Better yet, on Xbox One (opens in new tab), Microsoft often allows you to permanently keep hold of any Achievements you earn in a game’s trial run. That’s free Gamerscore points for playing a free demo, which are often worth playing for the entertainment value in and of themselves! Instead of having to trawl through the Xbox Marketplace looking for the right freebies for you, I’ve selected some of the very best Xbox One demos available and listed them below for your browsing pleasure.

Metro Redux

Curious about that eerie first-person shooter reveal at Microsoft’s 2017 E3 conference this year? The one with the giant rat? It’s the third game in 4A Games’ grounded, melancholic survival series, Metro, and continues the story left off by Metro 2033 (opens in new tab) and Metro: Last Light. Both of those titles were remastered and resold as one package (Metro Redux (opens in new tab)) a few years ago, and you can try the demos right now on Xbox One. 

That’s right, demos, plural. You can download and play trials for either or both of the titles, playing around a third of the campaign for each, which gives you a good deal of flexibility and freedom for your consideration. Luckily, they’re both excellent games, and your progress will carry on if you decide to jump in full time for the Russia-set rambling. 

Titanfall 2

The good news gods must have been smiling upon earth when it was announced that Respawn would be making a third Titanfall game with EA (opens in new tab), but you might not have yet had the chance to play the recently released sequel.

The least you can do to show your support is give the demo a whirl, which contains approximately an hour of gameplay, using a mid-game chapter from Titanfall 2 (opens in new tab)’s stellar campaign. Be warned, though, you’ll be aching to play more by the end of it, especially once you make friends with BT. 

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

Bethesda has a pretty good track record when it comes to demos of late. You can download trials for Dishonored 2 (opens in new tab), Prey (opens in new tab), Doom (opens in new tab), The Evil Within 2 (opens in new tab), and now Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (opens in new tab), which only released in October. 

Machine Games’ FPS sequel is a loud and proud Nazi slaying simulation, but its unforgiving run-and-gun gameplay isn’t for everyone, so this demo is a good excuse to see if your penchant for its bold flavour of gunplay can last to see the story through to its conclusion. The best part, though, is that the demo is the entirety of the game’s first level: the one where you’re killing Nazis from a wheelchair. Excellent. 

Rise of the Tomb Raider 

You’ll have to buy the complete product if you want to witness Lara Croft’s promised ascension in full, but the first two chapters contained within the Rise of the Tomb Raider (opens in new tab)’s demo give you a good sense of how it’s all going to play out. 

There’s shooting, crafting, raiding, upgrading, and exploring to be done, and it can take you anywhere between two to three hours before the demo is up, depending on how you prefer to play. Oh, and it features at least one scene where Lara dies in some horrible, excruciating way. Sorry about that.  

Watch Dogs 2 

If Watch Dogs 2 (opens in new tab) protagonist Marcus Holloway had known that Ubisoft is offering a three hour trial of open-world adventuring in his game for no charge, he’d probably have never hacked the studio’s offices in the first place. 

The demo includes full access to the single player and multiplayer features of the San Francisco-set sandbox, but be warned – you’re on a timer for the entire thing, so spend your minutes wisely before the demo automatically comes to a close. If three hours isn’t enough (and let’s face it; it isn’t), you can continue on seamlessly from your trial’s progress once you decide to cash in on the full game. 

Gears of War 4

As far as value for no money goes, The Coalition has outdone itself with the Gears of War 4 (opens in new tab) free trial. You can enjoy up to ten hours of the game at no cost, which includes the opening Act of the campaign, and as much PvP and Horde multiplayer that you can wring out of the experience. 

You’ll know by the end whether you want to pay up to keep going or not, and even if you don’t, that’s ten hours of high quality gaming for the price of nothing. Go on, pat yourself on the back for being such a frugal gamer.

Forza Motorsport 7 

You might enjoy the odd driving sim every now and again, but never enough to warrant a full blown purchase on the next big racing game. The Forza Motorsport 7 (opens in new tab) demo has you covered, then, offering a small but not insubstantial set of racing experiences that have enough replay value for you to return to whenever you feel the need for speed.

There are three unique tracks, each boasting a different car to test them out in, and the demo even includes a race at at the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit, which is a nice showcase for Motorsport 7’s breathtaking dynamic weather technology. Better yet, you’ll never have to worry about those pesky and overbearing microtransactions plaguing the full game. 

