The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard - Television Tropes & Idioms

The original Civilization for the PC has a lot of ways for the computer to get a huge advantage over you:
1) Improvements in the Emperor Level are about a third of the cost for the computer.
2) Technologies are discovered at alarming rates.
3) Wonders can be built almost instantly.
4) The computer's caravans are transported instantaneously.
5) The computer never has production penalties despite city-wide riots.
Et cetera.
- In the Civilization sequels, the game manual actually details exactly how much the computer cheats and in what areas at various difficulty levels.
- In Civ2, the AI on higher difficulties would have no qualms about commencing construction of a Wonder and completing it right away.
- It also seems that the game tries to force averages to occur. Try using saves to make sure you always win. If your win chance is 50%, your chance of winning the first fight is 50%, right? Right. Second fight (after your unit is healed), displayed chance to win is still 50%—but try saving before it and loading. Your chances are closer to 25%. Winning a third fight in a row is likely to have even worse odds—but the displayed chance to win is still 50%. The question exists, does it work in reverse also? Sacrifice a dozen or so units for a run of good luck?
  - What you're seeing here is a bug in the game due to a programmer who doesn't understand probability theory. The displayed battle odds are calculated by the naive method of multiplying each unit's hitpoints by the odds of winning a single round of combat, and using that ratio as the odds of winning the battle. The actual odds of winning, based on the battle mechanics, are much harder to calculate, and can deviate significantly from the displayed odds: your "95% victory" fight might actually be a "0.1% victory". Once you do them right, though, it becomes clear that the computer isn't cheating in battle, just lying through statistics.
  - For context, units fight multiple rounds within a single combat until one dies. Thus winning one round in actuality only reduces the opponent by a certain amount of HP. So while a unit with low life may have a 50% chance of winning a round, if they can be killed with one hit, the first hit they take in combat (pretty likely at 50%) will kill them.
- You can't see strategic resources on the map in Civ 3 until you have the skills to use them. The AI can see them all right from the start of the game though, and will make an effort to build cities next to them to give itself an advantage later on.
- If you cheat so that you can control the enemies cities, you will see that despite have far inferiorly built cities, they have HUGE commerce and production bonuses, making them far better than yours.

Close Civilization

In Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, abilities are all learned by specific jobs. Blood Price, for instance, can only be learned by Spellblades, a Viera-only class. Now, there exists a job changing system, so you can use abilities from one class to another, so this means finding Red Mages and Summoners (both Viera jobs) with Blood Price isn't terribly out of the ordinary. However, AI units tend to ignore the exclusivity of support abilities like these, and you'll find plenty of enemy units with abilities they just simply shouldn't have. Illusionist (Humes and Nu Mou only) with Blood Price, despite lacking the Spellblade job necessary to get it? Sure, why not? And, whenever you compete in the "Cup" missions to get scions, some enemy units will have support skills that raise Magick/Resistance, or raise Attack/Defense, or support skills (not Evade Magick, that's a reaction skill) that allows the unit to evade all long-range attacks. Of course, your clan will never learn such skills, oh no.
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has some boss enemies who are granted immunity from the game's law system, while you're stuck playing by the rules. Ice abilities are illegal for the battle? The boss will laugh while casting Blizzaga every turn and the judge will just yellow cards him repeatedly.
- In the PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Onion Knight job is marked by being able to use any piece of equipment, being unable to use abilities, yet having extremely high stats when mastered. However, in one link mission, you and your partner must defeat a team of master Onion Knights who have a full range of powerful abilities equipped.LL hit you back and more than likely screw you over.
- Also, it should be noted that in Final Fantasy Tactics, while the confusion status takes your units out of your control and makes them move and use abilities at random (sometimes ones that benefit your party like injuring an enemy, sometimes ones that hurt your party, and sometimes ones that make no sense, such as using an antidote on a perfectly healthy character), you will find that when an enemy is confused the AI almost always acts just as it would in a normal situation, carrying out attacks with perfect efficiency, and only once in a blue moon actually catering to the status effect by attacking one of its own units.

Close Final Fantasy Tactics

Everything is stacked against you. Everything.
- I'll let SA speak for me on this one..
  - And then you realize that that post refers to the easiest difficulty level, and that there are two more to beat. And those are the ones that net you the unlocks.

Close F-Zero GX

In the first Super Mario Kart game, the AI opponents didn't just have Rubber Band AI, but had infinite stores of super-special weapons and items that in several cases the player was never able to use — namely, the poisoned mushrooms, dinosaur eggs and meandering fireballs. For the items the player could launch, the AI opponent also had the ability to dodge by jumping the kart its own height above the track.
- And they're invincible to the Thwomps, including the electric ones on Rainbow Road.
- Furthermore: the Grand Prix mode would select an order of skill for each of the computer-controlled players, based on your own character selection. If one of the Mario brothers were picked as the "champion" racer (which happened if you chose Bowser or Koopa Troopa) you could expect perfect racing lines and cornering coupled with infinite and arbitrary use of the Super Star, allowing them to go at increased speed with no slowing down, plus invincibility. Having one of the plumbers trigger this on the final stretch, powering either past or through the player and being unable to stop regardless of what's fired at them (or even more annoyingly, just as that red shell was about to knock them out of first place) meant that it was often easier just to start a new game and hope you didn't get one of them as the top racer again.
  - The computer was actually even smarter than simply choosing one "super-racer". I recall working out who the super-racer was in my grand-prix, and deliberately setting out to make sure they came last, and I first. After dozens of attempts, I managed to do this, which would give me enough points to have a bit of lee-way. All it ended up doing was making the character who came second in the first race the NEW super-racer. You just can't win!
Mario Kart Wii will hate you and you will hate it in the form of item distribution. The AI always gets the most powerful items no matter what, but if you happen to be in the back of the pack, expect nothing but a variety of Mushrooms and occasionally a Spiny Shell or Bullet Bill while other items are much more rare. Further, regardless of difficulty level, the AI will be able to dump that fake item block right in front of you just as you were about to draft through them.
- There is a reason for this. The creators decided that the racers in the back places should get more powerful items to have a chance to catch up. The problem is, with 12 racers instead of 8, the whole track becomes a battlefield with explosions, shells, and stars flung left and right. So yeah, you'll get those more powerful items in Grand Prix...if you were at least in 9th place.
  - Mushroom Gorge. Imagine this: 30% of the track is nothing but gigantic toadstools you bounce from and to over an abyss. 20% is a different kind of toadstool you drive across, rather than bounce off of. Using Mushroom powerups or Super Stars will give you too much velocity when you move from one toadstool to another, making you overshoot the next one and fall into the gorge. Now imagine yourself getting nothing but Mushrooms in this track and being unable to force yourself to use them while toadstool-hopping because you know that you will throw yourself into the pit if you try to boost while jumping. To simulate a stroke, just watch the computer drivers use Spiny Blue Shells (items that seek out the first-place driver) and Thunderbolts (shrinkage!) in the middle of a jump so they make you fall down. Get a Bullet Bill (ridiculous speed, invincibility, and guided driving)? Better pray that it will last you over all the mushrooms in the next batch.
- Mario Kart Wii. 12 Players. 11 AI. 150cc, any cup. Expect a Spiny Blue Shell to hit you on the last lap when the finish line is in spitting distance. Even better, imagine one hitting you in the middle of a jump. And for more fun, try getting hit a Spiny Blue Shell, followed by a Red Shell, then a Thunderbolt, and for kicks, a POW Block in the middle of all that action. Item Rape doesn't even come close to defining it.
  - It's not much better on the lower levels, where the computer usually lets the effects of one attack (usually a Thunderbolt or Blooper) wear off before immediately nailing you with a POW or Red/Blue Shell. One advantage of being hit all at once—you generally only spin out once, no matter how many attacks hit you.
  - Rapid fire attacks following a POW block warning are actually what you'd see with human opponents because POW blocks make you lose your items, so the computer fires them all off to make sure they're used for something instead of lost.
  - The computer drivers are so cheap they will always manage to strip you of a powerup you're using for defensive purposes with the most lamebrained maneuvers imaginable—maneuvers you can't duplicate for the life of you, such as taking out all three bananas dragged behind a racer by ramming them once.
  - A lesser form of cheating in Mario Kart Wii is that the computer rarely abides by the driving rules you set. Beginners who play with Automatic drifting will find themsleves having to deal with computers who are drifting masters on top of all the item rape.
- Another ability the computers have in Mario Kart 64 and earlier is the ability to instantly recover from items as long as they weren't on screen when the item hit. The best items would simply stop computers for a moment if you couldn't see them, while the same items used on you would make you fly through the air. If the computers still do this in more recent versions, it isn't as noticeable.
  - The rubber-band AI in Mario Kart 64 is the most egregious in the series. If you'd like to see for yourself, switch the map view to the lap mode (the whole track is in a square) and watch your hard-earned lead evaporate.
As if the Rubberband AI wasn't bad enough, the computer drivers in Mario Kart (all games) have an uncanny timing to hit you right when you are in the air over a Bottomless Pit (or an earlier part of the track, which is even worse as you lost all your velocity and thus can't make the jump, losing even more time), as well as having a noticeably better chance to get the really good items in the lower places than you do. (It should be noted that the physics in Mario Kart is greatly simplified—if you're hit with an attack in midair, you simply stop. Take That, conservation of momentum!) And then you're hit with Thunderbolt from the last placed AI driver so you lose the item anyway.
Double Dash's AI seems to entirely ignore the weight system and kart stats - heavy karts (the only ones available to large characters such as Bowser) all have crappy acceleration but high top speeds. Go ahead, knock Bowser off the track. Invariably, he'll be right on your ass in no time flat - despite the nice long stall that getting put back on the track gives you, and the fact that his crappy acceleration should leave him far behind a cart that's already running at top speed with no slowdowns.
This sums all of the above up quite nicely.
This reveals how much Mario Kart one's played. Just gauge their reaction on the final panel.
The AI being a cheating bastard makes the bits towards the end of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEtmhArbXB4 so much more satisfying.

Close Mario Kart

If a move has an accuracy of less than 100% in Pokemon, you can guarantee that your likelihood of missing is the listed value, while the computer's likelihood of missing is half that, at best. Further, if there is a positive secondary effect that can kick in with a move, you can practically guarantee the computer will get it twice as often. And to top it off, the three status ailments that have a chance of preventing a Pokemon to act (confusion, paralysis, and attraction) will be much more likely to afflict a human player than a computer player. The frustration with this is so great, human players refer to Pokemon built to take advantage of these as "hax" and most are dismissive of those who try to use such tactics in Pv P environments.
- If your Pokemon is confused then you're in for about a 50% chance of dealing damage to yourself. The computer does not go by this rule - although admittedly, Pokemon does a better job with this than some other RPGs, most notably EarthBound, where feeling strange affects your party members nearly 100% but almost never affects your opponents.
- It doesn't help that random computer players with no plot significance tend to have Pokemon that learned powerful moves about five levels early, either.
  - And let's not forget that Gym Leaders don't seem to be governed by the same rules of evolution as the player.
  - In later games, Pokemon learning moves early is actually justified - a skilled breeder can get level-up moves bred into level 1 Pokemon, so presumably the computer-controlled trainers bred their own. While the player can't do this at first, many Tournament Play fans abuse this in the Metagame.
- The battle tower in the latest two games screws with odds to the point where your low odds of success never work and the AI's always do. This is most notable with any instant-kill effect, which theoretically all have 30% success rates. Experienced Battle Tower players key in on anything that could conceivably learn Sheer Cold, Guillotine, Fissure, or Horn Drill first, or lose their entire team in as many rounds as they have Pokemon.
  - One of the worst moves to beware of in the Battle Tower is Double Team. The enemy uses it once and suddenly you can't hit them at all with most moves, you almost have to have a 'sure-to-hit' one
  - Or Haze. Nobody is going to make way just to slot Haze into their movesets though.
- The Stadium games deserve special mention, where the most common (read:only in all but a handful) method of loss for someone with a decent team is cheating computers.
  - This troper counted. Yes, the Mewtwo that serves as the boss of the first Stadium (or second, if you're Japanese) has infinite PP. Sadly, these are the only such games. This troper has often lost legendaries to recoil damage from Struggle
Lance's Dragonite in the original games has Barrier. Go on. Check. Done? Yep. Dragonite's line has forever been incapable of learning Barrier. Another example of the games LITERALLY cheating.
- And it's not only in Red, Green, and Blue. In Silver/Gold/Crystal, he cheated extensively. Not only did he delevel his entire party from in the 50s-60s to the 40s with a cap of a Lv50 Dragonite, he EVOLVED his two Dragonair from the earlier games into Dragonites, despite the fact that they can't evolve until Lv55. What's more, his Aerodactyl knows Rock Slide, which it couldn't learn until FireRed/LeafGreen. So he is forever the cheating bastard.
In Generation II, when you face the Rival in the Burned Tower, he has a Haunter... at level 20. Gastly is supposed to evolve at level 25. Stupid Cheating Computer Bastard.
Pokemon Colosseum has one particularly annoying thing that the opponent gets to decide his moves after you use any items or send out any Pokemon. It leads to the very annoying thing of not being able to cure a pokemon of confusion as, when you do, the opponent uses Confuse Ray on him again, despite that there's no way he'd use it normally!
- The above is why I will never use a Misdreavus again.
- Some of the Gen IV pokes will do this as well. This can lead to an entire team being put to sleep or poisoned.
And there's Bertha's Quagsire in Diamond and Pearl. He continuously spams Protect (which never fails, even when abused to bits) and Double Team. It's blockable via Taunt, but taunt wears off pretty quickly for some reason.

