Def Jam: Fight For Ny - Rubberbands

[loluntilmypie]

I'll start out positive - I fuckin' love this game. Loved it ever since it first came out. The fights, the story mode, the variety of options available with the fights, oh it was brilliant. Never got tired of it once. So, I decided to pop it back in a couple of days back, relive the old story mode because I always love playing through some of my old games. Me and one of my friends who was over both decided "hey, let's do a best of 3 first thing, the fights on this were always amazing". Human vs human fights, yeah, they were always great fun no matter what, all about skill. So we took the first two fights getting warmed up to the controls again, with some hilarity ensuing at the same time. After the third (and proper) fight, we both decided to dig back into story mode, which I remembered was my favourite part of the game.

What I completely forgot was how many controllers I broke over fighting the AI in the game. And trust me - I always do my best to hold any rage in.

It started with fighting that first guy, Trick - I'd familiarised myself with the controls thanks to the best of 3 with my compadre with some fair fights (even though the AI NEVER fights fairly) and yeah, I did get my ass handed to me once or twice. But I managed to off him after that, and before I knew it I was clearing the other two guys out like it was garbage day... somehow?

Then it got to the first boss. So I was, in my head, thinking "I don't remember being this good, but this should be easy as piss", but deep, DEEP down, I knew something wasn't right.

So the first boss fight starts, both the characters throw their taunts, match starts. Not even 30 seconds go by and I get his health down into the red zone. "Pfff, I got this, now to unleash hell." ... All of the sudden I apparently can't lay a fucking finger on him. I throw punches, he either keeps his block up, counters or somehow manages to pull up an attack whilst mine don't register at all. I try grappling him whilst he's blocking-- "Oh, WHAT? YOU WERE JUST SETTING UP A COUNTER, WHAT THE FUCK?"

Before I know the fight has turned into something like watching a brain-damaged 80-year-old man trying to lay a hit on a jacked-up Spiderman. I just couldn't do anything but get hit back, thrown into walls and eventually destroyed by his Blazin' attack. TWICE. Before I know it, bam, I'm K.O'd by some extremely cheap tactics and I'm just sat there, wondering what in the wide world of hell just happened.

So it took me a few rematches to FINALLY beat him... and after I beat him, I noticed the same pattern appearing each time I fought him: beat him down to next-to-no health, massive fightback where I can't hit him, then I get KO'd.

And then it hit me. This isn't me being spiteful, the AI is ACTUALLY handicapped when it gets backed into a corner like that.

Why the fuck did the people at EA think that giving the AI this much of an unfair advantage would make things right? So what if it's an unfair fight if the human player is CLEARLY better than the AI, that's on the player to either turn up the difficulty or for the programmers to simply program better CPU. It doesn't even give the human any unfair advantage if the CPU beats you down 'til your at 2% health whilst they haven't even had a scratch on them.

I know that this game is 10 years old (holy shit, 10 years? Fuck, I feel old now) but I know this has been a common theme in games. I think they call it rubber-band AI, and in some cases it's understandable why they put it in as long as it doesn't eliminate the effort the player puts in to begin with. There are times, though, like I explained above, where it becomes so fucking frustrating and irritating you may as well put down the controller and go "How about I just let the CPU win? My skill doesn't seem to count for a fucking thing here!"

So I'll just leave it with this question (and for those who TL;DR) - What's the worst kind of Rubber band AI you've come across in any game(s) and why?