's the A.I.

The maps need AI nodes for them to behave correctly.

I found the AI in the second to be a good effort. They scatter, take cover, throw grenades, and sometimes flank if possible. The shotgunners will charge you, and they speak to each other. Although their speech isn't as dynamic or cool as FEAR's.

Like I said, I just beat HL a day or two ago again after not touching it for a very long time and I'm convinced it was all a clever illusion. The first time you boot up HL you see the grunts 'talking' to each other, throwing grenades and running around for cover. This memory sticks with you, and I think it's nostalgia goggles.

In reality, they run around like headless chickens, sometimes right past you without firing. They'll blow themselves up with grenades, or drop a grenade at their feet and stand on it. They're dumb as a bag of dirt. They don't seem to take cover at all, they just run around like idiots. Sometimes into trip mines.

The aliens are not any better, sometimes Vortigaunts will stand there and take my arrows from my crossbow until they die. They all just rush you, Vorts will flee when hurt but other than that, the AI for the aliens is basic, and the AI for the marines is really bad nowadays.