Close Pokemon

While the AI in Super Smash Bros Melee and Brawl isn't of Rubber Band variety, it still possesses reflexes well beyond any skilled human player, including, but not limited to:
- Being able to parry/reflect any projectile with just the shield, something that requires frame-precision timing, thus rendering projectiles largely useless. Naturally, this is not an issue if the human player is using a character who does not possess a useful projectile.
  - This has been remedied in Brawl, where the computer AI, even on the hardest difficulty, is not capable of consistently pulling this off.
- The AI also notices when items have appeared off screen, resulting in it running off in the middle of a heated duel to grab an item that it shouldn't have even noticed until it came on-screen. On no stage is this act of cheating more obvious than on the Temple stage, where the AI will happily abandon the fight all of a sudden to run all the way to the other side of the stage to grab a Pokeball that only appeared just a second ago.
  - If stereo sound is enabled, one should quite easily hear the tell-tale *plink-plink* of a Pokeball hitting the ground off-screen. This only applies to Brawl (where, ironically, the Pokemon are nowhere as good as they were Melee); in Melee the Pokeball makes no special sound, and you don't know that it dropped somewhere until they use it. This now applies to the Dragoon pieces, and they make no distinct sound upon impact.
- No Interface Screw in the world is going to deter the AI.
  - When Togepi appears and performs Night Shade, the screen goes COMPLETELY black. Not only you can't see what the hell you are doing, but the AI knows EXACTLY where you are in the darkness, making this Pokemon move more of a hindrance.
  - Also, when the Nintendog appears, nothing happens to the AIs.
  - Also in Brawl, the AI have perfect bearings when the controls or the stage in Spear Pillar is reversed, making the fight much harder and cheaper than it needs to be.
  - Not to mention generally grabbing a Cloaking Device in any single player mode in Melee. There was an Event match that had both Fox and Falco permanently invisible just to drive the opposing point home. Evil bastards.
- The final match before Master Hand in brawl is a Battle Royal... except for the fact that it's not. CPU characters focus on killing the player, instead of each other. This is even more evident with the Dragoon. It always focuses on you.
  - In fact, this seems to be the case in a regular free for all match. There will always be at least one guy who will stalk you no matter how much you try to distance yourself and when they do, it attracts attention from the other AI players, thus you get caught in the "brawl."
The computer also knows what effect clocks will have. If you see a clock, and don't see the computer gunning for it, when you pick it up, it will slow you down. It can also tell apart mushrooms, which is difficult but not impossible for the player, as well as pokeballs and assist trophies.

Close Super Smash Bros.

In the Street Fighter series, there are moves known as "charge moves" which require holding the joystick in a certain direction for a short period. The computer, however, doesn't have to do this and can often perform a charge move in the middle of moving in the opposite direction, such as using Blanka's charge-back roll attack while walking forward. This also applies to "spin" moves (moves which require a 180 degree, 360, or more cycle of joystick motion). Most obvious the 3,000th time Zangief hits you with a full-strength spinning piledriver (the "air" version, triggered by any upwards joystick click, is approximately 3/4 the damage of the ground version).
- Zangief in Street Fighter 2, whose Spinning Piledriver had such high priority that, if a character would shoot a projectile a point blank range, it was actually possible to grab the player after the shot got off and still do the attack without the attack doing any effect (the shot would go right through him). At point blank range (literally directly next to an opponent). This was toned down in later games, but this ability has returned in Street Fighter 4.
- In all fairness, he doesn't have much else going for him.
- Worse yet was Balrog. He could execute dashing punches faster than the player can recover from a block. He had the option of using them exclusively until the player's life was bled away. Only a perfectly timed Dragon Punch, Flash Kick or Spinning Lariat could stop the nefarious beast. This made him potentially the most difficult boss.
  - Fortunately, Balrog was pretty dumb and would rarely do this. You could usually beat him by just crouching and sweeping.
- The charge move behavior has been fixed in later Capcom fighters, such as Vampire Savior. But perhaps as a throwback to the cheating AI in Street Fighter 2, ~~Little Red Riding Hood~~ Baby Bonnie Hood has a super move that enables her to use her high-damaging charge attack, Smile & Missile, without charging (replacing her normal punch attacks) for a short period of time.
- Seth Seth Seth Seth FUCKING SETH.
  - In Street Fighter IV's defense, you can unlock every character in about an hour (everyone but Seth in about half an hour) by setting the difficulty to "easiest", which is Capcom's way of saying, "We know our AI is ridiculously cheap and not everyone likes being frustrated by that. Just play it on easiest".
In the Mortal Kombat arcade series, the computer player often blatantly cheats. Given that this is the game series that gave the name to MK Walker, you will find a good number of examples here.
- One textbook case vessel of the trope and a bane to most players is Jade in UMK 3 who activates her invincibility technique THE INSTANT you throw a projectile at her. It doesn't help that when she activates this, she actually runs at you in the instant she does without any warning whatsoever and devastates you with her uber-long combo with no resistance and does so with impeccable timing.
- In the original Mortal Kombat, computer characters ducked and slowly slid across the floor to counter a barrage of player fireballs.
- Here are some gems for Mortal Kombat 2.
  - On ANY match after the first few, you cannot throw the computer unless it's stunned or immobilized. It would ALWAYS throw you instead. In early revisions, it would even throw you when it was incapacitated. You could freeze the cpu solid with your ice ball, but if you tried to throw it, it would throw you back WHILE STILL LOOKING FROZEN. Opponent dazed for "Finish Him!" if you accidentally did a throw, he'd STILL throw you back. And if that took you to no life, you'd lose. Absolutely hilarious, unless you are the one it happened to.
  - Whenever you did Scorpion's screen side shifting teleport, the computer would turn around and send a projectile your way... before you even left your side of the screen. Humans can't do this, but actually have to wait for you to wrap around before they turn around. However, if your screen wrapping teleport failed because you were backed into the corner... it would STILL turn around and fire the other way! Unless you were playing against a character with a really fast projectile recovery, this resulted in you getting a free chance to harpoon the computer. Hilarity Ensues.
Dragonball licensed games have this during story missions. For instance, some characters in later stages are programmed to automatically dodge most combo attacks (like throwing your enemy in the air and teleporting to hit them up there, more than one energy attack, etc.). This becomes a problem in levels where you can get a Ring Out. Because the enemy will doubtless be able to break your guard and counterattack whenever he feels like, you'll be easily knocked out the ring by him, while he can simply decide not to be hurt by your attacks.
Soul Series has their moments of blatant cheating, but Soul Calibur III has the most notorious examples.
- The AI will suddenly block every throw, land their throws on your character despite being theoretically out of range, block or counter every move the player has used so far in the "set" of battles (even if the CPU character's back is turned, and it's not Voldo!). Read: The computer opponent will read your controller inputs. Every. Single. Time.
  - Did you try changing controller ports?
  - Smartass.
- If you get knocked down even once, you'll usually NEVER get a chance to fight back, unless the CPU decides to ease up.
- SNK Boss Night Terror is an especially egregious example, nulling the time-honored Ring-Out defeat by flying back when knocked out of the arena (sure Word Of God stated they're trying to de-emphasize the use of Ring-Outs...), and a stance that rendered it invincible.
- Setsuka, when controlled by the computer. Just... Setsuka. She is the destroyer of controllers and the crusher of souls. Not only is she incredibly fast, but she's able to land devastating combos while the player character is still in midair even when using air control, giving said character absolutely NO CHANCE of fighting back! She can also block almost all throws, exploits your weak points without mercy, and almost always makes it impossible to get to Night Terror, since you have to follow a certain path AND not lose a single battle in the process!
- Even when you DO actually have a good chance of winning, the opponent will suddenly go completely batshit insane in terms of speed and power, and will demolish your entire life meter in two or three hits. Really, really noticeable in Chronicles of the Sword. Chronicle 5 and onward will make you snap your controller in sheer frustration. Even worse is that you have to beat this mode once in order to unlock some of the custom parts for custom fighters that cannot be unlocked via abuse of versus mode.
  - Thankfully, a handy fix for most of this can be found, Anti-Ai moves
  - Soul Calibur 3 takes this to a cruel level with a few bosses in Chronicles mode. These bosses take ludicrously low damage from attacks and never flinch. While this seems like it would lead to a long, hit-and-fade battle, it tends to lead to the computer MK Walking towards you, since you can't push it back, and knocking you off the ledge. Repeat for your whole army. You lose and have wasted the last 30 minutes.
- The AI's blatant cheating is why no one minds spamming the handful of moves (example:Iron Sword A+B/L2) they can't block or dodge. Even when doing this, though, the above stipulation will still give you trouble; same goes for "ice," which tends to send your fighter careening off the edge of the ring at the slightest provocation, instantly taking 50% of your health no matter how high your level.
Guilty Gear is very... well... guilty of this. On top of the usual array of unfair SNK Boss attributes for the "boss" versions of otherwise regular characters—dealing dramatically more and taking dramatically less damage compared to their playable counterparts, doing even the most absurdly impossible-to-input moves in the middle of combos completely at will, gaining a full bar of tension with a thought, etc.—all AI characters on high enough difficulty settings or close enough to the final match of Arcade mode gain the ability to psychically read controller input. Many characters rely on having a good mix-up game, placing continuous pressure on an opponent until they finally make a mistake in their blocking, and going from there. It works pretty well against humans so long as the attacker doesn't get too predictable. Against the CPU, though, mix-up characters are almost completely useless, as every attack is more or less a polite request for the computer to please consider allowing this next one to actually connect for once. Which is usually denied.
- There is also, notably, Boss I-No from Guilty Gear XX — she happens to have a boss-only move (which has recently been added to the player moveset, but not in the game she's a boss in) called 'Megalomania' which spams heart-shaped projectiles, and if you so much as graze one the entire swarm will mug you. It has three ranges — one that's fairly easy to dodge, one that's kind of like a wave and needs to be walked through, and one that fills the entire screen in front of her. The obvious solution to that last one might be to block or to leap over and behind her before she lets it go . . . but tell that to the guy who's freaking out at the sight of innumerable 'warning' signs covering 90% of the screen (the attack, it should be noted, is kind enough to tell you where it's going to hit).
  - Incidentally, the way you beat that last iteration? It doesn't last long, so it's actually easy to, stand right next to I-no and time a double jump. Don't jump behind her. That's the cue for the projectiles to change direction and swarm you.
Those who played SNK vs. Capcom (also known as "SvC Chaos") learned to dislike Goenitz, an SNK sub-boss with an attack targeting one of four areas on the screen (close, close-mid, mid, far) that always knew exactly where you would be, canceled projectiles, and was spammed constantly, making getting close enough to hit an exercise in frustrating patience.
- Even Goenitz's bastardhood paled in the face of Ryu's, whose anti-air Dragon Punch special had easily abusable invincibility frames A player can learn to take advantage of this, but not with the CPU's efficiency. What made Ryu a nightmare was that he used it all the time and could counter literally anything but projectiles with it. The only way to win against a late-level Ryu was to wait for him to attack and pray you could counter before his move ended (when he would inevitably Dragon Punch).
  - In a couple of ways, Goenitz was even worse in The King OF Fighters '96, since he could do desperation moves without restrictions while giving more and receiving less damage to/from the player.
Eternal Fighter Zero is full of this. On 3 or 4 difficulty, CPU-controlled characters do things that simply are not possible, such as dodging your attacks the frame they come out. Also, CPU Akane seems to have the ability to combo any attack into any other attack, which never works when you play as her.
- Just as annoying was Ayu, who would parry and counter up to 80% of all your attacks on high difficulty levels.
In Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, the AI opponents will often head towards powerups that are offscreen, that the player has no idea that they're there.
If your attack is blocked by the computer in Fatal Fury 2, the computer will throw you. Doesn't matter what difficulty level, or how strong the attack and the subsequent blockstun is - the computer will throw you.
The nigh-forgotten Eternal Champions games on the Sega Genesis and Sega CD were 2D fighters that took the unusual approach of requiring "inner energy" for all special moves. Theoretically, this forced the player to learn the characters and apply specific strategies in every possible matchup... Except against the AI, which could always execute specials with sheer and utter disregard of its own energy levels.
- Even more, well, insulting, characters have an ability called Insult which allows them to sacrifice one piece of their special gauge to destroy a little more of their opponents. The computer, especially the final boss (bosses in the Sega CD version), is quite fond of repeatedly Insulting you from a distance to render you impotent — usually shortly before, with a blatantly flashing EMPTY gauge, they execute their ultimate full-gauge-requiring attacks, some of which doing things like rendering the character completely invincible (the final boss(es) have these, naturally). Did we mention if you lose in the final battle, you can't continue?
The SNES game Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story probably deserves a mention. Whether or not the Demon with the halberd represents Bruce Lee's historically unalterable death, it is basically invincible, there is no way to avoid it, and it will end up killing you no matter what you do.
- While the Demon's abilities certainly are an example of this trope, it is possible to win that fight. Have full health and finish its health meter by using the nunchuck choke.
The Game Boy Color fighting game Power Quest has one character (known as the "Announcer") who randomly shows up out of nowhere and forces you to fight him. It's possible to run away from him, but he's slightly faster than you, so fighting him is almost inevitable.
In that same vein, Richard Wong in the Psychic Force games can become unbeatable in a fight by spamming his magically-appearing sword move.
The King Of Fighters suffered this terribly in the '94 and '95 incarnations. There was an ability called "Evade" that, if timed right, allowed the character to dodge attacks. This translated to "The computer is immune to projectiles". And in a callback to Fatal Fury 2, getting blocked when you jumped in would lead to an instant throw. '96 pulled Evade completely, replacing it with the trademark "Roll", one of many reasons it's considered the first high point of the series.
- Another nasty SNK Boss advantage is one that the bosses of XI have. In addition to the usual SNK unfairness, the game uses a gauge system that goes up when you hit the opponent and down when they hit you to measure how well you do and decides who wins at time out based on that. The bosses gauge takes an ENORMOUS leap if they so much as brush past you, you however barely make it twitch even if you hit them multiple times. Combined with the fact the timer acts like it is on speed combines to add yet another layer of evil to the mix.
Tekken 5's Jinpachi Mishima was a great example of this trope. He had The Stomp, an auto-stun move that didn't do damage but left your character floating and unable to block for at least seven seconds, an eternity in a fighting game. This was even worse in Dark Resurrection, when the computer learned how to do juggles with three signature uppercuts in a row, which took off about half your health. The version of the character given to the player, of course, did not have nearly as much priority for the stomp, which also had to be timed with the enemy attack (unlike the AI version which could just be done whenever).
In the Xbox remake of Dead or Alive 2, if you are playing Hayabusa (yes that one), Ein will block and counter pretty much every move that you ever make.
- While we're on the subject of Dead Or Alive, here's a message for whichever DOA4 programmer thought it would be funny to make the CPU opponent immune to throws during stagger animations: I hate you so much... so fucking much...
Virtua Fighter's Dural will severely punish you for ANY mistakes, though without being an SNK Boss exactly. She's still bound by the game rules (she does have a mix of the best moves available and is terrific at juggling) and won't down attack you.
In Castlevania Judgement, Dracula WILL put his back to the screen, and thus you will not see what attack he is going to make.
In Naruto: The Broken Bond, not only will the computer use Substitutions with perfect timing, but they are also seemingly able to use the Rage Mode (which speeds them up and makes them take no damage from anything but damage-dealing jutsus) in the middle of a combo. Combine this with the fact that, if they beat on you enough, they CAN have Rage mode at full, or nearly full, health, and the game gets very frustrating.
- Nevermind that if you make one mistake you get totally owned. They'll juggle you, never letting you even block. If the computer makes a mistake it doesn't matter because you have to have pretty much perfect timing to hit them at that moment anyway. Not to mention that they'll almost ALWAYS be able to charge up their jutsu but you'll never get even one chance.
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: It takes tournament level skill to match the AI's comboing ability... on the default difficulty setting ("2: Very Easy"). One hesitates to think what it's like on "8: Hardest."
- Not all that much different, actually. Eventually, as you increase the difficulty, the computer stops getting smarter, instead increasing the damage you take and decreasing the damage you inflict.
The first Samurai Shodown game was very guilty of this: The CPU could knock you out in as little as 2 hits/attacks, dizzy you repeatedly, connect more hits with the same attacks you used, stun you for more time than you could, or all of the above at the same time.
Super Godzilla for the Super Nintendo did this against, well, pretty much everyone. Your own fighting spirit (a measure of how strong your techniques are) rises pretty slowly, compared to the UFO which is nearly permanently at maximum, or Mechagodzilla, who can go from nothing to max in a heartbeat, and teleport-body-slam you in the process. He will then use eye lasers just to mess with you.
TNA iMPACT! the game. Anyone who is an established wrestler will automatically be twice as good as you, no matter who you choose. Certain matches in story mode can consist of you spending 90% of the match beating the hell out of them, only for them to come out of nowhere with enough counters to use a special move, hit it once, and win.
- WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2009's career mode suffers the same issue above when facing the "higher level" wrestlers.