Halo Wars 2 

The original Halo Wars came out so long ago, that it’s difficult to know if the recently released sequel to the cult hit RTS is something that could hold your interest. It’s exactly the kind of game that can benefit from a demo, and Microsoft isn’t oblivious to this, offering a free trial that introduces players to all the important nuts and bolts of its strategically-minded gameplay.

It uses the campaign’s opening mission, so you won’t have free reign of every gizmo and gadget available in the full game, but it does give you a basic understanding of the kind of Halo experience that Halo Wars 2 (opens in new tab) is. At the very least, it’ll save you from making the horrible mistake of buying the full title thinking that it’s another classic Halo FPS outing. Welp. 

Dead Rising 3 

Sometimes you’re not in the mood for enrapturing narratives, elaborate role-playing, or tough-as-nails PvP. Sometimes, you just want to whack a few zombies round the head with a baseball bat. Dead Rising 3 (opens in new tab) offers exactly that kind of therapy for the low, low price of nil, with a demo that chucks you head-first into its open world, with 20 minutes to do as you please with whatever you can find. 

Tear zombies in half with a cement saw if you want, or head towards a nearby side quest for something more purposeful. Whatever you’re doing, it’s mindless gratification from the get go, and tells you all you need to know about the kind of game that Dead Rising 3 is. 

FIFA 18

There’s a reason that every annual FIFA demo consistently breaks its own records as the most popular demo released on consoles, year after year, without fail. Not only is it the FIFA community’s first chance to test out the new software for themselves, but it always boasts a striking amount (pun intended) of replay value, thanks to the fact that players can enjoy match after match to no end, even if the conditions and choices contextualizing each game are necessarily limited.

If you’re not a massive fan of video game footy, but don’t mind having a quick kickabout whenever a friend is round, this demo is the perfect option, allowing you to easily boot up a game of FIFA 18 (opens in new tab) without ever having to spend dime. 

The post Gears of War 4, Wolfenstein 2, and the best demos you can play for free on the Xbox One right now appeared first on Game News.

Prepare the ban hammer. If you’ve been playing video games for more than five minutes, you know they have a tendency to be moral outrage magnets. If you can name it, games have been blamed for it, so it’s not too shocking that game bans have followed in force. For the children, I suppose, though I’m not sure how many children are picking up the Witcher or Command and Conquer.

Game bans brought down by someone somewhere in the world are so numerous it would be impossible to cover them all. Here are 19 high and lowlights. Prepare to be outraged for the opposite reason. 

Outlast 2 banned in Australia for about two days 

Outlast 2 is pretty grisly. There’s no denying it. There are skinned people on sticks, piles of dead babies and, every so often, a giant 9ft woman plunges a pick axe into your crotch and you watch the blood spew out from a first person perspective. Lovely. This, apparently along with inclusion of ‘implied sexual violence’ tipped the Australian Ratings Board over the edge, prompting it to refuse even handing out the highest R18 level of ratings.

However it turns out that developer Red Barrels actually sent the wrong footage in for classification. Along with the code was a video that didn’t represent the final product. Once this mistake was cleared up, Australia was free to wander the death filled cornfields. Phew. 

Getting Up banned in Australia for glorifying street art

Apparently some countries can’t handle a little rampant vandalism these days. Over in Australia, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure was refused classification (opens in new tab) (i.e. the censors wouldn’t give it a rating, which is a ban in every way but spelling) based on the idea that it glorified graffiti. And it did, since its entire premise is that a youth from a bad part of town uses the power of street art to take down rival gangs and the corrupt mayor who used an anti-graffiti campaign to cover up the fact that he murdered Trane’s father.

As you can probably guess from that description, the plot was a bit silly and kind of outside the realm of believability. Still, Australian censors thought that this game would act as a gateway to the righteous world of tagging, so it was never rated.

Command & Conquer: Generals banned in China for destroying China

Command & Conquer: Generals did not do well in China, for the same reason that kneecapping Lady Liberty would likely flop in the US. Not only does the game’s China campaign open on the nuclear obliteration of Beijing (good start!), but the player is directly involved in the destruction of Chinese landmarks like the Hong Kong Convention Center and the Three Gorges Dam. What, was the Great Wall too far away?

