I’ve played a lot of games in my time. And in those games I’ve stomped on, shot at and slashed my way through millions of different enemies. Some were cute, like the Goombas and Koopa Troopas. Some were ugly like Abobo in Double Dragon and the Flood in Halo. But it didn’t matter: adorable or hideous, I slew them all and moved on to the next one.
But lately I’ve been feeling a bit of fatigue in games, specifically the ones that don’t seem to try anything new and just throw the same tired tropes at us in the hopes that we’ve become too numb to care. Zombies when they want gore, robots when they don’t. Ninjas when it’s time for stealth and Nazis when they want a clear delineation between good and evil. Terrorists when they want a modern game and aliens when its time to go back to the future. I am weary of it all.
But I shook myself from this apathy and decided to poll our esteemed readers on what common video game enemy you would love to never have to face again:
Loading ...The list reads like an 8 year-old kid’s fantasies and nightmares all rolled into one. Personally, despite the success of The Walking Dead last year, I think zombies are pretty played out. Maybe they’re the Nazis of this generation because if you think back several years, it seemed every other game coming out had Nazis as the common cannon fodder. On the other side of the equation, I could stand to have more ninjas in my life. Mark of the Ninja was a welcome return to the pajama-outfitted assassins and their penchant for badassery never goes out of style.
So vote above and let us know in the comments below: Which enemy do you never want to see again?
I would say zombies, but I’m so in love with the Walking Dead game and comic right now that that I can see that there’s still untapped potential in them. At this point I would definitely go with Nazis, since I would prefer more multidimensional bad guys rather than a faceless horde of evil. And the fact that I’ve killed millions of them at this point doesn’t help.
I’d have to say zombies. Among my favorite recent enemies though, would be Gears of War’s locusts. Those guys were so satisfying to kill. Never too cheap, unpredictable and relentless. Great video game minions to slaughter.
Since I can’t vote for Nazis, Zombies AND Terrorists, I’ll just state why I think all 3 need retired here.
Nazi’s: We’ve finally got out of the WW2 shooter scene so give the Germans a rest guys, not all of them were bad, we don’t need to brutally execute them with molotov cocktails once a year (that was a disturbing scene in W@W, I must say). Give us a few years and maybe we can try this again. WW2 is a cool setting, but CoD and MoH played the tropes to death. I’d like to see a game presented from both sides too.
Zombies: Unless you’re doing something really fucking interesting, I’m not gonna look twice. Hell, DayZ DID do something interesting and I haven’t played it once. I just find Zombies quite boring as an enemy. They have TOO limited scope and 0 characterisation. Take aliens as an example: they can have much more variety. Zombies? Slow or fast. Motivation? Oh they’re just… evil. Should you feel bad? Nope. Here’s a shotgun. Have at it.
Terrorists: Again, no variation. In films and games they’re either Muslim extremists fighting Americans in Genericistan, or evil Russians. I’ve seen it all. I don’t care for their motivations because they are clearly evil and threatening the peace of The Free World.
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In all, I think developers need to make something that we can empathise with, not these one-dimensional characters, or ones who are presented as such. Grey is the best colour.
The only thing I foresaw Nazi’s doing well in was Sniper Elite V2
nazi robot zombies need to be retired
Can I say Cerberus? One game shooting those guys (well, two if you count ME1) and I’m over them.
Russians. Terrorists too. It seems like they’re a requirement in every shooter with a modern setting.
We forgot one guys. A very important one most of us will understand. Zubat.
@Killklli I just wanted to get outta Mt. Moon, man *rocks back and forth*