Close Fighting Game

In Puzzle Quest, every time either combatant makes a move, there is a small (5% or less) chance that they will get an extra turn. The AI knows when its "random" extra turns are coming and, when they are, it moves gems in ways that would directly conflict with its normal priorities if the player was going to go next. It also seems to know in advance what the "random" gem spawns will be.
A certain chess program, when it was close to losing, would actually flash the message "The [piece] has escaped!" and that piece would appear back on the board. Obviously, only the computer's pieces ever 'escaped'. One suspects this isn't how Deep Blue beat Kasparov.
- Watch the chess in Kubrick's 2001 very carefully: HAL declares a checkmate that doesn't actually exist, and his human opponent is either so bored or has so strongly assumed that HAL would win, that he doesn't challenge the mistake.
- THAT'S how Deep Blue beat Kasparov. It at one point made a mistake, Kasparov assumed that there was no way such a machine could make such a stupid mistake, did not exploit it, and lost.
- And again on the subject of Chess Titans, only the computer can use en passant. It uses en passant according to the standard rules of chess. The player is given bad info on how en passant works in the game's help file, and is forbidden both orthodox en passant and game-file-type en passant - even though the game file says both sides can use it.
Even old handheld toys based on game shows like Wheel Of Fortune and The Price Is Right had the computer cheat. If the game was based on luck, you would be screwed over quite often. If you went against a computer opponent, they would always know the answer to the questions very early in the rounds or simply be much luckier than you.
In Yakuman DS, a Mahjong game from the same people at Nintendo who make the Mario Kart and Mario Party games, the tougher computer opponents have ridiculously good luck. The AI performs Double Reach (only possible when your opening draw is one away from a winning hand) numerous times, often multiple times in a single match, not to mention a suspiciously high rate of Tenhou/Chiihou hands (i.e. when your opening draw is a winning hand. Tenhou and Chiihou are basically the equivalent of being dealt a Royal Flush in poker). More details on Double Reach, Tenhou, and Chiihou here.
The Mahjong Fight Club series, on the other hand, completely subverts this trope. Konami's official web site for Mahjong Fight Club actually has an entire page dedicated to assuring fans that the random number generator is not rigged or biased, the CPU doesn't cheat, and multiple CPUs do not collude with each other.
In Peggle's Duel mode, the harder AI difficulties basically get a Zen Ball every single turn. In a game where the slightest adjustment in angle can mean a radically different bounce, this means the AI has a ridiculous rate of accuracy as to where the ball goes after 2-3 bounces.
This is the whole point of Bastet, a Tetris fan clone with a ~~random~~ piece generator designed to ~~not give you pieces you really need~~ always give you the worst possible piece for your situation.
In the NES game Anticipation, computer controlled opponents can guess the string's length of letters and can screw up as many times as there are letters in the word(s) while humans only get two chances to guess a letter before their turn is over. On the hardest difficulty, the opponents buzz in the instant the die shows the number of spaces they want to move and can guess the answer correctly without even knowing what the category is, how long the word is, or even before anything is actually drawn.