Not only did the government of China promptly bring down the ban hammer (which they’ve done to games for less), but even Chinese gamers who went to the trouble of pirating the title weren’t pleased with it (opens in new tab). Mostly because you have the option of bombing Tiananmen Square into rubble. Can you say cultural insensitivity?

Fallout 3 banned in Australia for encouraging drug use

You’d think in a dystopian wasteland where danger lurks around every corner and pain is a constant companion, you could get away with taking a few much-needed hits of Vitamin M. Not so, say censors in Australia, who briefly refused classification for Fallout 3 due to the player character’s use of morphine. Don’t remember that part? That’s because the developers changed the game entirely to account for these complaints, taking morphine out for every region and replacing it with Med-X. Which has the exact same effects, of course.

The full report (opens in new tab) goes into more detail on how the game’s use of “chems” pushed it over the hill into ban town because they were just too darn much like real drugs. Ultimately the ban was lifted when the chem system was scaled back and ‘morphine’ was changed to Med-X. Good thing too, or we’d all want to be like the Lone Wanderer and hang with Sister M. I mean, who wouldn’t want that guy’s life?

Witcher 2 banned in Australia for using sex as a prize

In its day, Witcher 2 was refused a rating in the land down under for going down under. Haaaaa, not sorry. Specifically, the issue was a scene where sex is used as a reward for Geralt completing a quest, which he can choose whether or not to accept. Chances are this refers to a mission given to him by a succubus, and that’s kind of their M.O., but whatever. Message received, sex as a reward for actions is bad.

At least, if he accepts it. Witcher 2 was eventually released after the scene was altered so that Geralt rejects the offer by default. Bewilderingly, everything else about the scene remains the same. I get the objection behind a reward-lay (romantic interaction doesn’t follow a three-steps-and-profit scheme), but when the reward is still totally a thing and the main character just refuses to take it? I mean, I guess we know he’s a good guy, or something?

Battlefield 3 banned in Iran for inciting international terror

Back in November 2011, the sale of Battlefield 3 was banned in Iran. It was all thanks to a scene where American soldiers lay siege to Tehran and the Grand Bazaar. The announcement was followed by raids on game shops to nab all existing copies, while a petition bearing the signatures of 5,000 Iranians accused the game of drumming up fear of Iran in the international community. Not unexpected, since the relationship between the US and Iran is famously sticky anyway.

There’s one wrinkle, though: Battlefield 3 was never officially released in Iran. Publisher EA has no resellers in the country, so all copies available when the ban came down were pirated. Is a “shot yourself in the foot” joke crass here?

Dead Rising 3 banned in Germany for having human-like enemies

Germany wins the blue ribbon for Europe’s most intense game restrictions. While changing a human to a zombie (opens in new tab) can get a game to pass muster in the likes of the UK or France, it’ll have no such luck in Deutschland. Given that Dead Rising is all about zombies, it’s no surprise that this series has seen repeated bans in Germany. Dead Rising 3 is the latest victim, expunged from the Xbox One launch line-up in this country.

This pretty-goddamn-violent zombie thrasher is considered tolerable in many places, since your main target are fantasy legions of undead monsters. However, Germany’s Bundeprfstelle fr jugendgefhrende Medien (the gaming police) places heavy restrictions on games where you kill any human or “human-like” enemies, so zombies qualify. Then again, Gears of War 3 was deemed acceptable without edits, so I can’t pretend to understand the logic.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter banned in Pakistan for smearing the nation’s image

Two for the price of one here. In January 2013, the government of Pakistan banned Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter in one fell swoop, saying they “show the country in a very poor light.” Since both of these military shooters essentially equate Pakistan with terrorism, I’d say that’s a fair comment.

They probably should have tried to convince the country’s game retailers to accept the ban, though, or at least told them about it. On the day of the ban, the owner of Islamabad’s biggest game store claimed to have not even heard about it, and another anonymous shop-owner said (opens in new tab) “The nationalists and the religious ones don’t like [these games] but I’m not going to stop selling them.” Nothing yells louder than green it seems.

Mass Effect banned in Singapore for lesbianism

Finally, a game that wasn’t banned over political outrage. Just lesbian sex! Wait, is that better, or worse? Either way, back in 2007 Singapore banned the first Mass Effect because it contains an optional scene of lady Shepard and Liara T’soni gettin’ bizzah. While in many places this was met with newscaster pearl-clutching and adolescent fist-pumps, the ladies’ “kissing and caressing” translated to “gratuitous sex” in Singapore, which barred it from release.

