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15 Most Irritating Things AI Companions Do

Ravi Sinha — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 08:52:28 +0000

Gaming is full of iconic heroes, but their companions deserve as much praise, if not more. Alyx from Half-Life, Ellie in The Last of Us, Garrus in Mass Effect and so on have some of the best AI and will do everything they can to help you. Of course, not all AI is equal, as some can annoy you in various ways or cause your death in others. Let’s look at 15 of the most annoying things that they do.

Block Your Shots

In some shooters, like Left 4 Dead, the AI is intelligent enough to move out of the way of your shots. In others, like the infamous Daikatana, your companions, Superfly Johnson and Mikiko, will run in front of your shots. Friendly fire is also enabled, so they can take damage and fall amid their stupidity, which is probably their least annoying trait.

15 Video Games Where You Can Actually Play As A Monster

Shubhankar Parijat — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 13:57:04 +0000

It’s always fun when games flip the scrip in unexpected ways, which, given their more interactive nature than any other entertainment medium, they do quite often. One method that games have adopted frequently over the years is letting you play as the monster, so that terrorizing your prey or unleashing your unique abilities becomes the focus of the experience. Games have let players do that in a variety of ways, and here, we’re going to talk about a few of them.

PREDATOR: HUNTING GROUNDS

Illfonic’s asymmetrical multiplayer title Predator: Hunting Grounds was a flawed game in more ways than one, but for fans of the property, there was some fun to be had in getting to play as a Predator. With multiple different Predator types to play as and unique abilities to make use of with each of them, the game certainly had some interesting mechanics up its sleeve- even though not all of them were as well executed as they should have been.

10 Things Video Games Do Secretly

Shubhankar Parijat — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 09:38:17 +0000

Making games is a complicated process, to say the very least, and it gets progressively more complicated as technology advances, as the industry and its audience grow, as developers and publishers get more ambitious with their projects. Even the simplest of games have so much going on behind the scenes, so many systems and mechanics in place and working in conjunction to deliver what you see on the screen and get on your controller. Often, developers are quite creative in how they choose to solve problems or accomplish specific things with the things they do behind the scenes, and here, we’re going to talk about a few such things.

P.T. AND LISA

It’s ridiculous that a short demo of a game that never got made made as much of an impact on the industry as large as Hideo Kojima’s P.T. did, but there’s just so much going on here. It’s a masterclass in scaring the crap out of players at every turn, and it does that in incredibly simple yet effective ways. For instance, you’re constantly hearing terrifying noises and seeing shadows that make it look and sound like something is right behind you- but of course, when you turn around, there’s nothing there. Well, as it turns out, the developers made it so that Lisa will always be behind the player constantly, so when you’re hearing and seeing things, that’s because she’s right there at your back. And when you turn around to see if she’s there- well, she’s still behind you.

15 Best Games of 2008

Ravi Sinha — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 06:04:46 +0000

It’s always nice to look back on the console generations gone by and marvel at the number of high profile releases each year. This is especially so when looking at 2008 which had excellent follow-ups in established franchises and awesome new IPs. Let’s examine 15 of the best games that year along with what made them so great.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Super Smash Bros. Melee served as the series’ watershed moment, providing a near-perfect combination of gameplay, graphics and music. Super Smash Bros. Brawl didn’t win over everyone with some of its changes (hello, tripping) but it was superior in a number of other aspects. Subspace Emissary is an incredible story-driven mode till this day; the base roster was large and grew even further with the addition of non-Nintendo characters like Solid Snake, Sonic the Hedgehog and Cloud Strife; and the Stage Builder was introduced for creating one’s own levels. The Nintendo Wii already had a number of great exclusives but Super Smash Bros. Brawl is definitely one of its finest.