Close Puzzle/Board Games

The yellow car from RC Pro-Am exhibited signs of Rubber Band AI during certain races. Well, not exactly... the rubber band outright snapped, making that car move nearly twice as fast as all of the other cars on the track (including your own, even if you collected all of the upgrades). When you heard that tell-tale high-pitched squeal around the beginning of the second lap, it was your ass.
Burnout 3: Takedown features broken one-way Rubberband AI in many of its events. When you're in the lead, driving perfectly and constantly boosting, the AI will be, as a helpful yellow pop-up caption exclaims, "right on your tail!" no matter how many times you wreck them. The moment you crash, they start to take an insurmountable 30-second lead that is nearly impossible to catch up to.
Abused to a bizarre end in the Super Nintendo game Super Off-Road: The Baja. Each and every one of your competitors had their own preferred place in the lineup, and Heaven forbid you should attempt to take that place from them. For example: Should you take third place from the AI driver who typically came in third, he would become a super driver fueled by rage; he would gain speed, cut corners, ram your truck mercilessly, and pretty much suddenly become the Uberdriver in his efforts to dislodge you from third place. Once you dropped back to fourth place, though, that driver would return to normal, and never challenge Mr. Number Two for HIS place. (Of course, then Mr. Fourth Place would have his turn at harassing you.) Coupled with the tendency for the AI in first place to absolutely obliterate you should you dare violate his sacred position AND stage last-minute comebacks at speeds approaching those of a low-flying jet fighter, winning any race at any difficulty level became far more based on luck (and your ability to keep from being rammed into oblivion) than skill.
Racing game Wipeout Pure is guilty of rubberbanding, starting the player in last place in every race and of unlimited item use - in the first lap of every race, every NPC racer gets unlimited turbo boosts, making a first place after the first lap a matter of pure luck in obtaining a Quake weapon in the first two or three weapon pads. Even if you do, you still have to contend with turbo boost-powered rubberbanding...
- On the other hand, Wipeout 3 (not sure about the others) is nice enough to prevent the AI from even getting the two most powerful weapons available. Somewhat justified in that said weapons are extremely destructive, one of which is an instant kill. Given some thought, thank everything holy and sacred the AI can't get that. It would be too much, as instead of rubberband AI, they just have god-like skills all the time.
Sega GT 2002. While not necessarily rubberbanding, in the later races you can be assured that one tiny crash = no chance of winning. Even if you're driving newly-repaired, mint condition cars that are at the very top of your price range (and thus better).
Classic F1 racing game Super Monaco Grand Prix featured a version of this that kicked in only after you'd become World Champion. In order to speed up the process by which a driver rose in the ranks, the game featured a system of "challenging" whereby if you beat someone in a better team twice in a row, you'd be offered their place (and thus, a better car). Once you'd won the championship, you were automatically placed in the best team (Mc Laren ersatz "Madonna") and then promptly challenged by some unknown newcomer in a team halfway down the rankings. Scoffing as the first race of the new season begins, you can only watch in horror as his blatantly inferior vehicle accelerates past you and proceeds to completely destroy you. Two races later, he's driving your supposedly top car (even though he shouldn't need it...) and you're stinking up the field in the crappy blue and turquoise thing he started in.
In Ridge Racer 6 for the Xbox 360 (and perhaps other Ridge Racer games), the computer cheats so often it's almost pointless to even try the harder difficulty levels and race types. Special races, for example, pit you against a car that you can win if you beat it. This car is always better than any car you have available at the time. Also, the "Reverse Nitro" races are well known for rampant cheating. In a Reverse Nitro race, your car cannot gain nitro from drifting like it can normally, so you are given an extra two tanks to work with and the only way to get them back is to go into what the game calls "Ultimate Charge" (coming out of a nitro blast while drifting). Somehow, all computer-controlled cars in these races can gain nitro simply by driving in a straight line for a couple of seconds, completely ignoring all the rules for nitro boosts set out for you. This means they can, suddenly, blow past you with a fully charged 3-tank nitro boost just after they finished another 3-tank nitro boost.
- In Ridge Racer 64, not only did the rival car have ridiculously effective Rubber Band AI but if you crashed into it, you stopped dead while the rival wobbled a bit but basically carried on unaffected. This was the case even if the rival crashed into you from behind, in which case it would drive right through your motionless car.
In Midtown Madness, some racing modes involve competing against computer-controlled cars, and since you are always in danger of smashing into vehicles or obstacles, it helps greatly that they are too (not to mention that it's gratifying to see them smash head-on into oncoming traffic or miss a critical turn). Except that if they ever leave your immediate surroundings and end up in a part of the city of Chicago that isn't currently being "simulated," they go into cruise mode and move quickly and safely wherever they are meant to go next. In one of the races, a single computer car takes a very different route than the rest, meaning that in order to win you must be very lucky to have it crash during the parts of the race when it ends up being near you.
The game based on the Dragon Booster television show is guilty of this. While you only ever have five energy points, and have to recharge by getting powerups, the AI racers have unlimited energy, ignore obstacles (offscreen, at least; onscreen, they just charge into nearly all of them), and even have equipment that is unable to be obtained by the player. It's made up for in that the AI is dumb as a post.
In Red Baron Arcade (as with many, many flight/driving/racing type games), if there is any penalty to being rammed, you can bet that the computer has any number of planes or cars (or whatever) cheerfully lining up to ram the absolute crap out of you as soon as you start targeting the thing that will let you win that level.
- CURSE YOU RED BARON!!!
Need For Speed Underground combined Rubber Band AI with your opponents always having just slightly better cars than you. Because of that it was easier to deliberately downgrade your car in the endgame by using a weak engine and so on. The AI would be downgraded as well so that relatively everything stayed the same, but the race would be a lot slower and therefore more forgiving.
- Furthermore, Underground 2 and Most Wanted also had a particularly egregious feature whereby even if you managed to build up a decent lead in spite of the Rubber Band AI, in the last lap of the race one of the opponents would make a miraculous comeback and pass you unless you managed to block him or had a lot of nitro to burn. This was presumably done to make the races more dramatic, but of course the end result was just more frustration.
- The car damage thing is inverted, since cop cars can be taken out fairly easily while your own car is indestructible. This is ~~balanced~~ outweighed by the fact that the computer has an infinite supply of them, though.
- The cops also rarely go after the computer players. There may be one or two occasions where if you deliberately slow down and give up your position so the other can get the cop first. Otherwise, the cop will usually go after you, and completely ignore everyone else.
Speaking of Most Wanted, once the backup timer has run out, the cops are free to respawn anywhere they want. Nothing quite beats seeing a cop car flicker into view on the golf course. Of course, if you try to respawn by using R, it's an instant bust, no matter where the cops are.
- Not to mention the effect in latter tollbooth challenges, where if you take the shortcut through opposing traffic, there always ends up being traffic there. If you take the long way around, surprise, surprise, no traffic!
- Need for Speed Most Wanted actually cheats in multiplayer mode. You can upgrade every car in the game to 100% on all three stats (acceleration, speed and handling), except for the game's signature car, the BMW M3 GTR which cannot be upgraded at all and is therefore pretty bad in single player. However, as bad as its ingame performance is, its listed stats are worse. And in multiplayer mode, the game attempts to ensure a fair race by equalising the stats of all cars in the race. The result is that your shiny Porsche Carrera GT that ordinarily blows the doors off the M3 GTR is detuned to a limping piece of junk with the same stats as the M3 GTR... at which point the M3 GTR is the better car and will proceed to beat you. This is probably a design flaw, but ironically the M3 GTR is driven in career mode by a cheating bastard who took it from you after rigging a race through sabotage.
In Star Wars Episode I: Racer, the AI racers never crash, never run into walls, always hit turns perfectly, and never have to use the boost.
While most of the time, it doesn't really help the AI, computer players on Carmageddon 2 can sometimes do stuff limited to human players, such as passing through the walls (when the player is far from them, their clipping is off), run past pedestrians without smooshing them, etc. Also, sometimes the AI can recover by themselves (which is normally impossible, except by a glitch of sorts) and can inexplicably change directions in a mere number of frames and speed up from 10 MPH to 250.
- The same is also true in all other games in the Carmageddon series. HOWEVER, the computer cars cannot make use of their "no clipping" cheat-ability when the player has the main map-screen up; their location is always shown and they move much more player-like.
Cel Damage's AI players can make sharper turns than the human player. This can be seen when the player is killed, and for the brief seconds until the respawn, the computer player (most likely the assassin) can make some incredible curves, even while standing on the same place.
Test Drive for PS 2, Xbox and GC. The AI is a cheating bastard in this game. No matter how skilled you are or how powerful your car is, the AI will always gain a ridiculous speed and handling boost and catch up, making races a Luck Based Mission.