Not that the ban lasted long. Originally, it went through because the nation didn’t have a proper video game rating system, making it harder to judge degrees of debauchery. However, when the ban shockingly resulted in backlash, officials used the country’s movie rating system instead, dubbing Mass Effect an M18 and lifting the ban only a few days after setting it. Now the people of Singapore can enjoy softcore lady-on-lady action to their heart’s content. Freedom.

God of War 2 banned in Saudi Arabia for sexual themes

If Iran and Pakistan’s examples are any indication, our gaming brethren in the Middle East sure know their way around a game ban. Saudi Arabian gamers are no exception, because even in the face of strict content restrictions and fines for playing banned titles, many manage to sneak prohibited games anyway. One good example is God of War 2, which was banned for sexual content (and possibly the use of the word God in the title) upon release. However, it’s still very much available for players who know where to look.

Satisfied as the nation’s moralizers were with the decision, gamers weren’t pleased, and they weren’t deterred either. Speaking to Kotaku (opens in new tab) about ways of circumventing the ban, Saudi Arabian user Alaa A explained that retailers still sell black market copies of the game, just packaged and shrink-wrapped as something else. Congratulations, Alaa, you deserve a go at that fantastical debauchery.

• 1
• 2

Current page:

Page 1

Next Page Page 2

The post 19 games banned across the world, and why they got the axe appeared first on Game News.

The film takes place amidst a zombie outbreak apparently triggered by some ineffective Zombrex – y’know, that drug you have to take every 24 hours to keep from turning into a zombie. From there the situation rapidly devolves, but at least Frank West isn’t stuck in the middle this time.

Although, to be honest, Rob Riggle’s take on the semi-sleazy reporter is so spot-on that I kind of wish he was out there smashing zombies again. The new protagonist played by Jesse Metcalfe probably hasn’t even covered wars, even if he is similarly scoop driven.

The feature-length film is set to debut on March 27 on ad-supported streaming service Crackle.

(And your ears aren’t deceiving you, fellow Cowboy Bebop fans, that is definitely ‘Memory’ (opens in new tab) playing over the Zombrex TV commercial. Kind of an odd choice.)

The post Dead Rising movie trailer has Frank West and a sledgesaw appeared first on Game News.

AI companions tend to come in a couple different flavors. There’s the true companions, versatile and interesting characters who really add something to the experience, like Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite or Alyx from Half-Life 2. Next are the harmless annoyances, who aren’t great to have around but don’t get in the way–Ashley Graham has the good sense to keep her head down, and Navi has some alright advice here and there. And then there are the AI companions who actively make the game worse by existing. From charging headfirst into enemy bullets to using up your precious resources while you shriek in rage, they seem deadset on making EVERY level the “hell level.”

In (dis)honor of these hated, virtual hanger-ons, I’ve compiled a list of the worst AI companions gaming has to offer. Hoarders, pesterers, jerkfaces and straight-up dead weight–they’re all here, and they’re going to do their best to ruin your fun. It’s time for some naming and shaming!

Sheva (Resident Evil 5)

The thing about going into battle with someone is that you need to trust them. “With your life” is a pretty good benchmark, since your partner will hopefully be stopping bullets and knives from trying to occupy the same space as your internal organs. That’s why so many players hate Sheva, Chris Redfield’s partner in Resident Evil 5: she can’t be trusted. She consumes all your shared ammo and health items like its penny candy, and when you’re on your last legs and need her most, she has a penchant for standing around and letting nature run its course. She may not be a bad character per say, but it’s kind of hard to remember that when she’s watching you die like an unfeeling robot.

Tails (Sonic 2)

Bless Tails; he really does try. He just sucks so bad that failure is his only option, and he simply can’t keep up with Sonic “Gotta Go Fast” the Hedgehog. Sometimes that’s literal, like when he’s so slow on special stages that he regularly runs into bombs and ruins everything. Other times he’s just flat-out dense, like when he collapses platforms before Sonic can even touch them or runs straight into very obvious spikes. You want to give him a little credit, because he will nab a ring or two for you. But then he’ll promptly lose them doing something stupid, or drag you down when you try to help him, and you’ll suddenly wish Sonic would aim his fist bumps a little higher.