15 Times Players Accidentally Made Video Games Harder

Shubhankar Parijat — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 09:55:22 +0000

Playing video games that are difficult by design is all well and good, but things get really interesting when you’re playing a game that sneakily puts in elements that result in you making things harder for yourself. Whether that’s because of specific gameplay choices or hidden underlying mechanics or even consequences of seemingly unrelated actions, there have been a number of games over the years that have done exactly that. Here, we’re going to talk about a few of them.

SPEC OPS: STEALTH PATROL – SWAPPED DIFFICULTIES

A perfect example of how the lack of post-launch patches (which is something we now take for granted) could ruin a game. Its easy, normal, and hard difficulties were dubbed private, corporal, and sergeant respectively, only in the game itself, private and sergeant were, for whatever reason, swapped. This meant that people who wanted to play the game on the easiest difficulty were unknowingly playing it on the hardest, wondering all the while just why things were as frustratingly difficult as they were. Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol wasn’t exactly the best of games as it is, and this did it no favours.

Valve Developer Talks About Left 4 Dead Leaks, Portal VR

Shubhankar Parijat — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 12:00:01 +0000

At long last, Valve have returned to mainstream development with Half-Life: Alyx, which is also the first new Half-Life game in over a decade. Reception for the game has been incredible, and if Valve have anything to say about it, this is not going to be their last Half-Life game by any stretch of the imagination. But what about their other properties?

The likes of Portal and Left 4 Dead are beloved properties that – much like Half-Life (and even its episodic releases) – don’t seem to know how to count to three. There have, however, been plenty of leaks, and more than a little speculation, about new projects for both. Portal VR was something we all heard about quite often before Half-Life: Alyx was announced, while Left 4 Dead 3 and Left 4 Dead VR have both been the subjects of leaks as well.

And speaking recently to IGN, Valve programmer Robin Walker talked more about both. As far as the supposed Left 4 Dead 3 leaks are concerned – which emerged when assets from a supposed new Left 4 Dead project got out – Walker explains that that was only stuff Valve was working with to test out its tools while making the Source 2 engine, and that that was never really something that materialized as an actual new project for them to work on, echoing similar statements made by the developer not too long ago.

“We used parts of a Left 4 Dead level as the first bit of level geometry to start building in Source 2, so a bit of that got out,” Walker said. “It was essentially a rendering test, and people thought that meant we were working on Left 4 Dead.”

“We built lots of different things as part of building technology in Source 2,” he continued. “There were groups here who would generate a product in mind that would attempt to be a target for Source 2, and so a couple of those were Left 4 Dead-related things, but none of them reached the point where we were like, ‘now this is a product team that we’re going to build a big product around.’ They were more tools for moving Source 2 forward.”

About Portal and the possibility of a VR project, Walker explained that that was something Valve did toy around with when exploring options for what to adapt into a VR game- but when they realized that the restricted movement that VR requires would get in the way of several core gameplay features and mechanics of Portal, they quickly dropped that, before moving on to Half-Life.

“We [looked] at our various IPs when we started… before we selected Half-Life… which is a really standard thing for us to do,” he said. “When you’re trying to explore something new, of course you start with ‘What are all the tools we’ve got from the past that could help us rapidly learn here?’

“So we looked at various IPs and, yep, Portal was one of them, [but] we didn’t get very far in that. It was pretty clear when we looked at Portal as a whole… If we can’t do player movement, not as a result of their choice, but by launching them… momentum…standing on things… all that sort of stuff… then a whole swath of Portal’s puzzles… the whole back half of Portal, or more… goes away, and we’d need some alternative thing.

“The whole point of using existing IPs is to get a head start on trying to understand and learn, and if we start by taking away one of the most interesting things from the IP we’re looking at, then it doesn’t seem like we’re making a good choice there.”

Well, hopefully Valve will find a way to bring both franchises back in the near future. After seeing Half-Life make its grand, long-awaited return, that doesn’t seem like such a distant possibility anymore, so fingers crossed.

Half-Life: Alyx, meanwhile, is available now on PC, and compatible with various virtual reality headsets, including Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality.