Close Racing

An ancient (well, 8-bit) version of this trope is the way the AI put together bands of random wandering monsters in Pool of Radiance. If you created characters with maximised stat scores, you often found yourself facing wandering monsters more numerous and more powerful than half the "set" encounters in the game. Battles when simply travelling from place to place therefore often turned out to be epic struggles against 50+ goblins or kobolds compared with the typically 10-15-something encounters which were part of the plot. The reason was that the AI took stat scores heavily into account in generating random monster encounters.
The Triple Triad card game in Final Fantasy VIII had another blatant example of cheating. Normally, the human player and the computer can see each other's hands, making the card game fairly easy to win. However, whenever the hands are concealed, the computer's win rate goes up more than tenfold, as it seems perfectly aware what cards you have, and its cards are not so much "hidden" as "the computer's single remaining card has the exact combination of three values, in three specific locations, needed to win." This is especially frustrating as you watch it happen ten times in a row.
- Made even worse when you're on the Lunar Base, where practically every card rule is in effect.
  - There is a way to limit the ruleset, involving initiating and then canceling card games until your opponent offers to play by a different set of rules. Do it enough, and you'll spread favorable rules from earlier in the game to a new area. However, it took a disassembler to find the mechanics of this, making it something of a Guide Dang It.
- The ever-hated Random rule. Exactly What It Says On The Tin, it picks out completely random cards from your collection for the current match. Whereas most players are trying to complete the collection and therefore have a LOT of weak cards and a few strong ones, it's to be expected that you'll end up with 2 or 3 (or more, if you're really unlucky) low-level cards, but you'll almost never see the computer with the same weaklings you just drew. There's a reason everyone loathes this rule, and god help you if you let it spread...
The big battle at the end of Tales of the Sword Coast (the expansion for the first Baldurs Gate) had an ability that allowed a save—but blatantly overrode the results of the save to affect the target anyway, every single time to every single party member in over a dozen tries. Even when not a single one of the main character's saves was greater than 1 (and some were less than one). Without a save penalty on that ability of at least -10, it is...highly improbable at best to miss all the saves. Oddly, though, around the thirteenth try, something weird happened at the ability ended up reflected at the creature... and it didn't make the save, either. Heh. (The ability in question is a gaze attack, and a potion of mirrored eyes offers complete and infallible protection from it, but those are rare.)
- In Baldurs Gate when you're robbing houses, there's a good chance of you getting that awful "Somebody has spotted you and called the guard" even when there's nobody on the floor. This is because the cats are spies for the Flaming Fist. Yes, that's right, you can be reported to the guard if a cat can see you.
- From Baldur's Gate II and onwards, all high-level mages (and there are a lot of these) get something called a 'tattoo of power', which is a spell trigger that can activate any number of defensive spells instantly and without any action from the user and stacks on top of existing spell triggers and contingencies. Oh, wait, did I say 'all mages'? Silly me, I meant 'every mage except you and the ones you can have in your party'.
- Speaking of teleportation, nearly every mage in Baldur's Gate II can teleport — except for you. No one in the universe has a dimension door scroll for you to buy, with no explanation given at all.
  - This isn't The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard, this is the developers removing the spell and citing 'potential abuse' as the reason. Jerks. Fortunately, there is a downloadable mod (the D0Tweaks mod) that'll restore dimension door to the game for player use.
For reasons never explained in-game (which is a rare occurrence), the Krogan enemies in Mass Effect can regenerate to full health in two seconds when you destroy their very last HP. Now, Krogans are clearly labelled as "natural super soldiers" by the in-game encyclopedia, but that doesn't explain why your Krogan buddy, supposedly a badass among the badasses in his kind, can't do the same. Basically, it's an auto-regen power that pops out of thin air.
- You can shut this little trick down with Polonium or Sledgehammer Rounds, though. Not only do these ammo mods inflict poison damage, they prevent regeneration. And these mods are fairly easy to get.
Surprisingly enough, Chrono Cross suffers from this. When in battle, the party can only use their element magic attacks when they have generated enough "Combo" through basic attacks to charge their element grid, and they can only use each slotted element once per battle. Your enemies are not limited by this. It is especially frustrating when fighting bosses, because they can immediately use high-level elements without generating a single normal attack, and they can use any of their elements, even the unique special-attacks, as many times as they want. The longer the fight goes on, the less you have to work with as your element grid runs out... not so for your opponent!
In Final Fantasy XI, at least for most jobs, in order to unlock the ability to level from 70 to 75 on a character, you must defeat Maat, a geriatric yet powerful fighter, in combat. It normally is somewhat challenging, and for some job classes, an important test of their fighting skills. The cheating comes in the form of Asuran Fists, which has the potential to take a player out in one shot. The problem, however lies in his ability to use the attack consecutively, WITHOUT END, until you are a pile of fine paste. Horror stories of Paladins using their Invincible 2-hour and getting smacked in the face with Asuran Fists for 0 damage each time repeatedly(Until said Invincible wears off, then they die) pretty much confirm that no matter how hard you try, it's the old fart that decides if you win or lose.
- That is, unless you play the Thief version of the fight and steal the old fart's Warp Scroll...and WIN INSTANTLY. WHAT?!
  - White Mages can also win by hunkering down and healing enough to outlast him (having to duck Asuran Fists somehow), and Samurais can win by performing a third-level skillchain against him (which involves switching between two weapon types and using many abilities with perfect timing). It's basically him saying, "Wow, you're so good that I'm just going to give up now." Except that outside of these very few jobs, the only way to make him give up is to get him to low enough HP (below 25% or so).
In Eve Online NPC ships such as pirates have no capacitor (energy) which means capacitor warfare is useless against them. This means you can't prevent them from firing energy-based weapons and can't stop them from running their shield repairers, armour repairers or afterburners. Additionally, they never have to reload their weapons. It's not THAT irritating because NP Cs are pretty stupid, but it is more than a little unfair.
- Then Apocrypha introduced The Sleepers who have all of the above advantages, much more HP, and much better AI than standard mooks.
In Golden Sun, some enemies can use Psyenergy, and generally have huge amounts of PP. Now, you have an ability called Bind that seals it off and a Djinn that can do the same thing, but this only stops attacks that start with the word casts, and not with ones that start with used. Not to mention that attacks that start with used are more frequent that ones that start with casts and aren't tied to PP. Did I mention that some enemies can seal off your PP and you have no abilities that can be used after that?
In World Of Warcraft, there's a boss whose story leans toward this. When he was first introduced, one of his actions was to turn the entire raid facing him into sheep and sit down for a drink to restore mana - a parody of the mage class. However, burst damage would break his concentration, so one of the Shaman's newly-introduced Elemental Totems (short-term summons) could keep him from restoring mana. The dev team didn't like that, so if he gets hit while drinking he'll just pop a mana potion instead to get the same effect, and use the time saved to get a head start on blasting everyone.
- Some bosses can be manadrained but exept for a few where keeping their mana down is part of the fight strategy. They can cast spells even at 0% mana.
Blue Dragon's Final boss is a God damn cheat. It summons a monster that attacks outside of its own turn, and it can use the same attack twice in one turn. Including full on, unique-to-that-monster attacks.
The RPG Metal Hearts: Replicant Rampage, is just this trope incarnate. First off, the attributes are not explained, and there's 18-20 of them. Each one covers something specific, in fact they're more like the skills in any other conventional RPG. For example Evasion does not affect your ability to dodge attacks, that's covered by luck, and for some reason applied mostly to firearms and only a few melee attacks. When the player gets to the first part of civilisation they will note the following: By moving, the P Cs will be penalised and completely lose their dodge bonus to range attacks - yes, BY MOVING THEY LOSE THE ABILITY TO DODGE ATTACKS WHICH WOULD NEVER HIT THEM IF THEY STOOD STILL. The local Stormtrooper knock offs must've have seen Star Wars and thought that hitting the enemy is better than flailing about and dying as they will hit the player nearly every time, excluding cases of a massive Luck stat, and when the guards are moving, the player has a better chance of shooting a single atom from the other side of the city with a handgun. The entire stat system and how things are calculated verges on the impossible as even after extensive play the game will throw up weird results like 1 when the observed action is determined by multiple dice... Or getting a 1 when the players bonuses after penalties is +2 or higher. At least, that's how it seems, as the player isn't able to observe any numbers other than their stats. It gets better - small evil scorpions with a "Fuck You For Buying This Game" poison at the start are easier to hit lying down from about 10 metres away with a handgun than point blank with a shotgun, SMG, or Sniper Rifle. Allies with firearms are less likely to hit than the players, but they tend to have weapons and gear that give bonuses to marksmanship, have the weapons strong enough to hurt evil guards. The players can't use those weapons due to stat requirements.
Whilst technically not an RPG, the UFO series use RPG mechanics for pretty much everything in the first 2 games, UFO: Aftermath and UFO: Aftershock. The computer cheats when it comes to pretty much anything explosive. Grenades in Aftermath are chancy but if the character's Throw skill is high enough it can clear entrenched hostiles, but the character is still going to be using the shotgun as the grenade throws fail in spectacular ways. Most often the player's soldiers will fumble the grenade and drop it under them, throw it behind them into the civilians being evacuated, overshoot the target by half the map, Lob onto a higher floor inside a building behind them, with no windows or doors on their side. This applies to rocket launchers, unless the user is in a heavy exo-skeleton, which is a waste as there are better Machine guns that can only be fired with those suits and don't run the risk of failing the mission by destroying the objective and entire team in one shot. In Aftershock, these effects are applied 2 at a time and also to rocket launchers and grenade launchers (Actually by adding an underbarrel grenadelauncher to any weapon the player will have corrupted the savegame their running, and also result in a more explosive fumble when the character drops it from a fricking launcher). Needless to say the aliens, mutants and cultists from the second are immune to this and can be reliably expected to incapacitate if not kill at least one character a shot.
- Worse still is the Reticulans in the first game have no weight-to-speed penalty with their launchers which are listed as significantly more accurate and faster firing than anything the player can manufacture and just better in all other stats.
- Sniper Rifles in UFO: Aftershock are strangely inaccurate unless the user is a level 3 sniper, then combat becomes a joke, however hostiles are all able to fire them like normal weapons without any penalties for stance or injuries. On the plus side they don't get any bonuses for these either and Cultist psychics almost never wear Trueshot aura Bracers.
- One of the most common mutants in UFO: Aftermath is a large slug with mutated wasps/locusts of death, called appropriately the Deathbellows. The player has no way of killing this beast with its hit points, high defence and it fires homing swarms of bugs that spread out after hitting the target, will chase down other targets, cannot be treated and has a sight range greater than the player ever can, ensuring your only going to detect it because weapons fire automatically makes an entity visible. The only protection is to abort the mission and sacrifice anyone not in the evac zone. In later levels especially ones on the biomass, as many as five of these things can appear.
- In Aftermath, there is a bug which stops the 'Retrieve a sample of Biomass' mission appearing. Given that without that and some research time, the stuff can infect the entire planet, or just the player's territory, thus ending the game. Even with the sample the player still needs time to discover biomass repulsers and 24 hours to convert bases to repulser bases, which leads to effective failure if its the last base/s the player has, due to the requirement of a single military base needed to launch missions that acquire territory or defend against invasions.
All Yugioh games have a list of restricted cards, just like the real card game, and usualy matching the official one when said videogame came out. But computer opponents were not bound by it. The computer could have 3 copies of Game Breaker cards that you were only allowed to have one of (many of which would later be outright banned with the introduction of the real-life game's "Advanced" format used in official tournaments). This was probably to make up for AI so stupid that it often seemed like it was trying to lose.
- This runs rampant in Forbidden Memories, where the computer not only has better cards than you, but can also play fusion monsters as single cards. In other words, the CPU can play a powerful fusion monster without fusing other cards like you would normally have to.
- Another universal hax cheat that the CPU abuses is their complete and utter disregard for the banned/limited list. Oh, sure, you might expect the NCP duelists to use cards on the Banned list (such as Premature Burial), and they generally only use one copy of those cards...but then you duel against Jaden or Aster or someone else with a Hero deck, and they use 3 copies of a Hero card that's limited to 1, and you'd be want to scream at the PSP or DS in outrage. Heck, the only way the player can do this, is if they hack the game themselves and remove the list physically, which just shows you how bad this is.
The old Microprose game Master Of Magic initially had a shapeshift spell that would disguise one unit as another. The manual noted that this illusion would not affect the computer players. Too bad Master Of Magic was a one-player game with no network or internet play capabilities.
In the Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy games, all Force-using characters (enemies and friends) but you possess immense (though not bottomless) Force batteries, have bullshitime perfect reflexes and cannot be surprised. Furthermore, their Force powers don't cool down and can be reused instantly. (Theoretically, this is how a Jedi should be anyway, so it's more that the player's been nerfed than the NPCs have been buffed. Regardless...) All this is designed to make them impossible to kill without a lightsaber, since they will deflect blaster bolts and telekinetically redirect missiles and explosives straight back at you. (Theoretically, one could lure them into a heavily-mined area, but that's more trouble than it's worth.) When you have a Jedi NPC, a Dark Jedi NPC and a missile launcher (or better still the concussion rifle) in the same room, it is actually possible to get the two to play a deadly game of Force Push tennis.
- With certain tricks, it is possible to kill a Dark Jedi with a ranged weapon. For example, a moderately-charged blast from the Tenloss Disruptor Rifle (effectively the game's sniper rifle, which wasn't blockable with a sabre) aimed at the targets crotch would cause a force sensitive enemy to leap into the air. If you were quick, or if they had leaped high enough, you could then catch them in midair with a second blast. If you had a way to predict which way they would jump, you could also make them jump into an abyss.
  - They also can't dodge the shock gun thingy's secondary blast, as it's an area effect.
City Of Heroes has a whole slew of difficult enemies, although most of the difficulty comes from what they're supposed to do in the first place — for example, the Malta group would be a much easier enemy if the Demonic Spider Sapper wasn't included among its ranks. One clear example of the cheating computer, however, is when you face enemies that can teleport. Player characters can teleport too, but only a few hundred yards at a time. The computer has no such restriction, however - which leads to teleporting enemies going halfway across the mission map in order to escape. It's more prudent to sit tight and wait for the computer to decide it's had enough of being cowardly and teleport back to you to continue the fight, rather than run halfway across the mission to chase it down.
- What's especially infuriating is when enemies teleport next to one of their allies the second they're injured, heal them, and then teleport away before you can even target them.
  - And you can't target about 50% of anything that's not basic floorspace for no apparent reason...
- Even the lowest level mook can jump five stories straight up when either coming at or escaping from you.
- Not to mention several enemies have power combinations that are simply impossible for a player to have.
- Ghost Widow cannot be beaten without several Break Free (anti-mez) inspirations or applications of Clear Mind (a defender anti-status power), as she has holds that are several magnitudes above any hold available to the player in a game. (Made up for, slightly, because in the new Mission Architect, you can have her as an ally with the same powers in your mission).
When a boss, the Devil-Triggered Vergil in Devil May Cry 3 is Implacable, not flinching from the player's best blows and apparently invincible. Not so when playing as Vergil, who flinches much more easily and takes conspicuous damage.
- He goes back into Devil-Triggered mode 5 times faster than you can. And stays there longer.
- Used in a slightly different way during the second Dante boss fight in Devil May Cry 4. The player might figure he'll be as easy as he was during the first encounter as the game's tutorial level, but this Dante is viciously fast and is capable of using every one of Dante's styles to their greatest effect. It's not so much that the computer Dante is more powerful in boss form than the playable Dante that immediately follows the fight; in fact, he is a carbon copy (except for the life bar). No, it's that he can use every one of Dante's moves without the slightest error, especially when it comes to the Royal Guard style, which, when coupled with computer precision, essentially makes him invincible and Nero a dead man. In short, his computerized reflexes are far superior to yours, and there is very little you can do to compensate for this disadvantage. Even Devil Trigger is nearly worthless.
  - If you've ever seen any expert DMC4 videos, you'd realise that if the computer used Dante to his greatest effect, Nero would last about three seconds. Point stands, though.
Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has a unique example, in that you can beat the computer at its own game. You see, by Spellbinding multiple Mons in battle, you only get the option to attempt to add the weakest to your party... but the mechanics of Spellbind are such that it's easy to only bind the one you want.
- Hell, it isn't even good at rubbing it in your face - by turning down a pact, you'll get a useful item.
In Luminous Arc, one enemy, Iris, the Steel Witch, has the ability to dodge attacks that are listed on-screen as being 100% sure hits. That's on top of the fact that said enemy starts with the ability to perform a Limit Break at the start of battle. Obviously, neither ability is available to your characters.
Fire Emblem also contains arena opponents that have stats higher than the stat caps their particular class is supposed to have...
- Case in point:Solders (low level enemy only cannon fodder) with enough HP it can't properly be shown.
- Fire Emblem also has numerous stages that are blocked by the Fogof War. You cannot see enemies through this, yet they all know EXACTLY where you are.
- Also inverted, Fire Emblem uses a two RN calculator for hit percentage, this method generally favors the player as it means high accuracy attacks hit more, but when you fight a sword master boss it plays it straight.
Final Fantasy X has this in a few areas, but the most obvious use of this trope would be the Blitzball mini-game. Though at first appearing to be a pure sports-like mini-game, it actually relies quite heavily on numbers. Also, during skirmishes against other players, the numbers aren't always accurate; the actual value in the calculation used is partially random, being anywhere from half the listed value to getting a 50% increase. Naturally, the computer will favor the enemy by lowering your values while giving the opposition favorable boosts. To no one's surprise, it happens far more often in close matches. And if that wasn't enough, one team in particular, the Al Bhed Psyches, are so ungodly powerful that playing against them is just asking to lose unless you're very, VERY good (or several levels higher with cheap techniques).
- The Blitzball game is fairly counter intuitive with what players end up having the best stats, since stat growth always is more important than starting stats (one of the best goalies starts out as one of the best shooters, then becomes one of the better defenders, and then only later becomes a good goalie due to his stat growth). It seems far more likely that most people simply don't get past the early point where the player team is actually the worst in the league (this is a storyline point, after all). Under fairly even conditions a competent player should almost always win because the computer is actually quite reckless about shooting and passing.
- One minor way the computer does cheat is that in computer vs computer matches, goalies tend to get more xp then seems logical compared to what the player goalie tends to get during matches (unless you are getting shot on a whole lot). This isn't too big of a deal since the player can poach goalies from other teams and most goalies can respectably play other positions to earn xp.
- The player also hands down gets the characters with unique shooting abilities that are absurdly powerful, while the computer characters only have the generic abilities. Tidus can eliminate defenders from blocking shots and Wakka can potentially boost his Shot stat to ludicrous levels if the original Aurochs are on his team.
The Monster Rancher series suffers from the same cheating as Pokémon, that PC simply ignores the missing rate, and top on this, your monster has far more chance of doing "foolery" instead of attacking, even when both are supposed to be equally unloyal due to master inexperience.
Two Words: Forced Evasion. For those who haven't played OG Saga: Endless Frontier, let me clarify. Forced Evasion is a Scrappy Mechanic that kicks in when an enemy either hits or is about to hit the ground, whereupon three things will happen: First, the rest of the damage they receive during that character's turn is reduced to 0. Second, the character's turn ends immediately, ruining any chance of a combo and bringing the otherwise speedy pace of combat to a screeching halt. Finally, it allows the enemy a chance to counterattack, every bit as powerful and unblockable as their normal attack. Meant to be a mechanic that punishes players for not juggling enemies in the air well enough, it's partly-justified that only the enemy gets it - after all, they don't get to use items or Spirit commands to heal, and can't combo with their allies. It becomes ridiculous, however, when enemies hit Forced Evasion without ever being knocked up into the air. How exactly does a juggled enemy hit the ground if they were never juggled in the first place?
Several enemies in Tales of the Abyss screw the rules on numerous occasions. You have to be in overlimit to use a mystic arte. Several bosses that have them can use it randomly. They may also not only go into overlimit numerous times in a row. The final boss does both - when you take out half his health and get a cutscene mid-way through the boss battle, he may use Celestial Elegy without even going into overlimit or immediately go into overlimit twice in a row.
Thanks to the Useless Useful Spell logic, enemies in Final Fantasy Legend 2 cheat when skills like Erase and Chainsaw work on you 100% of the time.
In the Game Boy advance version of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, enemies that shuffle their decks like you do have infinite CP and find numerous ways to cheat.
- In order for the player to use Dark aura on Riku mode, you have to stock three 9s. When you are fighting the Riku Replica, he can use it with ANY combination.
Freelancer is unique as an RPG in that it features a racing cheat used throughout the game. Enemy ships have the rubber-band effect preventing you from outrunning them so long as they are behind you. By hitting the afterburner hard, going into freefall and turning around while adrift, you can watch them quickly revert to their natural speeds and lag behind. This becomes the primary tactic when playing the merchant game, since turrets are comparably ineffective, and one can avoid combats altogether.
Fallout 3: Wondering why the Tribals and Swampfolk of the Point Lookout DLC are kicking your ass despite their ordinary weapons and your fancy armor? Because they get additional 35 points of unresistable damage per hit. Why? Only Bethesda knows.

