Ask HN: the games with the most challenging AI you've ever played?

4 points by MrBra ↗ HN
Please recommend me some? I've seen some topics on reddit but.. they would not get any farther than the classic mainstream fps's or rts's everybody knows.

4 comments

[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] thread
Frozen synapse was a game that I felt got AI right. A skilled human still beats it quite comfortably, but it felt like a huge step up from RTS/FPS AI's.
I played it and tried to like it, but really I could not.. it' just not my kind of game, though it might implement a good AI..

The "game" part involves fun.. and I don't see enough of it in just guessing an AI calculated pathway or seeing it react to mine, so to find in the end who will shoot who.

But, it's probably just not my kind of game as I am seeing it has received high votes and had many posite reviews.

Anyway thank you.

Perhaps I'm rubbish at it, but I felt like the AI in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was fantastic.
Yes but as I suspected it features a scripted A.I. while I was looking for a real 100% "thinking" dynamic and/or even machine-learning based A.I.

Quoting from: http://voices.yahoo.com/what-good-ai-bad-ai-7633798.html

"Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3. These two games feature the most scripted A.I. in the history of video games. And yet, I love the A.I. of both games. They're programmed to react differently to your different actions and while everything is pre-programmed and you'll learn just how scripted it is by the time you're about half-done with the game, there're so many different scripts to the A.I., that as predictable as they are, you'll en up having a lot of unique and unpredictable moments in those two games."

Compare that to "Creatures" for example.

Quoting from: http://aigamedev.com/open/highlights/top-ai-games/

"Creatures is an artificial life program where the user ‘hatches’ small furry animals and teaches them how to behave. These “Norms” can talk, feed themselves, and protect themselves against vicious creatures.

It’s the first popular application of machine learning into an interactive simulation.

Neural networks are used by the creatures to learn what to do. The game is regarded as a breakthrough in alife research, which aims to model the behavior of creatures interacting with their environment."

So I am sure that no matter at how good MGS 3 might get, given I am specifically putting attention to this aspect (and that I am not really interested in stunning graphics and such), at some point I will surely notice its scripted behaviour...

Thanks for the suggestion though, it might still be a good game to play. :)