Duck Hunt Dog (Duck Hunt)

With man’s-best-friends like these, who needs enemies? Not Duck Hunt, where your only real enemy in the struggle for duck dominance is your son-of-a-bitch hunting dog. Rather than focusing on your victories like any good dog should, the Duck Hunt Dog spends more time ridiculing you for your failures. The mockery never ends. Every time one of the slippery fowl gets away from you, the Dog is there to undercut your self-esteem until you just can’t take it ANYMORE!!! You can’t shoot him either, to the disappointment of frustrated players everywhere. However, he is set to appear in the upcoming Super Smash Bros for Wii U/3DS, so revenge might finally be ours.

Roman (Grand Theft Auto 4)

Niko Bellic deals with some unpleasant things in GTA IV, brawling with vicious gang members and dealing with the popo after accidentally mowing down a group of tourists. But few things in Liberty City make your stomach drop like getting a phone call and hearing “HEEEEEY COOOOOOOOOUSIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN” blasting down the line. After the fifteenth time cousin Roman ask you to join him in an annoying bowling minigame, you start running people over out of rage instead of just for fun. It would almost be bearable, if that was the worst family failure you had to deal with. But when you have to kick the crap out of a bunch of guys to clean up your cousin’s mess? And then he calls you for the sixteenth time? Bowling balls aren’t all that’s gonna roll!

Survivors (Dead Rising)

I get that the zombie apocalypse can be stressful, especially when you find yourself locked in a shopping mall with a horde of the undead, packs of psychopaths, and no Orange Julius stands in sight. But as completely idiotic, frustrating, and useless as the survivors in Dead Rising can be, it looks like the zombies arent the only ones in want of brains. Most of your human cohorts are unbelievably slow, lagging behind you even when you’re carrying an injured party on you back. They’re virtually incapable of defending themselves even with a weapon, and have a nasty habit of walking into the thick of a zombie pack and expecting you to get them out. Sure, you can leave particularly infuriating survivors behind, but that hurts your overall score, and the one you left for dead could be replaced by someone equally useless!

Survivors, again (Left 4 Dead)

Speaking of left for dead–sorry, Left 4 Dead–those survivors don’t come out looking so good either when a fellow player isn’t controlling them. CPU versions of the zombie-blasting friends do their best to emulate human behavior, like a robot trying to calculate the square root of love, and do seem to get it right some of the time. But they’ll just as soon stare at you Sheva-like as you die, play lemming and leap off balconies, or get comfy in a toasty patch of fire. Forget any time you need to lay low and not draw attention–the AI knows that proper way to combat the horde is to run in with guns blazing. Oh, and never forget to walk directly up to a witch. Come on, they just need some love.

Superfly Johnson and Mikiko (Daikatana)

Granted, Daikatana itself is notoriously awful, and it’s AI characters could hardly escape the crapshoot. Still, Superfly Johnson (yes, that’s his actual name) and Mikiko go above and beyond, combining their powers to make this game as bad as it could possibly be. These two hit all the terrible AI touchstones: running directly into any stream of bullets you let loose, getting stuck on doors, and happily putting themselves in lethal situations where their deaths spell Game Over for you. They even spice it up a bit by being blithely hostile, occasionally shooting you in the midst of a firefight instead of getting shot themselves. Did I mention friendly fire is on? When Mikiko double-crosses you and steals the Sword-of-Ultimate-Power-or-Whatever at the end (I’d warn for spoilers, but who cares?), you almost start to wonder if these two were actually brilliant enemy combatants. But, no–they’re just that stupid.

Your comrades (Gears of War)

The characters in Gears of War are men and women of extremes. I don’t mean those times when they go mano-a-monster with the demonesque Locusts, but the part where they’re either really bad or way too good at it. In the first Gears game, your brothers in (h)arms spent a lot of time doing lethally stupid things, like meleeing a megaboss or standing on top of a campfire. Dom in particular is known for putting himself in deadly situations that are too dumb to comprehend. The developers saw the problem here and adjusted for Gears of War 3, by which I mean the game basically plays itself. Yes, replace my clunker van with a rocket I can’t ride. That’s so much better.