Close Role Playing Games

Bioshock: In the second level of the game the player is introduced to Spider Splicers. A nigh-unkillable enemy who can climb on the ceilings and throw hooks at you. They also come down to attack with melee on occasion. They're nearly as durable as a Big Daddy(though not as strong), perhaps more so because of their smaller size. This difficulty is put into place to give you a reason to be interested in the research camera found later in the level. After getting only 1 level worth of research on the spider splicers they suddenly have less overall HP than leadhead splicers do, and magically go down in just a couple hits.
- In numerous parts of the game it also has scripting take precedence over the players interaction to the extent that enemies who are needed for dramatic effect may ignore fatal or crippling attacks, or in some circumstances the player is unable to use their weapons while the enemy relocates to a more dramatic location.
Soldier Of Fortune 2. The AI can even cheat grenade timers! A player's experience with speedrunning the game describes the myriad ways they cheat.
- On Soldier Of Fortune difficulty, the enemies are Demonic Spiders, most notably in Colombia and Kamchatka, due to the jungle underbrush and fog, respectively, which they can apparently see through, while you can't.
- The enemies in the first game can also see you through fog and also cheat somewhat, although not as much.
Halo: Enemies with plasma pistols can rapid-fire them faster than a plasma rifle on the higher difficulties, at least in the first game. Enemies can sometimes home in on you and flank you out of your cover before they even see you. Those grunts(particularly Ultras) have deadly accuracy and range with plasma grenades, and of course, if you're stuck, you're fucked (if only there was a grenade warning indicator). In Halo 2 Legendary, Ultra Elite's shields recharge much faster than yours and other Elites, Jackal Snipers can shoot before they aim, and even ricochet their beams off walls(which you can't do), and while both allies and enemies can take multiple Beam Rifle shots, they insta-kill the Master Chief if they so much as graze him. Direct melee hits from Elites and Flood kill the Master Chief and the Arbiter instantly even with full shields, while the enemies themselves can take multiple melees, except if it's an "assassination" while they're not alerted(except Ultra Elites, which will just go berserk). And the Infection Forms kill you instantly if they touch you with your shields down in 2 and 3, with not even a chance to shake them off.
Enemy Navis in Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge always have more Program Deck space than you do — even when you're using that same Navi. WoodMan, for instance, only has room for a couple of the best Wood-type chips when you control him. When Sal is controlling him, expect to be hit with those chips every round.
In the Descent: Freespace series, the AI ships (friendly or hostile) can target even in scrambled radar situations that make stuff "untargetable." This means that the AI ships can use their normal aspect-seeking missiles on targets that you wouldn't be able to do the same to. However, this can be exploited with the "Target my target's target" key. When you're in a mission where the enemy has some Applied Phlebotinum that prevents you from targeting them, you can select a friendly ship that's engaged with an "untargetable," press the "target my target's target" key, and viola! Start firing away those Interceptors. This is highly useful, for example, in the missions when you first encounter the Shivans, the Shivans being untargetable supposedly due to your ship's lack of information on Shivan electronics, or in the Silent Threat missions that feature the stealth Lokis.
- This is a near useless ability, non-targetable ships are only in a couple of missions and usually do not require being shot. Freespace 2 also seems to eliminate this issue because most enemy fighters do seem to have trouble just identifying stealth fighters as targets unless they are severely harassed.
Goldeneye: Rogue Agent had this in the form of the Omen gun, a weapon that, if it hits, kills anything in one shot. When wielded by the player it has a slow trigger-to-shot time, the glow obscures the aim, and misses 50-90% of the time. When equipped to the faceless, nameless guards, however, it became game-breakingly annoying to the player, as even being winged by it leads to having the restart the section repeatedly. To clarify, by the time it takes for you to shoot one slow projectile, the enemy has already fired three much faster instadeath projectiles and reloaded, ready for another burst of three, oh, and they have infinite ammo.
The Arena in Armored Core 2 features Humongous Mecha that fight against you, outfitted with weapons and equipment that don't exist. The real kicker is that even if you could buy said equipment, you couldn't put it all on one AC without that AC being incapable of fighting to begin with.
- The Armored Core series, as a whole, is notorious for this, exempting the AI from many restrictions that players have to contend with. Some of the AI's bonuses: Nigh Perfect accuracy, an energy gauge that recharges faster than normal (meaning they can maintain flight for the entire battle), the ability to fire heavy back weapons not only while moving, but in mid-air too(these same weapons require the player to crouch and remain stationary in order to fire), and increased damage output for virtually every weapon. Admittedly, earlier games in the series gave you the Human+ part, which granted the same abilities, but only after you had completed everything else in the game.
  - In Armored Core 2 you could get all of the Human Plus enhancements by getting the "too deep in debt" nonstandardgameover repeatedly.
  - In the later games on the PS 2 the payer's mech had a much more realistic feel, as in boosting caused heatup just like bullet impacts ect. The AI on the other hand seemed completely exempt from that limitation, boosting all over the place and spamming their heavyest weapons in midair at best, and doing so from low orbit at worst.
In Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries,you can be alpha-striked by an enemy 'Mech while it was still prone. The player can't shoot anything while their 'Mech has been knocked down, no, but the AI does it all the time. The AI has also occasionally been known to alpha-strike with weapons that are no longer physically attached to their mech — i.e., firing its arm-mounted weapons even after you've blown its arms off.
Dark Sims (a type of multiplayer bot) in the original Perfect Dark were meant to be cheating bastards: they shoot perfectly, they always know where you are, they spawn with the best available weapon in the match, and the game tells you most of this in their description. They're the opposite of Meat Sims, who are designed to miss 95% of the time and walk straight by opponents and useful weapons. Thanks to a programming error, however, the difficulty swaps when projectile explosives become involved. Since they move slower through the air than bullets, the Dark Sims aiming to hit end up being easy to dodge, and the Meat Sims aiming to miss shoot right into your path!
- Not to mention that bots could empty the six-shot revolvers at the same speed as a human player could empty the Falcon 2.
Bomberman Blast. Well. ANY Bomberman game, to be honest. Why, you ask? You grab power-ups. Bomberman Blast has many power ups. Many tiny, similar looking power ups that you sometimes can't distinguish from one another. This leads to you running into a power up that increases bomb range...and accidentally killing yourself. The computer, however, even on Normal difficulty, seems to have an omniscient view of the field, how a bomb will explode (timing it within milliseconds to drop a bomb, break through, and move just as their other bomb goes off. This unerring feat allows them to trap you and themselves without ever being in a tough spot. Yeah.
- AIs do always know exactly where every power-up is; but, since the power-ups are in the same places every playthrough, a player with experience or a guide can know this as well.
In the Unreal Tournament series, bots will always know where the player is if there is a line of sight. Even if they're so far away you can barely see them with the sniper rifle's scope, or if there's vision-obscuring (for you, anyway) non-solid stuff in the way, or if you're directly behind them.
- Not to mention the near-perfect accuracy especially at long ranges, automatic triangulation of projectiles based on distance and your movement, always knowing where and when pickups spawn, a specifically fiendish brand of Rubberband AI that gets better based on team size, your lead, your kills, and so on, and general competance when compared to your useless AI team. Did I mention that every time you grab an item the AI knows where you are for the next couple seconds? Cheating bastards indeed.
- Also, the bots can see in the dark while you can't. Even if it's pitch black they can still see perfectly.
Resident Evil 5: I know its to make you treat him more like a puzzle, but how the HELL does Wesker dodge buckshot?
- Try firing a rocket at his feet, go on, just try it...
- ...or at his face. He catches it.
Killzone 2: The final boss can teleport at will, has a one-shot kill unblockable knife, instantly teleports after being shot or stabbed, and yells constantly with a scary german accent.
Left 4 Dead has mild example in a boss zombie that can throw rocks. Unfortunately, the check that determines whether the rock hits a survivor is determined at the moment the rock is thrown. Thus the rock will always hit a survivor (barring the rock hitting something else, the survivor changing direction, etc) even if the survivor is moving laterally. Of course, when playing as said boss zombie, ones rocks do not track the player, presumably because the player can better aim than the AI.
- In addition to this, AI Hunters and Smokers are not subjected to charge up/cooldown on their respective special attacks. This often isn't a major issue though since AI special infected tend not to attempt to make an attack as often as their player counterparts.
  - And then there's the AI survivors if there any in VS mode. While they do seem to reload, they never seem to run out of ammo ever. In fact, they rarely even use pistols. Of course, if you join a game online and take control away from the computer, you will see that ammo had been used.
  - Not to mention that the survivor AI has deadly accuracy as they are able to kill any special infected from many yards away with almost any weapon. While players welcome this in co-op mode, they will shout "How the hell is that even possible!?" when the AI shoots their zombie selves from all the way across the train yard.
  - Don't forget their ability to teleport when a teammate is in trouble and they can't get there. To their credit, at least they don't do it when they aren't able to move at all (i.e. when constricted or incapped). They can also be stupid about it; I once saw Louis hanging on the air for dear life, and Bill teleported up to save him, falling to his death shortly thereafter.
  - AI Survivors can also see special infected straight through objects that serve as visual (but not physical) obstructions - trees, corn, and so on - for human players.
A blatant example of this is in the Call Of Duty 4 level "Heat." Midway through the battle, while the SAS are holed up in the farm fighting off the Ultranationalists, the Ultranationalists will drop smoke grenades to cover their advance at about halfway across the field. The player can't see through it. Nor can the player's SAS comrades. The Ultranationalists, however, can, and their snipers take horrible advantage of it; the only way to get out of the farm is to take a side passage through a pasture, and you'll still be getting shot at by Ultranationalist soldiers who you can't see.
In Gears of War, this can work in your favor as your squad members can reload ad infinitum without touching the ammo boxes intended for you, as well as survive a massive amount of damage that would otherwise leave you into a pile of bloody kiddle, even a direct torque bow hit that can one-shot a boomer on insane difficulty.
- This can also come back to bite you in the ass if Dom is standing up right besides you while taking a rocket hit he was too dumb to dodge, exploding you in the process.
- And speaking of insane setting... don't touch the Troika machine guns. Seriously. Avoid them like ebola-flavored plague dipped in swine flu. The locust are so deadly and freakishly accurate with ANY weapon (even their default hammerbursts) that you WILL die in less than three seconds. [[ EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.]] On a related note, whenever Lieutenant Kim screams at you "Flank them Marcus!" he's basically sending you out of cover to face two or three locusts who can gun you down faster than Homer Simpson can eat a donut. Stay behind cover and you'll have a decent chance.
In Resistance Fallof Man you can pick up an anything-piercing weapon called the Auger. It's best used when firing against enemies behind cover, though you can't really use anything else to help you see through walls (i.e. the Far Sight in Perfect Dark was an anything piercing gun with an X-Ray scope, there is no such thing in Resistance). However, the Elite Mooks who have this gun know exactly where you are to take advantage of the anything piercing shots. The Auger also supposedly picks up strength if you use the said piercing ability. So staying behind cover is a very bad idea, and moving around won't even help you because they somehow know where you are.