Left 4 Dead 3 Confirmed To Not Be In Development By Valve

Landon Wright — Sat, 18 Jan 2020 03:25:43 +0000

With the return of the Half-Life series with the upcoming VR title, Half-Life: Alyx, it’s given renewed hope that more Valve games could be revived. The company was once known for several key multiplayer titles but after focusing on their Steam storefront, that part has largely been abandoned up until now. One franchise many hope to see brought back from the grave is Left 4 Dead with a third entry. There were some recent rumors to that effect, but unfortunately, it just got squashed.

In a statement to IGN, Valve dispelled recent rumors that a third entry in the zombie franchise is coming. While they did acknowledge that there had been some testing for a third game at some point, as of now there is no Left 4 Dead 3 in active development nor any game in the franchise.

“We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next opportunities a few years ago,” Valve said in the statement. “But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven’t for years.”

It is somewhat unfortunate, since there’s very few games quite like Left 4 Dead, but at least Half-Life is coming back. Maybe its revival will be successful enough that the undead series will rise again some day as well.

Dying Light And Left 4 Dead Crossover Is A Limited Time Event Until October 28

Landon Wright — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 12:22:30 +0000

Earlier in the week, we got the very unexpected announcement that the original Dying Light was going to have some type of crossover with Valve’s beloved Left 4 Dead series. It wasn’t clear what exactly the crossover would entail, but now we have our first look.

The crossover will be a limited time event mode that will see super aggressive zombies (or Virals, as they’re called here) that mimic the fast pace of the Left 4 Dead games. Sadly, it doesn’t seem any of the iconic characters from Valve’s franchise will be there, but it will include three new weapons from those games: Electric Guitar, Frying Pan and Golf Club. The three blueprints for those can be found in the DLC and other variants can be found through doing various challenges. It’s not quite Left 4 Dead 3, but it’s quite the simulation.

Dying Light is available now, and the ambitious sequel Dying Light 2 is coming out way in Spring of next year, which you can read more about through here. The Left 4 Dead event is live now and will last until October 28th.

15 Annoying Video Game Enemies We Absolutely Hate

Shubhankar Parijat — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 09:34:13 +0000

As gamers, we’ve been conditioned into never wanting to turn our backs on a fight (most of the time anyway), but there are a few occasions when even we can’t help but look at an enemy and groan in dismay. That’s because there are some enemies in various games and franchises that, for some reason or the other, just touch a nerve in all of us. In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at fifteen such enemies.

CUCCOS (ZELDA)

Ah, the legendary chickens- a more famous Zelda mainstay than Ganondorf instead. We hate what they do to us if we whack them one time too many, and yet we can’t resist doing it over and over anyway. The wrath of the Hyrule chickens is a fearsome thing, and if you anger these fowl birds, not even the might of the Triforce can save you.

15 Video Game Creatures That Will Haunt Your Dreams For Years

Shubhankar Parijat — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 15:12:58 +0000

Seeing a massive, grotesque, hairy spider in real life would give you a heart attack, but seeing that same thing in a video game counts as an amazing experience. Thankfully, over the years game have provided us with plenty of nightmare fuel. In this feature, we’re going to take a look at fifteen of the scariest creatures and entities in games. Given the vast pool of options available to us, it’s a given that we’re going to miss out on many terrifying creatures, so if any of your favourites get left out, sound off in the comments below.

With that out of the way, let’s get started.

PYRAMID HEAD (SILENT HILL 2)

Silent Hill 2 has the legacy of being one of the greatest horror games ever created, and there are plenty of reasons for that. One of those reasons is Pyramid Head. This terrifying, faceless monster is one of the scariest things we’ve ever come across in a Silent Hill game, and that’s saying something. Their hulking figures inspire fear the moment you lay your eyes on them, and watching them silently strut about with murderous intent strikes a primal fear in the player like few other things do.