Natalya (GoldenEye 007)

Yes, Natalya, I know we have to go to the main control room. Now if you could do that without walking in front of all of my bullets, marching directly into enemy fire, or getting stuck on the goddamn door of the goddamn main control room, I would REALLY. FREAKING. APPRECIATE IT!!! The most frustrating part of an otherwise great game, Natalya is the epitome of rage-inducing escort bots. Progressing requires that you anticipate her slow, clunky movements and keep her from walking into the business end of a rifle like she thinks it’s shooting money and free ice cream. I’m pretty sure she leads a double life as a target dummy, which explains why she has such crap dexterity that she gets stuck on a doorframe.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT???

Even years after they first drove us into a frothing rage we haven’t forgotten these AI idiots, and I’m sure most of us would rather hang out with anyone else over them. A rabid wolverine, perhaps. What do you think? Does the memory of these horrible partners make you want to tear your hair out? Did we miss an odious offender? Tell us in the comments below, and share in our hate-pain. Hain. Yes.

Want more rage against hapless “helpers”? Check out the Top 7 video game sidekicks we hated. Would you rather sooth your wrathful heart? Check out 10 sidekicks that deserve their own game, because they’re not all useless.

The post Gamings worst AI companions appeared first on Game News.

Lets just get this out of the way: We love video games. Theyre fun, challenging, and have even stirred our emotions from time to time. That said, as weve noted before, were a little tired of being murderers in games, particularly when its the same type of dude over and over again.

There are enemies weve had to slaughter so many times that its hard not to roll our eyes when they pop up, guns blazing, in a new game. Weve blown up these bad boys so many times that theyve lost whatever sense of danger they once had. All of these types of henchmen could use a break, so if you happen to be making a game, try to exclude these guys from your encounters…

Suicidal mercenaries

If a games big bad is the ruler of a country, then they have a whole army at their disposal, but if theyre merely super rich, theyve got to hire outside help. The problem is that mercs are fighting for a paycheck instead of queen and country, so were confused at just how much your average mercenary will risk in search of a paycheck. Theyve been known to follow their prey into certain death without the slightest hesitation, even when said enemy has killed hundreds of their merc brothers that afternoon. Dont these guys know they cant collect a paycheck after burning to death?

Recent offender: Uncharted 3 has this in spades, though the whole series is guilty of it. In one of Uncharted 3s most intense sections, Nathan Drake has to make his way out of a burning building on the verge of collapse. And with fiery death all around them, the mercs still shoot at Drake from behind (burning) cover. Maybe the big bad of the game only employs gunmen diagnosed with suicidal tendencies.

Helicopters

When the super rich villains of games hire a small army of mercenaries to hunt down one puckish rogue, they must have a huge segment of the budget set aside for helicopters. Sometimes a chopper shows up as a good close to a stage, but more often they appear by the dozens, just floating around, waiting to be blown up by a bazooka. We get the allure of shooting down a helicopter–it explodes in the air, then it blows up again when it hits the ground!–but how many helicopters can one security contractor own? Do they have a manufacturing deal or something?

Recent offender: 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand taught us two things: That the rapper/business mogul is great at killing terrorists, and that he HATES helicopters. Fiddy blows up so many choppers in this game it borders on parody, with multiple boss fights ending in a climatic helicopter shootout. Wed have appreciated it the bosses had instead jumped into a hydrofoil once just to keep things interesting.

That same guy you just killed, but with a different hat

Making games is hard work, so we can forgive some corner cutting, like the occasional backtracking or reused area. But when combat is the main focus of the game, give us a little variety in who well be decapitating. Dont just have four enemy types and then swap out little details like skin color or accessories, thinking youve fooled us. We know that new enemy is the guy we just fought, only now he has a helmet and 30% more health.

Recent offender: The recent Killer Is Dead falls into this trap a lot. There are around seven types of common foes, and they come in a number of colors. Sure, you killed that red, mace-swinging giant 10 times already, but you havent killed him when hes blue and wearing armor, have you?

Orcs

In the eternal war between Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres, science fiction normally has an edge in originality because it has to make up unique alien races for every new universe. Meanwhile, fantasy worlds can just be filled with elves, fairies, and most annoying of all, orcs. The ugly green beasts are easy shorthand for killable brutes; their faces just begging to be messed up. We applaud the games that try to give some dignity back to the orc race, but most titles are fine with outfitting them with armor and throwing them in front of an army of archers.

Recent offender: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine not only has an incredibly obvious name, but it also has a limitless supply of orcs to throw at players. Technically theyre orks, but the name change and added space armor arent fooling us. The green jerks bleed all the same.