Close Shooters

Anyone who has played an EA Sports football game knows all about cheating Rubber Band AI. ESPN columnist Bill Simmons has named it the "No F***ing Way Game", when the AI decides that you are losing this game, no matter what.
In the '80s arcade version of Super Dodge Ball, the first match is perfectly fair: each side has one big jock and three little jocks (with small guys on the sidelines). Then as you progress, you have face a four-on-five (with the player outnumbered), then a four-on-six, and the computer has all the big, mean guys on its side. With more big guys on the sidelines ready to hammer you. Throw in (no pun intended) a bunch of uncatchable shots and power shots that only the computer can throw, and you're in for a hard game. Oh, and there's a time limit. If time runs out, you lose the match.
The original Snowboard Kids game for the N64 had no end to this. Unless you wanted to use an Alpine Board and lose all your turning ability, every single race was incredibly difficult due to the AI. The computer-controlled characters perform every turn perfectly and consistently get the item boxes before you (and get better items than you to boot). Tommy and Slash dominated everything, and Shinobin was a complete Game Breaker. Then again, it is an ATLUS game...
- The sequel toned things down somewhat, but the bosses were still as ridiculously difficult as ever. It wasn't enough to simply beat them to the finish line. You also had to manage to collect enough shots, and aim well enough when shooting, to take their HP down.
The billards-like game Lunar Ball gives you limited lives, and you lose one each time you scratch or shoot three times without sinking a ball. In the versus computer mode, the computer has unlimited lives.
In at least one of the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw games, during tag matches the opponent's partner will come in to break up pin attempts every single time they're attempted, unless the player-controlled character goes outside and knocks them off the apron beforehand.
In Mario Strikers Charged Football the AI doesnt cheat until you hit the final Tournament of the game. It can then attack every single one of your players at once (Using the "Hit" tackle), can use Powerups whilst charging for a megastrike (Including being invulnerable using a Star whilst doing this, something that wears off as soon as you enter the charge meter as a player) and also can score from ridiculous distances.
In Tecmo Bowl if you got Los Angeles as one of your final two opponents, 99% of all players would simply reset. Bo Jackson's legendary unstoppable nature DOUBLED when controlled by the CPU. If the CPU decided it was time to score, even if you called the correct play Jackson would break every tackle and zoom down the field at speeds downright impossible for human controlled players. Tecmo Super Bowl didn't have any Bo level players, but was just as bad about simply running through you whenever it felt like it.

Close Sports

Empire Total War has a very complex economy system. Long story short, the human player is lucky to control 3-4 armies without owning the entire continent of Europe to finance them. Comparatively, the AI will often have 4 armies just for city defense! The most ludicrous example has to be late-game England. They have no trading routes not being raided, they've lost their new-world holdings in America, and all of their ports are being blockaded. Does that stop the AI from having, and I am not making this up, 6 full army stacks defending Edinburgh?
In StarCraft: Brood War, computer opponents in skirmish mode were apparently able to utilize buildings even while they were under construction. The easiest way to test this is to attempt a Dark Templar rush against a Terran opponent; the Terran will be able to use a half-built Comsat Station to detect your invisible units.
The Command And Conquer series:
- The first game had AI that could build anywhere it likes, despite the fact that the player can only build next to his own structures. However, in the campaign, the AI only builds structures in the exact same place. This can be exploited by placing your own unit or structure where the original destroyed structure of the enemy stood, preventing them from rebuilding the structure.
  - Try that in Dune 2. The AI will build the structure on top of your blocking units, destroying them.
- The Red Alert series feature Gap Generators, structures which create a permanent shroud above itself, effectively hiding anything that is covered by its radius of effect. It is somewhat effective in multiplayer for long games, because it can hide units and structures, forcing your opponents to guess what sort of attack to send your way. However, it's completely useless against AI opponents, which are omniscient and can target any specific unit or structure, even ones that it isn't supposed to see.
- The whole "Stealth is useless in single player" theme is continued in Zero Hour and Tiberium Wars. Nothing, up to and including cloaking your ENTIRE base and any units, will stop the enemy from finding them. Sure your army may be stealthed, but without even any stealth detection units (normally required to be able to fire upon stealth), the AI will blow your men to pieces in skirmish mode.
- Tiberian Sun also cheats in skirmish mode. No matter the difficulty, the AI knows exactly where your Construction Yard is, even if you moved it halfway across the map prior to deploying it, so long as they have seen ANY of your UNITS. Even a lowly Scout Bike.
- The AI in C&C, at least in Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge, also gets a build rate bonus and can built structures much faster than the player.
- In the final mission of the Allied campaign in Red Alert 3, the Soviets have a Vacuum Imploder. As with all superweapons, the game allows you to see its countdown so that you know how much time is left before it can be used. However, the enemy blatantly fires the weapon when there are still 30 seconds left on the countdown.
In Stronghold: Crusader, you're not allowed to build ANYTHING when ANY of the enemy's units are near (not just military units). However, when you're sieging the enemy's castle with 15 trebuchets and have 400 swordsmen lined up at his walls, it's very annoying to see the wall instantly rebuild in front of your army.
In Railroad Tycoon (the first one), the player can only build stations with two entrances, and they must be opposite of each other. The computer gets an eight-way station, with entrances at right angles and diagonals. Combined with the fact that the computer doesn't actually build any trains (or much of anything else), it's very obvious the computer is playing a different game than you.
In Empire Earth, the computer is basically just cheating constantly.
- You can watch this happen by gathering the resources to level up an age, instructing your main city to upgrade and then hovering over the AI's city. The moment your civilisation goes up an age so does all of the AI - At The Same Time. Very obvious cheating. On the other hand, the AI is known to specifically not level up through the ages when it very obviously can.
- The AI doesn't actually collect resources at all. The villagers mining? Just there for show. It does this on every single difficulty level, too: the only difference is just how many resources they get.
Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War: Soulstorm continues this fine tradition of Cheating AI Bastardhood, being able to freely and instantly replace its commander's Honour Guard units, and being more than happy to throw those at you at the start of a map; and when controlling the Dark Eldar race, it is able to use offensive Soul Powers on your units no matter where they are on the map, despite the fact that, as Dark Eldar, you can only cast Soul Powers in visible areas outside the fog of war.
- DoW had a third expansion? I didn't know that...
- And let's not forget Dark Crusade, where, as the game goes on, enemies will build more bases in their territories. And they don't just have more bases for you to wipe out, they actually get another unit cap, meaning they can have twice as many units as they normally do.
- Nor should we forget the Imperial Guard A Is, which have the uncanny ability to not only know exactly where your stealthed units are, but also the ability to place long range auspex (radar) scans right on top of them. This can be exploited by having some dummy stealthers around to attract auspex scans whilst the real stealth units do their work, but that's a waste for the most part.
  - It's a little less wasteful with the Tau or Space Marines, who have access to cheap stalth units.
- The Dark Crusade campaign didn't even try to pretend it was playing by the rules most of the time. Two Necron bases controlling 3 Necron Lords...which are limit 1 per player. Tau bases where they'd been explicitly ignoring the game's basic mechanics and building listening posts with guns on top where there are no strategic points to put them on, as a substitute for turrets.
In Master of Orion II, the AI is able to spend money to "buy" research instantly. The human player can't.
Leveling terrain in Transport Tycoon is extremely useful, but also extremely expensive. Of course, the AI players don't pay for it. This was not fixed in the Deluxe edition of the game. Other omission: they build roads and railroad much faster than the mouse interface would allow, often denying the player subsidies, awards for being the first company to perform some transportation.
- Then again, that isn't really much of a help to the AI, as the build stupid routes, mismanage routes, and often in the late game, if a new AI company starts, they run out cash before their first vehicle is built.
- At least you can have AIs that play more or less on human terms by using OpenTTD's NoAI variant. There has even been tournament among AIs made by different programmers. Granted, the AI interface still has commands like "put road at coordinate x,y" which permits the construction of functions that build roads near-instantaneously. And then there's Rondje, which is a truly insidious AI that leeches off the routes of others and sells trucks at one end to buy them at the other because it's cheaper than having them go back and forth.
One of the oldest and most blatant uses of this is in the old NES game Conflict. The difference in difficulty levels was in how many resource points you and the computer received at the start of the scenario. In EVERY SINGLE DIFFICULTY, the computer started with significantly more points than you, allowing them to build better units much more quickly. Slightly offset by the player being allowed to go first and occupy cities a turn early, which could help a little, but generally not enough. Still a very fun game to play against human opponents, though. The sequel wasn't nearly as good.
A lesser known game Romance of the Three Kingdoms, particularly VIII, had a system for which tactics of officers had a percent chance of not only hitting but adding status effects based on the experience the officer had in the tactic as well as the surrounding terrain. The computer, on the other hand, seemed to completely ignore these rules and simply chose for itself whether or not the tactic would hit, and the player would be utterly screwed. Arrowstorm is a prime example of this. A bow tactic that the computer can use effectively eliminating a nice chunk of soldiers under your command and throw them into confusion at the tender level of 1 in the worst possible terrain; where as you'd be lucky to deal any damage to them much less confuse them when the terrain favors you and you've maxed the skill out.
In Advance Wars 1 and 2, the computer can always see where you are in Fog Of War even if you're out of their vision range. (You can still hide from them by hiding in a forest or reef). This was fixed in later titles.
In one particular mission of Field Commander (which is the PSP version of Advance Wars), when your units get too close to the enemy HQ, they randomly spawn 3 tanks out of nowhere, and even taunt you about it!
Galactic Civilizations II: Among other things, each "default" race, has at least 1 ability far better than you can get without re-writing YOUR AI file. And one of the most cheatastic bits? All the races have a bonus to their naturally higher then yours economy, based on a percentage of whatever yours currently is. Don't even get me started on the "stuper" powers. The only one that isn't horrifyingly broken, once economy is taken into account, is Isolationist. And that's only because you can actually get to, and use, the anomalies before the cheating like mad computer does. That is, they start on the other end of the galaxy from you, yet by turn 19, at most, are eating all the anomalies in what is quite obviously YOUR territory, and he couldn't even see you, or actually reach your space.
- Not to mention the AI seems to be able to not only predict your weapons/defenses advancements (and thus flawlessly counter your fleet capabilities) before even meeting you, but also run around with a fleet full of amazingly powerful technology... yet it shouldn't have the economy to maintain them at all... or even build them at a relatively decent speed in the first place - did I mention this is on Normal?.
'Swashbucklers: Blue vs Grey' has two examples of computer cheating: in naval battles, it has unlimited ammo for special weapons. You don't. In sword-fighting mini-game both you and computer has access to powerful two-hit combo. If you get hit once, you won't be able to block the second hit. Computer, however, can block it.
A particularly obvious example is the (otherwise quite playable) flash game Warfare 1917. While the variety of units with their differing build times camouflage the build rate skulduggery, it becomes painfully obvious that the Computer is a Cheating Bastard when your restrict buildable units to tanks only. Right about the time your and the computer's behemoths meet in the middle (and you're halfway through building your next one), out pops a second tank on the computer's side.
In Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, during campaign scenarios, the computer will give TONS of resources to computer sides to keep them going by paying tribute from nowhere. This is, shall we say, rather frustrating if you're trying to siege someone.
- This troper once saw that the AI had Simon the Killer Ewok, a unit obtainable only by using a cheat code. The AI using cheat codes seems to be the logical extreme of this trope.
In the World War II grand strategy game Hearts of Iron 2 and its expansions, the AI's ships have unlimited range (leading, for instance, to Brazilian amphibious assaults on Cyprus). Moreover, the AI can see everything, and its forces gain organisation during movement, while the player's forces lose organisation. This to an extent compensates for the AI's ridiculous incompetence otherwise, but is still annoying.
The final boss of MechCommander 2 breaks not only the rules of its own game, but the rules of its entire well-established setting. The joker has a hundred-ton Atlas equipped with jump jets. Granted, there is a canon 100 tonner with jump jets... but it isn't the Atlas.
In one of many examples from Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, the computer doesn't actually need Food to make its population grow - it's possible to capture one of the computer's planets only to discover that it has no way of producing Food and therefore should have no way to support the population it somehow acheived under computer control.
In Call Of Duty: World At War on veteran difficulty causes the enemy to cheat not only like a bastard but mercilessly and without fail.
- Enemies will aim for you and only you
- Enemy weapons can reload instantly if at all
- Enemies can snipe you without the benefit of a scope... perfect aim at 900 yards (naturally)... while reloading... while retreating... facing the other way... using a shotgun.
- The above effect is instantly removed as soon as you get the weapon they were holding.
- All friendly NPC soldiers will completly ignore an enemy and actively refuse to kill him unless the kill is pre-scripted.
- Enemies become incredibly resistant to bullets despite that they are nameless faceless goons and you're "The hero of stalingrad" who has "cheated death time after time"
  - During one mission you must kill a sniper who is blocking your route, after sniping him right between the eyes your sergeant will say "Ah you only grazed him" shooting him again he tells you "only wounded him" despite this your target can kill you in one shot seemingly effortlessly.
Warcraft 2 also did this, and both are likely caused by the fact that the AI is not affected by things that affect how something is displayed on screen, as they resolve the data directly.
- Playing the game at the LOWEST SPEED greatly reduces the computer's ability to think. Most people automatically boost the speed up to max because they think this will help them. It won't. It is probably the biggest factor in the difficulty of Warcraft 2. It may be painful for a twitch player, but it's a lot less painful then dealing with an enemy force that can instantly focus targets to kill all of your guys easily before you can even think, or spam heal themselves to full in seconds.
- A particularly painful memory is of the Human vs Human mission. Even with a whole group of Paladins, you're stuck healing one unit at a time, a click for every cast. Meanwhile the computer pairs its wounded Paladins off so that they're simultaneously healing each other.
- Warcraft 2's skirmish mode also had the annoying tendency for all the AI players to gang up on you and only very occasionally attack each other, in contrast to its contemporary Command And Conquer counterparts.
- Last but not least, when the Player Is A Cheating Bastard, The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard. That is to say, all cheat codes used by the player also affect the AI (excepting the god-mode cheat for your units).
Pure subverts this. The AI does not need to cheat since the AI is not actually playing the game with the intent of beating the player. Instead, the AI is designed to stay with a certain range of the player, assuming ideal conditions (ie they don't crash or get interfered with). These ranges vary over the course of the race. On the other hand, theoretically given enough time, the player may seem to be cheating.
I once played Halo Wars unwittingly on Normal difficulty against only A Is. Before I even had enough resources to get to the third Covenant age, one of my enemies (playing the Brutes) had not only a crapload of attacking units, but a shielded main base, and a FREAKING SCARAB! Suffice to say, when I saw that happen, I simply quit the match.
- This means he had to have ammassed at least 5000 resources for the Scarab alone. And I had at least five upgraded Warehouses (could have something to do with the fact that he was using the 125 resource Brutes only while I was using a wide variety of units. Either way, I have no clue how he ammassed so many resources so quickly, or how he trained that many units so fast.)
- I was given the warning that he was creating a Scarab. I naturally charged his base to stop him. However, by the time I arrived, he already had a massive attack planned out with at least twenty Brutes and the aforementioned Scarab. He must've followed how he auto-magically pulls units outta his ass for no real reason.
Z (Zed) cheats openly; in the later levels, factories under enemy control can produce units at a much faster rate that yours can. The countdown clock at the front of each factory (visible to the player) gives this little chestnut away. Also, the enemy base at the beginning of each level is defended by far more potent weaponry than your own.
In Sins Of A Solar Empire, you can "anonymously place bounties on anyone that's not your allies" to entice the pirates (if enabled) to go after them. However, if you dare place a bounty on an AI's head, they know immediately who it was and will echo a threat. They will also, with their unlimited credits, place a smidge higher bounty on your head. So you're basically auctioning off to the pirates who gets to be attacked. And you don't want the pirates attacking you.
- I'm not sure the AI actually does know. Even if they did, I wouldn't be scared of a counterattack; the AI in Sins is So Bad Its Horrible. If pirates do come, just get your fleet into position and gobble up the EXP. Finally, to avoid the whole mess, don't place any bounty at all: most of the time, the AI will just squabble amongst themselves and leave you alone. (I'm not saying the computer doesn't cheat; I'm just saying the game's too easy for that to matter.)
- Or just put 500 bounty on 2 AI factions that are not allies, and watch them keep upping one another until bounty time is over.
  - That works. the AI doesnt know who bountied it, it increases the bounty on whoever has the highest bounty (other than itself) which will probably be you unless you put bounty one two people.