Zombies

When you strip away the current love for the undead, these guys are functionally as boring as robots, only they smell worse. Zombies allow for devs a perfectly good plot device to create oodles of mindless cannon fodder that run straight into the line of fire. Shooting these walking corpses in the head can be more addictive than popping bubble wrap, but weve long since passed the point of diminishing returns. Can this undead plague be stopped before it infects every new title announced?

Recent offender: Seemingly half of all games from the last five years.

The boss thats now a common enemy

We feel the most pity for this entry. Being an in-game boss should mean youre in a whole other class of bad guy, a special and unique snowflake among commoners. Thats likely how some early big bads feel, but as the game continues they get called on to join the ranks in regular encounters. The first time you battle this former boss in a normal fight might have some shock value, but soon theyre just another face in the crowd.

Recent offender: Ninja Gaiden for the original Xbox (later ported to PS3 and Vita) had a fine variety of enemies without reusing bosses, so its sad the game fell prey to this trope. An early boss battle in the adventure features a pack of demonic dinosaurs, which (if youre 13) is the coolest thing that ever existed. By the end of the game these bright red creatures are more ubiquitous than ninjas in a title thats ostensibly about killing ninjas.

Robots

This particular complaint is thrown at every T-rated game trying to get violent content past the censors. Chopping off the head of some android functions just the same as if they were a ninja or soldier, but with none of the guilt of murder. Additionally, robot henchmen can be mass produced and have little concern for their own wellbeing, avoiding the logic problems with reusing human mercenaries over and over again. It makes robots the perfect enemy for all ages, which is why they are everywhere!

Recent offender: Disney Infinity does this, specifically in the Incredibles adventure. The mode plays like a watered down, open world action game, with the heroes assigned to destroy the same robots over and over to keep the city safe. Disney Infinity lucked out that a robot army was a core part of the Incredibles universe, but that doesnt make it any less annoying.

MORE ROBOTS

Seriously, we have had it up to here with robots, those this particular brand of robot exists only in superhero games. You see, developers would love for heroes like Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and Hulk to kill army men like your average space marine, but colorful comic heroes have strict no killing policies. Because mediocre action games require endless waves of enemies, heroes like Iron Man end up exploding automatons far more often than they fight supervillains.

Recent offender: The recent Amazing Spider-Man movie tie-in fell prey to this. Manhattan is overrun with robots, including a couple that are roughly one fourth the size of Central Park. These would be silly enough in your average comic book, but the game is supposed to take place in the same reality as the film Amazing Spider-Man. That movie tried to lend the world of Spidey a little more believability, which was shattered when skyscrapers were routinely knocked down by trillion dollar robots.

Terrorists

Even prior to 9/11, using terrorists in games lent a title a kind of powerful, ripped from the headlines vibe, and that power only grew with the prevalence of the war on terror. But now theyve become so overdone that seeing a ski-mask wearing insurgent elicits more yawns than gasps. While theyre undeniably a threat in the real world, weve knifed enough terrorists to know that a well organized cell of twenty can be felled by one sneaky spy.

Recent offender: Splinter Cell: Blacklist once again indulges in the series red meat of terrorist execution. This time protagonist Sam Fisher has become so experienced at that he cuts down swaths of group known as The Engineers with ease. Blacklist gets bonus points for not tying the terrorists to any one country or nationality, thus making the game as commercially viable as possible.

Bonus: We miss killing Nazis

Even five years ago Nazis would be worthy of inclusion here, but theyve nearly vanished from mainstream games. Sure, youll kill them in the odd RTS, but now that the FPS genre has abandoned World War II for the near future, the National Socialist Party has been replaced as the leading, morally justifiable enemy. We didnt realize how much we enjoyed shooting them in the head until they went away. It makes us long for the days of the Nazis. Wait, that doesnt sound right

Recent offender: The upcoming Wolfenstein reboot might finally make Nazis hip again thanks to its fake future/past conceit. If the Nazis won WWII, then that means we can kill them all over for the first time.

Enough is enough

Those are our picks for overused bad guys, but what villains are you sick of killing? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

And if you’re looking for more gaming repetition, check out tired video game tropes that need to die and the most annoying fighter cliches (we still totally love).

The post 9 enemies were tired of killing appeared first on Game News.