Close Strategy

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition falls prey to this trope, and the designers admit to it! The monsters and enemies don't follow the same rules as the player characters!
- One egregious example is the mounted combat rules. A Player Character on a mount shares his actions with the mount so only one can make an attack. A mounted enemy AND its mount both get a full round of individual actions.
- But, there are no computers involved in controlling monsters! The DM is a cheating bastard?!
  - Actually, when there are computers involved, such as in virtual tabletop programs, the random number generators used for dice sometimes turn out to be not-so-random. I have a GM notorious for getting criticals, as well as me getting good rolls when my character goes even further down the morality scale.
- As one player I know puts it: The Monsters are Cheating Whores!
- On the other hand, players have far more powers; an NPC fighter, wizard, thief or cleric only has about half the combat options of a PC at the same level. Then throw in the fact that there are usually 4-5 heads on the player side, all of them scheming away, and it begins to look less like cheating and more like game balance.
- To be honest, different rules for monsters and players have been around since the very beginning of D&D. Monsters didn't even use the six ability scores players used until third edition, and their hit and damage bonuses were based on Hit Dice and whatever the DM deemed appropriate for attacks instead of using player-style bonuses.

Close Tabletop Games

This is Older Than The NES. The famous "hacker epic", ''The Story of Mel'', involves an extremely primitive, early computer game being coded to cheat. There is no reason to believe this story is fiction.
- Beyond just that. The titular individual has been identified as one Mel Kaye, who's signature is on several pieces of paperwork for the company in question at that time.
The 1982 John Carpenter movie The Thing introduces the main character by showing him playing chess against a computer. He makes some snarky comment about how cabin fever is getting to the computer, whose next move results in checkmate. In frustration, he pours his drink into the computer (causing a small sparky explosion) and declares it a "cheating bitch."
Mr. The Hedgehog seems to have some trouble with this. In Sonic Shuffle, you can steal cards from opponents' hands, though you can't see what cards they are until you take them. Evidently, the computer players can see them, as they always take the exact card they need. (Though they apparently can't tell when you've gotten the penalty that turns all your cards into Eggman cards.)
- Not to mention when the AI enters a card battle, not only will it choose exactly the card it needs, but it has the frame-perfect timing to beat the monsters with an exact number, winning not only a Precioustone, but also a Force Jewel. EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! Not to mention the AI players button-tap icredibly fast, and are able to easily escape the crocodiles in the nigh-impossible Croc-Attack minigame.
- In Sonic Rivals, the computer-controlled rival will TELEPORT when it can't be bothered to do a certain part of a level, or if it wants a cheap lead. Also, regardless of who they are, the AI rivals will always be faster than you.
  - Luckily, Sonic Rivals 2 does not suffer from this trope.
- In Sonic Adventure, Tails's levels require you to race someone (usually Sonic) to the goal. Because you can fly over almost everything, it is easy to see your opponents' Rubber Band AI. It is most evident in Windy Valley, where you can jump down from the start at the top then fly to the finish at the bottom and Sonic will zoom through the stage to keep up with you.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City suffers from Divine Driving Skills in the Malibu Bank Robbery mission "The Driver," where, barring crashes with police cars, your opponent is an infallible driver, and those crashes have to be engineered by you or unexpectedly from the side. He will always dodge head-on collisions. He also recovers abnormally fast from said crashes too, sometimes being able to turn back onto the road without even coming to a stop.
- That mission also suffers from the 'Race Ringer' in that you are driving a generic family sedan while your opponent is driving a badass souped-up muscle car.
  - The icing on the cake is, however, that you do this mission to recruit this guy to be your getaway driver, since he's allegedly the best (already a lapse in logic, since if you could beat him in a race you've proven that you're a better driver than him anyway), and, five seconds before he would have become necessary, he gets shot. Making the entire mission a complete waste
  - AND this mission suffered from a glitch where occasionally you would fall through a bridge as you were just about to win. On the other hand, this glitch can affect the AI opponent as well, causing him to fall through the bridge and make the mission laughably easy.
- Racing missions in all the Grand Theft Auto games also suffer from the fact that traffic exists only around the player character. If you let the opponents out of your sight you'll never catch them again because they won't have to avoid traffic anymore.
Guitar Hero III has become very well known for this trope. This editor has experienced it himself when battling Tom Morello on Medium mode. Slash and Lou are very easy because they have more than enough notes to screw up on if you hit them with a power-up. Tom Morello, however, has just enough notes that, no matter how much he screws up, he will never lose.
- If you don't use a power-up, they will NEVER miss a single note.
Flash Game Example, but slightly explainable: In Thing Thing 3 and onward, the enemies can shoot through walls and platforms if the gun is long enough. But shooting through the platforms could be passed off as the shooter peeking the gun over the edge.
- But it's played straight when the enemies never seem to miss much at all.
Etherlords II is more-or-less a knockoff of Magic: The Gathering. This means that the player has a "deck" of spells to play; you'd think the computer functions the same way, but, no. Every computer player has a preset response to the possible threats you throw at them. If you don't, they simply spam an attack combo over and over and over, regardless of resources and never running out of cards. Take one fight: On Turn one, each player has one resource. On it's first turn, the computer summons a creature costing two. It then casts a spell that costs another two, and a third for another two. So the computer has spent six in one turn, roughly 8 turns before you will be able to do the same. The computer will proceed to do this every round, for the rest of the fight.
In Feeding Frenzy 2, there are poisonous millows that will reverse your controls when eaten, and a meter will have to fill up before you can spit it out and go back to normal. The other fish? They just spit out the poisoned millows as soon as they eat them.
The Wii game Family Party: 30 Great Games has this in extremely high amounts early on, where the computers are occaisionally (and purely by chance)able to do events such as The 15-Tier Jump (which has the most vague instructions) and The Cushion (a balancing act - yes, the computer gets THIS one easy as well) with no issues at all. combine this with the fact that if there's a tie for first place at the end of a set of games, you lose automatically, and you've got an irritated Wii owner wanting to chuck his wiimote at the TV. Thankfully, this is much less prevailant in the Shooting and Variety Areas, which have to be unlocked by WINNING ONCE IN ALL OF THE AREAS BEFORE THEM.
Referenced in Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Droids, when explaining the dealer droid. These are programmed to deal for sabacc, and are occasionally told to ensure a house victory by, you guessed it, cheating like a bastard. This is usually reserved to gambling establishments that routinely frisk their guests, because droids are expensive and cheated customers are prone to using their weapons, which are designed to inflict damage.
In a season 3 episode of Lost, Mikhail says that the computer cheats at chess.
- That doesn't stop Locke from beating it anyway (and if you notice◊, he didn't actually have a checkmate, it could have been blocked with two pieces, but if you follow White's best-case scenario, he'd have lost in two of Black's moves, anyway)
  - Maybe the computer resigned, though this would be unusual for a computer. A checkmate would have been notated as Re1# (or maybe Re1++) instead of Re1+.
This is part of the premise of Extra Mode in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the 9th game in the Touhou series. In Extra Mode, the AI opponent is invulnerable at the start of each stage, until a timer runs down to zero, with the timer getting longer in each successive stage. To compensate, it is also on an AI Roulette and extremely weak, so it will usually die within seconds of the timer running out.
In Spyro 3, you have to race a gang of rhynocs to get a dragon egg. The good news is that you get a special skateboard that can do turbo boosts. The bad news is that they have this too. It's even more frusterating when you find out at the start of the race that they can automatically use the boosts whenever they want while you need to use tricks in order to fill up the turbo meter at the start and whenever it gets empty.
In every Splinter Cell game, enemies alerted to your presence will never miss when firing at you with a pistol, even if the enemy in question is outside the range of the player's scoped rifle... Even if the enemy is far outside the range of the game's draw distance. Oddly, they will occasionally miss if shooting with a rifle.

Close Other

On British pub fruit machines, when a player spins a winning combination he is given the option to go higher/lower for the chance to win the next biggest payout. The machine decides in advance how far the player will be allowed to go, and there will come a point where a player who chooses to go higher/lower is guaranteed to lose regardless of the option taken. This has been proven by the Fairplay campaign, who ran the fruit machine software on a PC emulator, saving the game state before the choice is made. The machine cabinets are now required to display the message "This machine may occasionally offer a choice where the player has no chance of success".
Similarly, with many games on pub quiz machines, when a player gets to the prize board the game ostensibly requires manual dexterity - for example, on Bullseye a player must hit a prize segment with a dart, and Battleships involves hitting it with a revolving turret. However, even when aimed perfectly, the game decides whether or not the shot will hit.
- This is because there are laws in the UK against making machines that are are based on skill. Trivia and random chance are ok, but not skill.
  - Then why give the game the illusion of requiring skill?
  - Money Dear Boy. If they think they're good at it, then they'll play and expect to win.
Stacker machines actually decide—before the game has even been played—whether the player is allowed to win a major prize or not; this means it's possible to "waste" winning games, as well as make your way to the end but never have a chance of winning. Though this is understandable, as the major prizes tend to be expensive things like game consoles or MP 3 players, it is cheating nonetheless. The machine doesn't cheat for the minor prizes, but that's because nobody cares about winning hair scrunchies.
- In case you had any doubt, there's no warning of this (at least in Canada).

Close Real Life

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys

Generic Examples:

Notable Offenders:

Specific Examples: