The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard

Most games aren't this honest.

"Cheat wherever you can. A.I.s are handicapped. They need to cheat from time to time if they're going to close the gap... Never get caught cheating. Nothing ruins the illusion of a good A.I. like seeing how they're cheating."

— Jonny Ebert, lead designer of Dawn of War II on video game A.I.

The computer player is a cheating bastard whenever the "rules" differ between you and Video Game A.I.-controlled opponents. This can be a quick-and-dirty method of achieving a "level" playing field against a skilled human player (especially in older games, where hardware and AI capabilities were limited and prone to Artificial Stupidity), but can also create Fake Difficulty when the computer has access to moves that a human player (in the same context) clearly does not.

In ZX Spectrum forums such as comp.sys.sinclair, this phenomenon (real or imagined) is known as "cheatingbastness".

Some games have even used the fact that their AI is not a cheating bastard as a selling point. Conversely, arcade versions of games ("quarter munchers") often cheat more than home console versions.

Though this trope generally applies to impossibilities (things that the player literally cannot do no matter how well they play and no matter how many things they've unlocked in the game at that point, the computer will just have extra resources or abilities), it can also just apply to more conventional cheating. If the game looks at the way your characters have been customized and the AI is then given strategies or abilities specifically designed to counter yours, that's not impossible, per se (it's entirely possible that you could encounter a human player with a team that counters yours perfectly!), but it's something that was specifically given to the computer as an advantage over the player, rather than random chance.

Sometimes this is justified due to the Rule of Fun. Computers are often prevented from using certain tactics that are open to the player, either because it's "cheap" when your enemies do it or there's no freaking way that a computer could manage to pull it off at a crucial moment. In order to make up the gap and still present a challenge, cheating is required. Ironically, players often think the AI is cheating when it isn't, such as strings of good luck from an RNG that is actually perfectly fair, while not noticing at all the subtle and behind-the-scenes ways that the computer is actually cheating. In fact, some games deliberately manipulate the RNG in the player's favor just to avoid the appearance of cheating.

Sub-Trope of Fake Difficulty. Has nothing to do with adultery.

Super-Trope to:

• The All-Seeing A.I.
  Where the computer's AI has information that the player is either always denied, or denied at that level.
• Contractual Boss Immunity
  Any overpowered, One-Hit Kill, or potent ailment-inflicting skill will be useless on big bosses. Naturally, this is not cheating in games that also give the player ways to attain immunity to such attacks.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules
  Where the AI players break the explicitly laid-out rules of the game.
• Not Playing Fair With Resources
  In strategy games, the game compensates for the player's intelligence by giving enemies unfair abilities to gain or gather resources.
• Secret A.I. Moves
  Where a character (generally in a Fighting Game) has some crazy move when played by the computer which human players can't do.
• SNK Boss
  A boss who actively breaks the established rules and mechanics of a competitive game just to be more challenging. Known side effects include thrown controllers, frothing at the mouth, F-Bombs, and the worst case scenario: Explaining to your parents just why their new television is pulverized.

This trope does not include "fair challenges" of the game (wide pits, powerful / numerous enemies, etc.); those are Real Difficulty. Likewise, one should not accuse the computer of cheating simply because it plays to a computer's natural strengths (lightning reflexes, omniscient knowledge of the game rules, and so forth), or because you have a single streak of bad luck. Consistent bad luck, however, may be a sign that the computer is using the RNG to cheat. On the other hand, some cheats can actually work to the player's advantage, such as with the Rubberband AI or plain old cheat codes.

Compare Gang Up on the Human, Rubberband AI, and Spiteful A.I.. Contrast Perfect Play A.I.. See also The Computer Is a Lying Bastard, Computers Are Fast, Gameplay and Story Segregation, The GM Is a Cheating Bastard, Nintendo Hard, Random Number God, and Redemption Demotion. When In-Universe AIs have these justified abilities, see The Singularity.

Note: when adding examples here, please make sure whatever you're planning to claim is actually true, meaning you have hard data saying there is cheating going on, not just some vague feeling that you always hurt yourself in confusion and the AI never does. The phenomenon making you feel that way is almost definitely Confirmation Bias, as any of the various people who have done actual testing with hundreds of data points can tell you.

This is not a place to complain about enemies that have skills you don't have, or about how unlucky you are and how many times you missed, or about how hard That One Boss is, or how the computer is actually half decent at some of the game's more advanced maneuvers that one might happen to suck at. This is only for scenarios where it would be expected for the player and the AI to be on even footing. For example, in the campaign of a strategy game, it would be natural for the computer to outnumber you and/or have more resources than you — that's part of the challenge of a campaign. However, in free battle or skirmish mode, a computer starting with more resources than you is usually cheating, since you would expect to be on even footing with the computer (unless you can set what everyone starts with).

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Works with their own pages:

• Civilization
• Fire Emblem
• F-Zero
• Mario Kart
• Pokémon
• WWE Video Games

Examples:

Note: Since this trope is so incredibly common, only egregious examples should be listed here, otherwise this entry would take over the entire wiki. Aversions or subversions should probably be left out as well, since that's (hopefully) the default.

Action-Adventure

• In ANNO: Mutationem, playing the Pong arcade mini-game has the AI opponent being given a faster paddle than your own, which gives it enough ample speed to toss the ball back while your paddle moves slowly without anyway to speed it up before the AI makes it's goal in.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Ocarina of Time: In the room in the Forest Temple where Link obtains the Fairy Bow, the first Stalfos you fight is able to walk in mid-air over the pit in the middle of the room, as though it was solid ground. While Link could theoretically do the same if he actually had the Hover Boots at that point, their power would only be momentarily, while the Stalfos can do so indefinitely. After defeating this first Stalfos, the pit gets sealed off, and you can fight the other two Stalfos normally.
  • Skyward Sword: If you try to snipe Lizalfos with a long-distance weapon, they'll always block it, even if they shouldn't possibly predict it coming. Although, this only applies to assaults to the front; their backsides are fair game.
  • Breath of the Wild:
    • Breakable Weapons are a staple element of the game, but they only wear out when you use them. Weapons and shields wielded by enemies (or NPCs) are indestructible. This is better than the alternative, though, because stealing weapons and shields from enemies is your primary means of acquiring them — you can't buy them anywhere, so the only other sources are treasure chests and the small number of "decorative" items found in settlements. It'd be pretty annoying if most of your weapons were in poor condition before you even got to use them.
    • Bows are only usable as long as Link has a stock of arrows, which are consumed when they strike an enemy and can easily be lost if a shot misses. They are easily replenished but Link can only carry a finite number at a time, and the rarer elemental and bomb arrows can be difficult to amass in number. However, enemies have another advantage over Link in that they all have Bottomless Magazines, allowing them to fire forever without ever running out of arrows. This, however, can also be exploited — the player can goad enemies with poor aim into firing at him and then pick up the arrows that miss, or simply catch them on a wooden shield, allowing him to slowly milk the enemies' infinite arrow supplies for himself.

Card Battle Games

• This trope is taken to the extreme in Digimon Digital Card Battle. The Big Bad literally hacks his Game-Breaker-filled deck to always get the same cards every time! This can be used against him if you have the ironically named 'Hacking' card, which swaps the HP of both Digimon as long as yours is a lower level.
• The Magic online game Magic Duels has an AI mode which states: "Duel against Randomized AI opponents". The "randomized AI opponent", however, is actually a script that analyzes your deck card-for-card and then proceeds to build a deck out of the entire game's card pool specifically to counter your build. Not only that, but the AI knows what cards are in your hand at all times. Also, the "Easy/Medium/Hard" difficulty levels don't actually do anything except dictate how many coins (5, 10, or 15 respectively) should you be victorious and win.^note However, it should be noted that the AI occasionally mana-screws itself, and/or sometimes plays a card that makes zero tactical sense.
  • One of the Origins campaign opponents uses Mindshrieker, with an ability that mills the top card of either player's deck and gains power and toughness based on the milled card's mana cost. Somehow, whenever that opponent uses this ability, it knows which player to mill and always hits a card with the right cost to get lethal damage or survive combat, and rarely does it ever hit a land.
• Invoked in Card City Nights where the final boss sneaks an illegal deck into the game by playing a friendly game with the Card King before hand. Since it was a friendly game, the Card King didn't bother to check the card and implicitly accepted the deck; and since the final boss only used fair cards from the illegal deck (itself a feat of luck, since it requires always having a legal card in hand to play) it didn't rouse suspicion during the game, and since they won they technically defeated the Card King before you did. The end result is a final boss deck with no card limitations and loaded with some of the best in the game.
• All Yu-Gi-Oh! games have a list of restricted cards, just like the real card game, and usually 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. Of course, that works both ways; in a lot of situations, you have to duel with someone as a partner, and your partner is usually kind of stupid too.
  • In Tag Force 3, the monster card "F.G.D."^note "Five God Dragon", known in the English TCG as "Five-Headed Dragon" had two abilities that are unmentioned on its card, and only apply when the computer controls it - it allows all other Dragon-type monsters on its controller's side of the field to inflict piercing damage^note If a monster in Defense Position is destroyed, its controller normally doesn't take any damage; piercing damage makes you take damage anyways., unless they attacked a Token monster, and Spell and Trap Cards cannot be activated when it attacks. It might be a strange bug due to how oddly specific the effects are, but it still gives the computer an advantage when using it.
  • The trend has continued in Duel Transer, the game will always follow the March 2010 Banlist even if you change it to the September 2010 Banlist. Sure, you'll be able to use Dark Hole and Monster Reborn when your opponents can't, but they get Heavy Storm, Brain Control, Rescue Cat, and Substitoad in exchange. Oh, did we forget to mention the post-game content where the game doesn't even hide that it's cheating? Multiple Pot of Greeds, Graceful Charities, Harpies Feather Dusters and RAIGEKI's abound.
  • 7 Trials To Glory was relatively good about the banlist. You had to obey the banlist, and the same cards wouldn't show up in the computers' decks.
    • However, you'll eventually notice a pattern of the days when Card Destruction is off the banlist (it works that every card is cycled on and off it), it will show up in your opponent's hand within the first three turns about half of the time. Aside from the AI also knowing your facedown monster's defense before it's flipped, it's pretty fair otherwise. The only place the cheating really shows up is when you're facing the anime characters, as nameless side characters will usually display pretty jarring Artificial Stupidity.
    • One other place where you'll see cheating (or just really, really good planning) is in the Limitation duel against Joey. In this duel, trap cards are banned, and almost all of the monsters he has in his deck have at least 1900 ATK. So you summon Gora Turtle, which prevents anything with 1900 or more ATK from attacking. Within two turns of summoning this, guaranteed, he'll summon Spell Canceler, the only monster he has with less than 1900, and it still has 1800. It's also a card he never uses in any other duel.
  • Opponents in Eternal Duelist Soul will only attack face-down monsters with a DEF lower than their monster's ATK. Each opponent has a threshold of error with their "card reading," the weakest opponents blatantly attacking any face-down monster you have while stronger opponents will single out all of your weaklings and ignore any face-down monster capable of withstanding the attack. Fortunately, this makes it easy to exploit the A.I. using cards like Man-Eater Bug (they'll read your card's Defense, but they won't read any effects so you can draw the opponent into attacking and triggering them).
  • Forbidden Memories. Not only does the AI have cards that you can't obtain without cheating devices, but it doesn't even bother to stack the deck, no; it turns the cards in its hands into other cards.
  • Duel Links feature Vagabond, an NPC whose deck is copied from the deck other players used in Ranked Duel. The issue here, is that Vagabond uses decks from the last few weeks, and this ignore the fact that there could be a new banlist within those weeks. Meaning, if you challenge Vagabond after the new banlist, there's a chance that Vagabond will use a pre-banlist deck.
• In the Cute Monster Girl-centric card battle game Monster Monpiece, the computer will always, in every single deck throughout the single-player campaign, have three copies of Fairy +2 and Poison Toad +2. These cards each cost 1 mana, provide 3 mana when they enter play, and are very easily killed — whereupon they add another 3 mana to the player's pool. These cards are also impossible to obtain during the single-player game, being very rare drops from post-game competitive online play. The computer opponent will also get at least one of these cards on its first turn, meaning that every single-player match effectively begins with the human player at a disadvantage in terms of resources with no effective means of balancing the odds. Ironically, this also counts as Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat, as while it does have more resources, it also lacks anything to use it on and will end up being overrun very quickly.
• South Park: Phone Destroyer: You can't play a version of someone if that character has already been played on the field by anyone (e.g. you can't play Super Craig if you or the AI has played any variant of Craig). The AI doesn't follow this rule whatsoever.

Fighting Games

• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, AI opponents will not consistently be affected by Stand abilities that affect their targeting such as Heavy Weather. Whether this is intentional on the part of the developers is unclear.
• 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). This will become painfully obvious when Zangief hits you for the 3,000th time 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).
  • 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, 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.
  • In Street Fighter: The Movie (the game of the movie of the game), when fighting M. Bison at the end, there was a fairly high chance that if the player was winning, Bison would stop taking damage from player attacks, or insta-kill the player with a weak attack, or the player would take damage from his own attacks.
  • Street Fighter II was infamous for this. AI opponents could deliver a barrage of crouching kicks at lightning speed. Fortunately for the player, the AI will usually only connect once, which sends the player's fighter flying away from the opponent. It could button mash faster than humanly possible too. Scream in rage as E. Honda did 90% damage off of one hold on high difficulty in Hyper Fighting.
    • It also had a command in its script to become invincible for x frames. It would use this to punish your dropped combos with a high damage roundhouse that is normally too slow to do this with.
    • Hyper Fighting also introduced another new cheat. The computer could remove startup frames from its moves. It would use this to respond to your roundhouse sweep with a faster roundhouse sweep. They figured you wouldn't notice because HF already skips frames. In certain cases, these modified moves were effectively unblockable because if you weren't already in blocking stance, they would hit you before you switched, and you can't enter block before an attack in range is made.
    • Super Turbo is the SFII CPU at its absolute cheapest, especially in the American arcade release where someone at Capcom USA believed that the AI had somehow become too easy over the years so they decided to raise the difficulty by about 2 or 3 levels compared to the original Japanese release. It utilizes all of the above mentioned shortcuts, plus a drastically improved, deadlier take on an old cheat that is physically impossible for a human to replicate even with the likes of autofire/turbo enabled: inescapable mash throws that are mashed out so inhumanly fast that a single one of them can either kill you outright or take off 95% of your lifebar in one go. Pray you don't get hit with one of these, otherwise you'll be treated to your character helplessly getting their faces devoured by Blanka, the life squeezed out of them by E. Honda, or their skull bashed into a bloody pulp by Balrog headbutting them to death.
  • During one of the final battles against M. Bison with the player controlling Charlie in the story mode of Street Fighter V, Bison will frequently use charge attacks... while walking towards the player!
  • In some of the old Capcom fighters that ran on quarter-guzzling Arcade rules, such the early days of the Marvel vs. Capcom titles, there's two separate DIP switches between the difficulty of A.I., and how much damage the A.I. does. It's entirely possible for a machine to be set to a situation where it seems like the computer is dumb as a brick, but they can K.O. you in a few well-placed attacks, grabs or specials, compared to you doing relative peanuts for damage to them no matter how hard you try.
• In the Mortal Kombat arcade series, the computer player often blatantly cheats. Here are some gems for Mortal Kombat II.
  • 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. If you accidentally did a throw on an opponent dazed for "Finish Him!", 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.
  • Heaven forbid your feet leave the ground. You want to jump forward? They will jump kick you out of the air. You want to jump back? Prepare to eat a projectile. (Though those who could warp attack like Smoke and Scorpion could jump back, cancel into the warp, and smack the computer silly when they inevitably fireballed.)
  • In Mortal Kombat 3, Kano and Liu Kang could pull their special charging moves almost instantly, sometimes several times in succession. Liu Kang could do several bicycle attacks and then finish you with a combo. Kano could do his spinning attack twice, and sometimes when you were in mid-air.
  • One textbook case vessel of the trope and a bane to most players is Jade in UMK3, 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.
  • If you're fighting with Liu Kang in 3 and Trilogy, you'd notice that every projectile that you throw on him would be retaliated with his crouching fireball.
  • In the same games including the Mythologies: Sub-Zero spinoff, the AI would ignore your uppercut by crouching and they would uppercut you instead.
  • Some more things that are painfully obvious are that occasionally, when you're in the middle of a combo, the AI will throw you before you finish it. Naturally, this is not normally possible. Another case is that if you get them with a spear/hook from Scorpion or Smoke, then attempt to jump over them, they'll attack you while they should still be stunned. Finally, in some situations, the AI will kick you or block your attacks in an Endurance match. They'll do this when they're supposed to be down and the second fighter is onscreen, by the way.
  • The final boss in Trilogy, Shao Kahn, has a tendency to use his hammer against you many times until you're defeated in the Nintendo 64 counterpart.
  • Mortal Kombat 9 (2011) lives up to its predecessors in cheating bastardness. Enemies can counter your moves the instant you throw them and can seemingly block everything you throw at times, but that isn't the worst part. The worst part is the bosses. If a boss throws an attack of any kind, he becomes immune to being stunned. You jump kick Kintaro in the face while both of you are airborne? Too bad he just started his air throw, so you're getting slammed into the ground. In Challenge Tower levels where there are random powerups being dropped you can almost guarantee that they will be dropped behind the CPU, especially if the CPU is near death.
    • Not to mention, the absolute pain in the ass that is Shao Kahn. Most of his attacks are unblockable, though he can block the player's attacks without actually needing to block with his arms. He is capable of unleashing health-bar killing attack strings that are unavoidable, unbreakable, and unblockable once started, and his X-ray attack can take out half of the player's health-bar. Compounding this is that he's ridiculously fast and is usually (but not always) Immune to Flinching, making him a boss who can take you out in a matter of seconds!
• While the AI in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl isn't of Rubber Band variety, it still can, for instance, always see everything in the stage.
  • They've been seen to meteor cancel being spiked down at ridiculously high damage percentages.
  • It has also been told: The grab range of computer opponents seems to be far greater than when human players use them, meaning we aren't as safe as we thought we were.
  • The computer also knows what effect random items will have. If you see a Timer, and don't see the computer gunning for it, when you pick it up, it will slow you down. The same can be said for Poké Balls and Assist Trophies.
  • Items, particularly the Dragoon Parts in Brawl, are easier to drop when a human player is attacked, but the computer can hold onto them through a lot more attacks. Don't be surprised if you drop your beam sword after every single hit you take, then the AI grabs it and never lets go.
  • For Brawl's Final Smashes, when the AI uses Sonic's or Pikachu's, not only are you the next-to-always prime target, but they have PERFECT control over their powers (where a human will have a hard time not slip-sliding across the field of battle), as in they will only miss once in a lifetime.
  • Throughout the series, changing a CPU's difficulty level changes three parameters: how aggressive they are, how likely they are to avoid your attacks, and their reaction time. In for 3DS / Wii U, a level 9 CPU has a reaction time of one frame, meaning that the instant you input the button combination for a certain attack, they're already air-dodging out of harm's way. Meanwhile, of course, they're free to whale on you as much as they want. Players have cited such reflexes as being consistently able to deflect projectiles with a well-timed shield.
  • Picking up the hammer item will cause the player to only be able to walk and jump for a duration, during which they will rapidly swing it back and forth, dealing heavy damage to nearby opponents. Getting sent offstage, save for pressing the grab/toss button as soon as you tumble and hoping for the best, will ensure the wielder dies if the effect doesn't wear off fast enough to allow recovery moves. The CPU, however, will invariably drop it on its own if they are placed into a position where they will fall to their death if they hold on to it. In addition, the hammer's head will have a random but small chance of breaking off, leaving you prone to attacks until it wears off. The AI, however, is allowed to drop it under this circumstance too.
  • The final match before Master Hand in Brawl is a free-for-all Battle Royale... except for the fact that it's not. CPU characters focus on killing the player, instead of each other, sometimes creating a grocery line of computer players waiting to enact a team battle with friendly fire enabled. This is even more evident with the one-hit-KO tracking of Dragoon should the computer get all parts. It nearly-always focuses on you. In fact, this seems to be the case in a regular free for all match. At least one guy 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". There are even accounts of such AI taunting a human player when one of the other CPUs KO'd him or her in a free-for-all.
  • Despite all of those issues, though less so as the series went on, these computers are also known to make ridiculous, easily-enough exploited mistakes, such as when fought on certain stages - detailed on the Smash wiki.
• Dragon Ball 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.
  • Another source of shenanigans are ki teleports. It's essentially a counter that will consume an energy bar for teleporting behind the attacker and smacking him on the noggin. First off, the smack can be cancelled into a combo of your choice; but then the AI will immediately pull them off wherever a human player has to first input guard, and then the combo. Second, should you do a ki teleport, the AI will immediately follow up with another one, and another one, and ANOTHER one, so long as they come up on top. Doesn't help that sometimes the AI will cheat and use less energy per teleport to guarantee getting the last laugh.
  • In Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors 2, at the end of Mania mode. Throughout the 20 match mode, the player will automatically lose any special attack Beam-O-War animation. But for the last 10 matches, the computer adds two or three of the below tricks. For three of the last six matches, it then pits the player's team against one opponent (Cell, then Broly, and in the final match SS Goku), who has access to about a half-dozen AI exclusive skills, including:
    • A shield to block everything that can last as long as the AI wants. They can't do anything while it's active, but since they don't need to guard or gather energy, and they have other attack buffs (see below), this just means that the player is lulled into gathering energy so the computer can attack at a moment's notice.
    • Special moves can be spammed at no energy cost, meaning gathered Ki is only used for their ultimate attacks. They can also be done repeatedly, interrupting each other, and with no lag. For example, Broly's giant ball projectile, the strongest projectile in the game, that when spammed can Wombo Combo even another Broly.
    • Ultimate techniques become spiteful overkill for you almost killing them.
    • Instant teleportation to the space directly behind where you're attacking, as soon as you release that attack. Even without this, the characters can move more quickly than any other character in the game.
    • Base skill enhancements such as absurd speed, counter beams and triple throw range. For the Goku fight, these enhancements, and all hitboxes, are doubled again. This results in a regular Kamehameha taking up most of the screen and killing most characters.These characters are now usable with a hacking device, so you can now give the bastards a taste of their own murderous medicine!
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse was pretty bad about its cheating AI, mainly because while players had Ki or Stamina drain for transformations, the AI (who only transform when a mission makes them do so) never run out; this is bad in late game quests that liberally throw Super Saiyans at you who have infinite Ki and know how to use it. While they suffered Artificial Stupidity due to willingly wasting their Stamina on evasive skills and vanishes, they also often packed Super Armor, effectively making them unflinching no matter how hard you hit them as they smack you back.
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 removed super armor and infinite Ki, and let you see the enemy's stamina and ki at all times for further assurance that they're not cheating. Except they do anyway; when fighting Frieza and Cooler at the end of the Namek Saga, their Stamina regen is jacked up significantly to the point that even the Final Boss can't compare. Meanwhile, the AI can perfectly read player inputs, know when you're holding a button to prepare a Super or Ultimate Skill, and abuse Vanishes, Stamina Breaks and Burst Dashes with perfect timing to the point that using any Ultimate that isn't mostly risk-free will instantly have them Stamina Break you if you didn't break them beforehand.
• Guilty Gear is very... 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 attack is kind enough to put up warning boxes so you know which version is coming up. The obvious solution to that last one might be to block or to leap over and behind her before she lets it go... except that neither of those tricks actually works. If you block, best case you will use up most of your Faultless Defense bar. Worse case, you take one chip damage for each heart (and there are a LOT of them). If you get behind her, they swarm you even without a hit. There IS a way to dodge the third attack, if you can figure it out. double jump from close range straight up
• Those who played SVC Chaos: SNK vs Capcom 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. 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.
• 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. Fortunately you can counter this by running in the opposite direction and, if the pickup is far enough away, you'll get the computer stuck against the edge of the camera and unable to reach it. The computer will keep trying to get to the pickup while you're free to chuck buildings at it.
  • The Toonami review of the game in particular admits that Mechagodzilla is cheap.
• 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.
• Eternal Champions on the Sega Genesis and Sega CD 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's almost impossible to beat it, and even if you manage to deplete its health bar it still keeps fighting. The only way to finish the fight once and for all is to trigger choking it out with the nunchucks, recreating the scene from the film but with no foreshadowing or given way to pull off in the game whatsoever.
• 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". 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).
  • Jinpachi also gets a few 85%-95% damage attacks, which he will chain along with a teleporting backstep, which in the highest difficulty activates when an attack that would definitely hit is made by the player, it does it by reading controller inputs, but only at the highest difficulty level.
  • In a fighting game basically devoid of projectiles, Jinpachi has fireballs and teleports. The teleports are bad enough, since they're basically instantaneous. But the fireballs? Dear Lord. Unblockable, unjumpable, unduckable. He can toss them out with no charge-up and no cool-down. That means that, even if you get smart, and try to sidestep, he'll just keep shooting until you take the hit. Of course, they do about 50% damage.
  • The CPU opponents are inconsistent in their "skill". The arcade mode shifts from "Beginner" to "Tekken Lord"; Beginner AI will not attempt to attack and rarely block, while from Shihan rank and above the AI has 100% perfect accuracy, knows what button you are pressing and counters with perfect timing every move, and if that's not bad enough, the AI will 99% of times kick you in the air and do a 10+ combo + finishers that will reduce your health to 15-20%, and if you try to attack, the AI will block it and will counter it before you have a chance to do a combo, mostly forcing you to use cheap moves to best the high level AI.
  • Tekken 6's Azazel wasn't quite as bad, but had one very specific cheap cheat trick: he blocks while attacking. While attacking. Normally, characters are vulnerable when performing an attack, and an opponent can interrupt them by landing the proper hit on them first. The only way to reliably hit Azazel is to get behind him and hit him while his back is turned, where he can't (usually) defend. To be slightly more specific, Azazel is twice your height, and you hit him in the legs when you attack. His legs can block while his upper body attacks. It's still a violation of what has been a universal rule of Tekken until right then, and insanely frustrating. (To note: most previous Tekken games had bosses that were not too ridiculously powerful to be made available for playable use, and who followed all the same basic rules that every other character did. 5 and 6 were the first games to have bosses that were too obscenely powerful to give to players, or in the latter's case, that didn't even follow some of the basic rules of the game.)
  • Tekken Tag Tournament 2 makes things much worse with the return of Jun Kazama and Unknown. Jun isn't anything threatening really, so long as you're careful. But those stupid Attack Reversals can be annoying, especially since Reversals are rarely used by the AI. Unknown however is even more fucking annoying with her many penchants to do a handful of things to interrupt your rhythm: Jinpachi's stun, her branches, her Attack Reversal and that dangerous portal move. That's not counting her increased health and quick regeneration.
  • And don't even think about building a winning streak. The computer will use unavoidable/unblockable attacks, use moves from impossible positions, move/attack faster than you, instantly use moves that require human players to execute a complex command, do combos that are impossible for the player, read your controller inputs and counters you immediately, and become impossible to fake out to punish you for it.
  • In Tekken 7 Akuma follows the tradition. As a final boss, he can parry your attacks, teleport around the place extremely' fast, use an unblockable Focus Attack that is also twice as fast as that of his normal version, send 3 Shakunetsu Hadoken in a row (which will juggle you for quite some damage, or eat up most of your health if you happen to use an armoured move before being hit), and use an armoured taunt that instantly fills his entire Super Meter, not to mention that his Raging Demon is a One-Hit Kill. Of course, he also has a utterly obscene damage output.
    • His parry deserves some elaboration. Not only is he the only character in the game who can do that, but it is instantaneous as well, and the computer loves it. This means that unless you're punishing one of his attacks he can basically decide to take no damage and punish your every move. So, in the highest difficulty setting, you have a character who can perfectly block everything and counter for ridiculous damage while regaining his health (of which he also has an obscenely high amount).
  • Also in Tekken 7, the ridiculous "Special Battle" fighters you randomly encounter while in Treasure Battle mode. Akuma, Devil Kazumi, Devil Kazuya, battle damaged Heihachi and regular Jin. They all have one stupidly annoying thing in common; their Rage Art is an instant one hit kill. It doesn't matter if you get them down to a sliver of health, if they get lucky (and they will) and land their Rage move, it'll instantly win the round for them, even if you were at full health!
• By Namco, same as Tekken, Soulcalibur has been pretty fair for the most part. There are the occasional moments when the enemy moves faster than a human, but still feels beatable. Then there's Broken Destiny and the introduction of Dampierre. All his moves look like feints and/or mistakes, don't deal a lot of damage, but have a nasty habit of stun-locking you, as well as many moves that are just plain annoying. An extremely devoted player can make him the deadliest fighter on the planet.
  • Rock got a similar annoyance upgrade. He is slightly faster than his SCIV console counterpart and has an arsenal of grabs that can get you while your down or midair, and the AI's very good at chaining them back-to-back for maximum frustration potential.
  • In the original, Cervantes and Soul Edge have an attack called 'Self-Destruction' (renamed Geo De Rey in later installments); when the player uses it, it eats up 1/3 of their weapon gauge. The computer can decide arbitrarily if this applies to it or not; occasionally for Cervantes, hardly ever for Soul Edge. Soul Edge's version also has the advantage of controlling exactly when he launches, thus making it a nightmare when he starts spamming it, which is often, but you can control that too, so that's ok. It doesn't help that they (especially the latter) often get unbreakable weapons too while they suffer as much as everyone else when you control them, so good luck trying to disarm them. As the weapon gauge is never used again in such a fashion, it is no longer an issue from Soul Calibur onwards.
  • Go ahead and attempt to use the extraordinarily rare ranged attacks like Cervantes' gunshots. The AI will perfectly duck the bullets every time rather than risk guarding or side-stepping it, and be able to instantly attack out of it while you're still recovering from the shot. It's entirely possible to fire it repeatedly while the AI is too far to counter, and see them do frame perfect dodges each time yet not bother advancing since the script tells them to always prioritize ducking over anything else; it's predictable for players, but you won't see anyone pulling that stunt consistently.
• 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.
  • The Tag Team Challenges in DOA Dimensions will make you throw that brand new 3DS right into a wall. Sure, it starts out easy enough to lull you into a false sense of security, but then the madness begins. The opponent AI is damn near perfect. With one hit, it can take down almost half of your health, whereas if you hit them, it's like hitting a brick wall with an inflatable hammer. The computer also controls your tag partner... and is worse than any noob you could ever face online. Really, its only use is to be a punching bag so you can recover your health. But considering your opponent can usually kill both you and your tag partner within two seconds, it doesn't help much.
  • In DOA 5, it gets even worse once you get to the last four difficulties. You will be countered out of every string you try, usually by the second hit before the AI springs into a combo that damages at least half your health. There are ways around this, but once you get to survival mode, good luck. All four courses require you to defeat 100 opponents, in a row, with one health bar.
• In Castlevania: Judgment, Dracula will put his back to the screen, and thus you will not see what attack he is going to make.
• Naruto:
  • In Naruto: The Broken Bond, the computer is 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.
  • 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.
  • The Naruto: Clash of Ninja series avoided this for the most part, usual computer tendencies aside. Then English releases began to be developed by American developers instead, and now we have story mode enemies who have no stagger animations and Perfect Play A.I. mindsets- sometimes in 2 on 1 matches against you. These aren't even optional challenges- you have to kill these people to proceed. The optional challenges involve similar things, only with the difficulty increased by better AI.
  • The Grandpa Gen challenges in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2. Especially the Chiyo and Jiraiya fights. Both have insanely high attack and defenses, and can either poison you (Chiyo) or regain health (Jiraiya).
  • Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 has this in four distinct types.
    • Some battles as already mentioned are usually 1 (You) VS two/three, which means one attacks, one charges their chakra, then switch. Repeat until death.
    • Sometimes when you attack the computer it just goes through them, obviously this doesn’t happen to you. It also lets them set up an (Unblockable) attack.
    • Tactics like continuous healing work twice as well and as fast as they do for you.
• 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. If you want to pull off the killer moves with a full bar, you absolutely need the booster item to fill it faster, because the enemy will hit you first otherwise.
• 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.
• In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the AI also ignores equipment and accessory rules. Every piece of regular equipment (swords, shields, etc.) has a level requirement that your character must meet in order to equip it, but almost every AI opponent will be wearing at least one item above their level. Accessories work somewhat differently. They are ranked from D to Star. The higher the rank, the fewer of that accessory you can use at the same time. Many AI will have three or four of the same Star-ranked accessory.
  • Oddly enough, though, because of the way equipment was changed for the sequel^note Equipment only has "tiered" requirements: level 1, 30, 60, 90, or 100, the computer no longer breaks that rule.
  • Which brings us to Chaos, especially with his Summon. Every single other Summon in the game can only be used once per fight, except in one specific, rule-based case. He however can use his purely at will, as often as he wants.
  • The prequel adds to the cheating — if the game wants to play a character like an SNK Boss, it will — dodging will be instant, attacks will be instant (even if you're playing the same character), their priority will be scores higher than yours, etc.
  • Amusingly, Duodecim also lets you turn off most of the cheating by setting the ruleset for custom matches to "Official(Skill)", which disables equipment and summons for both sides. It's actually kind of pathetic seeing how badly the AI performs when forced to fight fair.
• In Bleach: Blade Of Fate, the human character can only Flash Step or use RF Special Attacks when they have enough Spiritual Power to do so. The AI opponents have infinite Spiritual Power. In Bleach: Soul Resurrección, a character can enter "Ignition Mode" to increase attack power, and from there use an "Ignition Attack", a powerful attack that completely empties the Ignition Gague. Usually the Ignition Gague can only be filled by causing damage, especially many hits quickly. The computer is not bound by these restrictions, and can enter Ignition Mode and use an Ignition Attack whenever they feel like it, which on harder difficulties they will. It's not unheard of for a computer-controlled character to use an Ignition Attack, and then re-enter Ignition mode before the player has even hit the ground, especially when fighting multiple enemies at once.
• BlazBlue is guilty of this. Particularly Unlimited Nu and Ragna in Score Attack Mode.
  • In Hakumen's story mode in Calamity Trigger, you get to fight Jin Kisaragi. Throughout this fight Jin ALWAYS HAS 100% HEAT GAUGE. He takes full advantage of this and will constantly catch you in an unwinnable loop with his Special attacks.
  • Basically any fight against Hazama because he lives up to his cheating bastard status. He will use his Distortion Drives only when you have literally no way to dodge them.
  • Nu-13 on her own is bad enough; she can rapidfire summoned projectile swords. Many characters, particularly Hakumen and Tager, have no way at all to approach Nu in her NORMAL state. Based on tournaments, they have around a 20% chance of winning a match against a Nu player of equal skill. Unlimited Nu is Nu, except she summons twice as many swords. Yeah. It's hell.
  • Ragna isn't much better. In his Unlimited state he has twice as much life as the tankiest glacier character in the game. He also has increased vampiric properties and his Distortion Drives in his Unlimited form can easily knock off around 75% of your HP, healing him for around 50% of his, and undoing all the work you've been doing through the entire match.
  • AI-controlled characters are pretty good about having realistic reaction times, except in one specific scenario: If you're Rachel, and you're trying to manipulate them with Sylphid, they will air-dash in the opposite direction, the exact frame you press D. Doesn't matter whom you're fighting, or what you're trying to move them into; they're just programmed to instantly resist any attempts to blow them around. In fact, this can turn Sylphid into an A.I. Breaker; if you use it to blow them away from you, and they air dash towards you, they'll use up their air dash and (if you time it right) move right into the middle of Baden Baden Lily (or Clownish Calendula if that's your thing).
• Battle CAPacity had major issues with Pyroak in the past. Pyroak has a lot of HP, excellent projectile attacks, and a useful anti-air attack which comes out quickly at adjustable heights. He is slow, however, and suffers against most characters at close range. When the AI was using Pyroak, there was literally no slowdown between launching projectiles and using his anti-air, making him all but unapproachable.
• This one is easy to miss, since you usually fight against human opponents in Rumble Fighter. However, in Survival Mode, the enemies can use the Panic Attack an unlimited number of times, whereas players are limited to using it once per round.
• Never let a fight go the distance in UFC 2. No matter how much you dominated the fight, the computer will invariably award itself the decision victory.
• X-Men: Next Dimension: your counterattacks will work approximately one time in seventeen. The A.I. can pull them off whenever it wants. The game engine treats interrupting a string of attacks as the worst kind of impoliteness.
• The various Punch-Out!! games all allow the opponents to break boxing rules like nobody's business while restricting you to legitimate boxing tactics. Enemies are free to chug soda to replenish health, duct-tape a manhole cover over their only weak spot, or blatantly use prohibited moves like headbutts and magic to take you down. Unlike most examples on this page, it's entirely Played for Laughs. The only aversion is Glass Joe's protective headgear, as it turns out if any boxer suffers 100 losses they're allowed to use it and, sure enough, Little Mac gets a set of his own if he suffers 100 losses.
• In For Honor, higher-difficulty opponents in the campaign and higher-difficulty multiplayer bots are able to change attack directions faster than is physically possible for a human player. As a result you'll get situations where an AI Orochi or Valkyrie will initiate attack chains from above and midway through change directions to launch side attacks, the latter of which is physically too fast for a player to block. The only option is to dodge the chain altogether or parry the first hit to prevent it from ever starting.

First-Person Shooters

General Note: One of the more egregrious kinds of "features" of this trope for this specific gaming genre is that the overall bullet physics for a human player tends to be much more detailed than for the AI. The most notorious example of such is the bullet spread from an automatic weapon. A human's bullets, often thanks to the weapon shaking when it is fired (tho it is usually integral to the weapon physics and the shake is just a bit of visual chrome), will exhibit a spread of the impact pattern around the target (often called "conefire"), meaning that quite a few rounds will miss the target no matter how well the player has kept the crosshairs on the target.

Not so for most AI's here. Instead of having a bullet spread of that sort, every single round will typically and unerringly hit exactly where the AI is aiming, meaning that in a simple mano-on-mano automatic weapon shootout between a human and an AI, the AI will win most every time. The AI may also have a simple hit scan shooting model (i.e. instant bullet impacts upon pulling the trigger) instead of the 3D model that the human is using (involving bullet drop and time of flight physics), which of course means the AI rounds will hit you before yours hits it if you both fire simultaneously.

• Up until Vegas, Rainbow Six seemed quite unfair in that the AI could somehow detect you even if you couldn't figure out where it was. A major problem with the first games was that being spotted once, even if the guy didn't alert his comrades, meant everyone knew where you were. In the original PC trilogy, the AI also had Improbable Aiming Skills: no matter what body armor you chose, a hit was usually deadly because the AI scored a headshot practically every time, and could do it from the other side of the map, with a machine pistol, facing the wrong way. Raven Shield's Elite setting is especially cheap, coupled with the Artificial Stupidity of friendly teammates.
• On higher difficulty levels, the bots in Quake III: Arena can track your character through walls and can one-shot kill you via Railgun the moment a single pixel of your hitbox is exposed.
• Medal of Honor, especially the PC games. Nazis have improbable accuracy with automatic weapons while yours suffer from A-Team Firing, can shoot through foliage and other transparent objects that you can't very well, don't suffer from aim disruption while supposedly flinching, will draw a bead on you the moment you enter their line of fire, especially the snipers in Snipertown, run and gun with unlikely aiming skill, and can even get perfect shots when blindfiring. All of which is true in Call of Duty as well, made by some of the same developers.
• Enemies in Call of Duty love to automatically shoot you just before you pull the trigger and throw off your aim so you miss your shot, especially when you're using a bolt-action rifle and have to wait a full second before you can fire again.
  • Later in the series, enemies will lob grenades that always land at the player's feet. Even if you're in what basically amounts to a pillbox with a tiny opening.
  • Combat training in the Black Ops games lets you see for yourself just how much the AI cheats by letting you see killcams from their perspective. Tracking players through walls, absolutely zero recoil or bullet spread, and on higher difficulties nearly infinite look speed. One AI enemy with a semi automatic sniper rifle can kill multiple players spread out over an area in less than a second the instant it has line of sight to all of them. What's worse is this generally only applies to the AI on the opposing team - your AI will frequently forget they have a loaded weapon in their hands and go for knife kills, forget they have a knife if they manage to survive to get into range, and generally just spread out as far as possible and actively ignore enemies, especially ones that are attacking you.
  • The stealth in the more modern Call of Duty games is actually quite fair. Occasionally though, your amazingly quiet silenced pistol suddenly gives away your position as if it fired nuclear missiles and boulders.
• Halo
  • After dual-wielding in Halo 2 and Halo 3 proved to be rather unbalanced, it was excised in the subsequent games... for players. In Halo: Reach, Elites are still perfectly capable of dual-wielding weapons, letting them still tear you to pieces with double plasma rifles while you have to wear down their shields the old fashioned way.
  • Players acquainted with trying to hijack Wraith tanks for themselves may know the utter rage they felt upon finding that enemy Wraiths can fire mortars sideways. Meanwhile the player in a Wraith can only fire directly forward, since that's the only direction the cannon faces. Covenant baddies being thorns in your side. Nothing you're allowed to do except slowly turn to hit them. That's not even including enemy Wraiths' incredibly long-aim and, despite what other nay-sayers might argue otherwise, are coupled with often-unerring accuracy (unless you move away from where it seems that their plasma might hit, which isn't always easy, especially if another threat is distracting you) with an arcing, large explosive projectile on Legendary.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • Under normal circumstances, "facestabbing" as a Spy is a rare, hilarious glitch. Spy-bots in the Mann vs. Machine mode, however, seem capable of facestabbing players whenever the hell they want to. This starts making more sense when you see how loopy the backstab hitboxes can be, and take into account the spies know exactly where these places begin and end. Thankfully averted elsewhere: Just like übered human players, übered bomb carriers (and their medics) aren't immune to the Pyro's airblast. Especially useful if the map has a Bottomless Pit, which not even über-bots can be exempted from. As a nice bonus, that resets the bomb all the way back to the beginning. And you thought MvM would turn Pyros useless. Spy Robots can also backstab Snipers wearing the Razorback. As in, that piece of equipment whose sole purpose is to protect the Sniper from backstabs.
• TimeSplitters
  • The 5* AI in the original TimeSplitters game's Arcade modes will turn a semi-automatic weapon into a fully-automatic nightmare, and they never have to reload. Ever. If they get hold of Pistol x2 and see you, you are probably going to die horribly in an endless storm of bullets. Curiously enough, they are less dangerous if using actual automatic weapons.
  • The bots in TimeSplitters Future Perfect will frequently walk through solid walls and scenery if you're not facing in their general direction, especially on Mapmaker maps; this becomes a real problem in Virus mode, where the AI will occasionally even fall through the fucking ceiling and land on you!! It's possible to turn around and catch them in the act, resulting in all sorts of creepy visual weirdness such as arms and faces half-emerged through the walls/windows/doors.
• Battlefield:
  • Battlefield 3. ESPECIALLY on hard difficulty. Let's see, bullets that are flying everywhere? Check. A player that dies in two or three continuous shots? Check. Enemies that can shoot you with just your BIG TOE sticking out of cover? Check. Enemies that can SHOOT THROUGH ROCKS IN THE INDESTRUCTIBLE ENVIRONMENT? THAT'S A BIG FUCKING CHECK!!!
  • If you ever play against AI bots in Battlefield 1942, you basically can't use airplanes because the AI's aiming is so accurate that it can use ordinary machine guns (as opposed to actual anti-air weapons) to whittle down your health and knock you out of the sky.
• Darksims in Perfect Dark's Combat Simulator. They can teleport, shoot with 100% accuracy no matter the weapon or distance, and spawn with every weapon on the map already in their inventory. They still don't know how to use Remote Mines. The game does warn you that they cheat, though.
• In Destiny, when lining up your sights on an enemy (usually through a sniper rifle but applies to other guns as well) the enemy will seem to magically know where you are and start moving to make your shot harder even if you haven't fired off a single round, yet. In addition, once you HAVE fired (especially annoying if you're using a sniper rifle) the enemies will know JUST where you are and move behind appropriate cover to keep from being picked off so easily.
• A Game Mod example: The Wolfenstein 3-D mod Eisenfaust: Legacy is so unfair that after a few levels you'd wish you were playing the normal Wolfenstein 3D again thanks to the unforgiving AI, which makes you die quickly. This becomes extremely annoying when the machinegunners come into play. To make things even worse, you cannot use debug cheats.
• XIII: The final boss will continue shooting even whilst reloading.

Maze Games

• Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness's multiplayer mode has all AI players being pretty much against all human players if there's any (and should be at least two of them) when it comes to the rules. Generally, they form a team, even though the player can't do so with other players. In Dot Mania mode, dead AIs lose merely two dots as opposed to the players' ten. In the same mode (and Ghost Tag, in the early moments), they're also notably quite spiteful, always chasing down power-ups if said power-up appears. Considering that 4 out of 5 power-ups in Dot Mania mode are lethal to anyone who didn't pick them up (though one power-up won't kill anyone but will result in dot loss regardless), this makes reaching the intended goal difficult for the players. Thankfully, the only power-ups that the AIs actively ignore are the bag of money (steals dots from other players) and the chocolate cake (makes the character grow bigger, enabling him/her to stomp on other players), which in their case can only be picked up by accident (though woe betide you if an AI happens to grab a money bag). On the bright side, those AIs are hilariously stupid when not doing anything else, often running back and forth or cluelessly going to random places, including using warps for no reason. Obviously, this often results in multiple hilarious deaths by ghosts (Dot Mania), easy tag targets (Ghost Tag and Da Bomb) and plain stupid deaths from running out of time (Da Bomb). For added hilarity, one map has electric hazards, so Hilarity Ensues if you play against those AIs in that map.^note Though, in Da Bomb, don't expect the "it" player to die because of those hazards, as he/she cannot be killed that way, though the untagged player can still take advantage of dying to the hazards if said player is being relentlessly chased. Just hope the chaser won't reach your spawn spot before you fully respawn (which the AIs will be more than happy to do so). As for Ghost Tag, while all players can die to the same hazard, AIs are still smart enough to simply tag a "dead" Pac-Person to continue gathering dots, since the foolishly dead player is still vulnerable to tags in that mode.

Racing Games

• The Cruis'n USA port on the Nintendo 64 featured drastic Rubber-Band A.I. from the few lead cars that would try to pass you, including "That F**king Blue Car". The top two cars in any race would drive perfectly and always managed to avoid crashing into traffic, even clipping through traffic that was going to wreck them if the player couldn't see it. The only way possible to achieve victory was to force other racers into the oncoming cars. Even then, it wasn't foolproof, as not only did you have to get lucky with the timing (since oncoming traffic is nearly impossible to predict and/or see coming), the AI cars would be back on your tail in less than ten seconds. On the higher difficulties, the only way to win was to knock a car into the opposing lanes towards the end of the race and hope an oncoming car rammed them off the road.
• Road Rash 3 for the Genesis thoroughly abuses this trope. One racer (Lucky Luc) always manages to stay ahead of you. You can have the same bike as him, and he still manages to get ahead of you so he can spam his oilcans. If you decide to grab the next higher bike, or two after that, he STILL is usually a bit faster than you, or can at least catch up to you with no problem. The game also has some serious Rubber-Band A.I.. The super secret bike tops out (when not using the nitro) at around 215 MPH. You get this bike (with the proper code) on the first races (if you decided to cheat back). You can speed past every other racer and take first place within the first 11 seconds of the race, but if you crash any time after that (most noticeable when you're at the end of the race), at least five other racers will pass you before you can get back onto the bike, even if you don't get flung too far away from it.
• RC Pro-Am:
  • In certain races, the yellow car will suddenly move twice as fast as all of the other cars on the track (including your own, even a fully-upgraded car). If you hear a high-pitched squeal and see the yellow car slingshot ahead of the pack, you'd better take it out quickly or forget about a first-place finish.
  • You can be a cheating bastard too. You have Secret Player Moves: Weapons. Even at super turbo speeds, if the yellow car eats a missile or bomb, it goes boom and loses its super turbo for a bit. Actually, the yellow car's cheating is in response to your blasting the other cars, so the safest rule is to minimize your use of weapons unless you're forced and resort to other techniques like ramming while protected by Roll Cages. What's worse is the late game tracks where EVERY car does this the instant they pass you up. If you don't blast them out of the starting gate, you can't win!
• In The Simpsons Hit & Run, each level has a series of races to win a car. Almost every race will feature the next level's starter car as the lead opposing car, and it is always superior to any car you can access in the current level. This is especially bad in the second level, where Lisa's level 3 Malibu Stacy car is insanely better than anything Bart can access in his level 2 arsenal, making the races a nightmare to win. Special mention also must go to Marge having to solo-race Frink's Hover Car in one of her races, which is the most nimble car in the game. Her starter car, by comparison, is an SUV that will tip over at the slightest provocation (if you know Simpsons Lore, you'll totally get the joke though - Canyonero!). In addition, the AI cars are nigh-impossible to push off the road and are generally perfect drivers except on really sharp turns. Of course, you can always come back to the early levels with a better car, making it a cakewalk, but that means you're prize is a car with worse stats than the ones you already have your hands on. Furthermore, oftentimes the cars you can just buy from Gil tend to have better stats than the cars you win in races anyways.
• Burnout: This is enforced in order to encourage you the player to find shortcuts on a route to get quarter mile leads.
  • 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 overcome.
  • In Burnout Paradise, the computer drivers will always get a head start in race events, allowing them to boost past you before you even get control of your car.
  • Marked Man, on the other hand, is a bitch on Class A and Elite levels. There are way more parked cars, gridlocked traffic and they throw the best aggression cars in the game at you regardless of what you are driving. Sometimes you will be lucky to make it a mile in a four mile Marked Man.
• In Crash Team Racing for the PS1, Nitrous Oxide literally starts the race before the green light that signals the race's start.
  • That isn't all. All the bosses would have an unlimited amount of weapons after passing through the first crate. (Or "Passing by" the first crate area, if you jump ahead and take the crate they would, they would still get the items even if they didn't break a weapon crate.) The only advantage is that they would only use one weapon type and would always fire behind them. The Final Boss uses weapon types of every other boss in the game!
  • Also, all racers crash and stop to recover whenever you hit them with missiles, bombs, or TNT/Nitro crates. N.Oxide spins a few times but is otherwise unhindered by any weapon you throw at him.
  • The trend of cheating AI would continue even in the latest remake, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. The computer, even on easy mode, can be seen rubber-banding with constant speeds. Even if you hit them with a weapon like a missile or a bomb, they get up and their speeds are unhindered. Not helping is the fact that some of these computers can get powerful game-changing power-ups at second place, while you are stuck with TNT/Nitro Crates and potions as low as 8th place. On top of that, the slower-speed characters, if chosen by the computer, would be given a massive speed boost that can outpace even an Advanced-level racer. At this point, it's all a matter of luck if you can beat the computer.
  • Inverted in one way: The AI can never use the Purposely Overpowered N. Tropy clock or Warp Orb powerups. Most noticeable when going online in Nitro-Fueled, where they suddenly become a constant headache on par with Mario Kart Wii's Spiny Shells.
  • Crash Nitro Kart's final boss Emperor Velo puts Oxide's cheating to pure shame. Not only is Velo substantially faster than you, he races with two companions that drop extra power-ups for you to dodge and act as a shield to him from your projectiles. He drops static orbs like mad and can roll bombs backwards at you with pinpoint accuracy, to the point that there is no way a human player could pull off the stunts he uses with those bombs. Now, other bosses in the series, their challenge is to get in front then stay in front as they cannot hit you while you're in front of them; but if you're in front of Velo not only does he speed up immensely, but he starts spamming homing missiles on you! Better pray to the RNG gods you get in front of him early and stay ahead or he'll get so far ahead, you'll never even see him during the race.
• 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.
• 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 (McLaren 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.
  • G.Ceara is the driver in question, and bears a resemblance to a certain Ayrton Senna. He is beatable, however - there are videos showing him being beaten in San Marino and Brazil, but you can be sneaky enough to prevent his Brazil challenge in the first place. He literally gives up once you pass, and after Brazil, he's no longer a threat.
• 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 A.I. 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.
• Every Tokyo Xtreme Racer series game has nearly invulnerable AI, with impossible handling abilities. "Boss" racers will always catch up with and pass you, regardless of your cars' relative stats. If a race starts with you slightly in front of another car, there's a chance you will accelerate faster. If you start a race behind the exact same opponent, they accelerate into the distance and are never seen again. Also, another game in which the traffic is actively trying to destroy your car, changing lanes to block you in and adjusting the timing of their lane changes to hit your car at any speed.
• 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.
• Need for Speed is basically built on this as its norm:
  • Underground combined Rubber-Band A.I. 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. Your top speed for the race could be reported as x MPH, with your opponents given as x-n. Even if, at that top speed, the opponents had passed you. The AI actually deliberately steers traffic so they'll cross paths with you. Cars come out out of an intersection with precise timing so that you'll hit them. If you're in the lead on the last lap, this becomes even more likely. The best tactic is to swerve wildly just before every intersection so you won't be where the computer thought you were going to be.
  • Furthermore, Underground 2 and Most Wanted (2005) also had an egregious feature whereby even if you managed to build up a decent lead in spite of the Rubber-Band A.I., 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.
  • In Most Wanted:
    • Car damage initially seems inverted, since police vehicles suffer from damage - both mechanical and visual - and can be destroyed, while your own car is indestructible.^note This is outweighed by the fact that the computer has an infinite supply of them, though. But it's actually subverted, because your car has an Achilles' Heel in the form of Spike Strips, which will almost always result in you getting immediately busted without getting extremely lucky and being extremely skilled. Police cars can drive through spike strips with impunity.
    • It is possible to drag a car with it facing the opposite direction, because it got its rear wheel caught on your front end, and then not only free itself, but proceed to gain magical turning abilities where it obtains a zero-degree radius turn, and speed off. Past you.
    • 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, they will actually go after the more egregious speeder. Otherwise, the cop will usually go after you, and completely ignore everyone else.
    • Most Wanted even goes so far as to actively lie to the player. One of the loading screen tips tells you that with a well-executed pursuit breaker it's possible to take out all your pursuers at once and get away easily. But doing that just causes a new police car to instantly spawn nearby. Following the advice and slowing down to allow cops to catch up and get them all can then easily have the opposite result than the tip claims, since even though the car is invulnerable, it can still get caught in the pursuit breaker and immobilized just long enough for that new cop car to bust you.^note However, this can be considered Anti-Frustration Features if you're trying to accomplish pursuit milestones like, say, Bounty and Cost to State, as destroying police cars counts for both.
    • Cop cars in Most Wanted can also travel sideways across the road in a controlled fashion (not power-sliding) to get in your way, as though they have 4-wheel steer with a 90-degree capability.
  • Every PSP version of Need for Speed seems to put a lot of effort in ensuring that its AI has a new annoying trick at its disposal. By the time of Need for Speed: Undercover, the CPU cars could drive faster than you, no matter what was your car and how well it was upgraded, were not affected by crashes (they were back on your tail in just few seconds), could TELEPORT if you somehow managed to make them stay really behind, or TURN MID-AIR! In one of the urban stages, there is a 90-degree turn just after a really long straight that ends with a significant bump. To drive past it you simply have to slow down, but the CPU cars can drive into it at full speed, jump and turn in the air. Funny sight when you are looking behind at that time.
  • Your opponents in Shift 2: Unleashed are rather fond of the Reverse PIT manoeuvre. It's performed in exactly the same way but it's the guy pushing that spins out. It's incredibly annoying when you've got a fast car and it gets congested. Generally, your opponent's cars weigh twice as much as yours according to the physics engine.
  • In Need for Speed: Undercover (non PSP), even if you have the pedal thoroughly buried in a Mclaren F1, police SUVs will still lazily pull in front of you as though you were parked. For those still confused; this is a scenario in which a Cadillac Escalade is represented as faster than one of the fastest production cars ever produced.^note The F1 remains as of 2011 one of the fastest production cars ever made; as of July 2010 it is succeeded by very few cars including the Koenigsegg CCR, the Bugatti Veyron, the SSC Ultimate Aero TT, and the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.
  • In Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) you can pass a parked police car, at top speed, in the fastest car in the game (Veyron) and it will be on your tail in just a couple of seconds, even if you didn't slow down at all.
  • While most people point Underground as the debut of rubber-banding AI in the franchise, it is Older Than They Think - Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit had opponents that would quite literally cheat in many ways:
    • Their cars could zigzag around the course very quickly without losing any speed, so they could block you from overtaking them. Even if you were able to zig-zag as fast as they can, you'd lose a lot of speed and fall behind.
    • They're able to negotiate extremely tight corners without losing a sliver of speed. All of your cars understeer and need to slow down a lot to make the many 90-degree turns without crashing.
    • They can easily ram you off the road and continue like nothing happened. Try to do that against them, and it will feel like trying to shove a brick - you'll lose a ton of speed and likely even lose control of your car and fall behind, while your supposed victim continues like nothing happened.
    • They do not lose speed or traction when driving through dirt, mud or snow. You do.
    • Even if your car is much faster than theirs - say, a Spectre R42 against its C-Class peers^note The Spectre R42 is a C-Class car whose performance matches that of a B-Class car - even surpassing them in a few aspects - outclassing pretty much everything in its tier. - they will catch up to you and easily overtake you. If they're more than 7 seconds ahead of you, might as well restart the race.
• 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. They know pretty much every shortcut; if you miss one, they'll take it and get way ahead, such as the upper route on Abyss.
  • In keeping with the film, Sebulba's racer is equipped with flame vents which can fry your engines if you sit there too long. To be fair, you can play as Sebulba and do it too... except the AI racers are totally immune.
• 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 PS2, Xbox and GC.
  • This game exhibits extreme Rubber-Band A.I.. No matter how skilled you are or how powerful your car is, the AI will always gain a ridiculous speed boost and catch up, sometimes "teleporting", making races a Luck-Based Mission. They almost never crash or make other mistakes.
  • Try this (At least on the PC version): Play Test Drive 5 and use the "nitro boost" cheat, race on a track with a lot of straight roads so you can boost your top speed way past the logical top speed like on the Sydney track, and take a look at the racer stats at the end of the race. If you've logged a top speed of around 400mph, then the AI will log a top speed of around 800mph just to keep up with you. Granted you would be cheating yourself in the first place, this is still an amusing way to prove the audacity of the rubber band AI under magnified proportions, and also shows you can't cheat a cheating opponent since it will just cheat more anyway.
  • Additionally, Test Drive 4 and 5 are some of the hardest entries of the series because of this. Not only the AI in these games are completely stupid, such as ramming into traffic, but they're also being much faster than the player.
• Most of the games in the Midnight Club series suffer from this.
  • Midnight Club II has two literal examples: in one of the Career races, Angel gives himself a head start. It doesn't help, though, as he's almost deliberately one of the worst AI opponents you'll ever face, and that happens early in the game, in Los Angeles. Later on, in Tokyo, Ricky also pulls the same stunt in his second race, and is also lampshaded by Gina before the race begins.
  • Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition seems to be malevolent and benevolent at the exact same time. In races, your opponents are always in better cars unless you have an A tier car (to the point that races can play out with you in a D tier and your opponent in a B tier BEFORE you've completely upgraded it), your opponents always have more nitrous shots than you (or in the case of bikes, HAVE nitrous shots), and, somehow, obey the Copenhagen interpretation, because even if you overlapped a car, if you are not watching him on the minimap, he will warp right behind you and be able to put you back into second place. However, you can outrun them on straightaways, they cannot use slipstream turbo, and cannot use any special abilities.
  • Midnight Club: Los Angeles was criticized in an IGN review because of its rubberband techniques making the game often harder than it needed to be. Not only can they rocket off the line faster, but they have NOS by the bucketload, often blowing right past you. Another gripe by that same review was for markers being in places that are hard to spot, such as on corners you will often blow past. A patch eased some of the Rubberband problem for the first third of the game.
• Forza:
  • Forza Motorsport 2 exhibits several of the stated examples (not to extreme levels, but they appear). But the worst offense is when you end up with the car in 2nd place pulling a PIT Maneuver on you, giving them and their 6 other AI buddies a chance to speed off as you are forced to get back to the track while the penalty meter is growing. The worst part is that you can have this happen with the AI set on Easy.
  • Forza Motorsport 3 is a little different.:
    • Even on Medium difficulty, they'll bump you to-and-fro in a pack-like manner, cars in front of you will seemingly drive in a tandem formation to block you from overtaking, and they're not afraid to ram you off on their way to first place. Combine this with Realistic-level damage modelling, and you can kiss your credits goodbye.
    • When you hit an opponent, you spin out, but they remain unfazed. They can also brake later and take turns faster than you.
    • If you're on the inside lane during a turn with an A.I. car next to you on the outside lane, you can't push it off the track. Instead it will push you to the inside. If you do that to a human player in a multiplayer race, however, you can easily push him off the track.
    • A.I. cars also aren't slowed down much by the grass/dirt/sand/gravel in chicanes and tight corners that slow you down to a crawl to prevent you from taking shortcuts.
    • Any car in the same class as you can and WILL outperform your car if driven by the #1 or #2 AI. Have the fastest car model in that class, fully upgraded and tuned to be literally a millimetre away from being the next class up? Too bad. #1 AI is going to fly past you as soon as you hit the straights.
    • The starting grid is sorted (or at least supposed to be sorted) according to the cars' performance index, or PI for short; the higher a car's PI, the better the starting position. While A.I. cars will always be positioned according to their respective PIs, you are almost always positioned behind A.I. cars if their PI is only a few points lower than yours. This can be especially aggravating in races where the PIs of all cars - including yours - are very close together; even though your car has the best PI, you're placed at the end of the grid.
  • In Forza Motorsport 6, there is often one Drivatar that is nigh-uncatchable and will always pull away from you and the rest of the pack. On lower difficulties, he's not the best at cornering, but that doesn't make a difference as he will accelerate to full power instantly and fly down the straights. Oftentimes, the only way to even compete with him is to resort to dirty tactics like ramming or corner cutting. Even if you manage to ram the current cheating bastard off the track, he will either catch up to you in no time, or the game will designate another Drivatar to be the new cheating AI that will make your race miserable. To add insult to injury, this can even happen on "New Racer" difficulty.
  • The opponent Drivatar cars in Forza Horizon 2 blatantly skip checkpoints to no penalty. Additionally, the AI in Horizon games have perfect traction and minimal speed loss in off-road races, even when driving RWD supercars.
    • Forza Horizon 5, and most likely earlier games, have other cars spawn around the player regularly, most often on street races. They do not spawn around Drivatars outside of a certain range, so any opponents which are far enough ahead of or behind the player can proceed unfettered.
    • Forza Horizon 5 has a level of AI difficulty called 'Unbeatable'. AI set to this difficulty is, in many cases literally unbeatable, being able to consistently set world record lap times and gain insurmountable leads. The same difficulty level existed in Horizon 4 as well, but that was at least possible to beat.
  • All the Horizon games after 2 let you put this on yourself by enabling "Damage & Tire Wear" in the difficulty settings, which adds the simulated engine damage, tire wearing, and fuel consumption from the Motorsport games. None of these apply to enemy racers, and many races in the Horizon series aren't designed with it in mind, meaning any race with huge jumps or lots of smashing through obstacles will damage your engine and slow you down while the AI zooms past you unfazed.
• Gran Turismo:
  • In Gran Turismo 4:
    • In the rally races, if you hit the wall, you get a 5 second penalty. If you run into the computer opponent, you get a 5 second penalty. If the computer runs into you, you get a 5 second penalty. Of course, the computer can pinball down the track without so much as applying the brakes, let alone catching a penalty for tapping the (occasionally invisible) track barrier.
    • The computer will also use cars that it specifically disallows you the use of. (Cadillac Cien and VW Nardo W12 Concept in a race specifically limited to Production Vehicles Only, for example.)
  • Back in GT2:
    • Due to an oversight with the Global Car list in v1.0 for the North American version, all but one of the endurance races have car lists whereupon 1 car from each list is actually a car for another race. This resulted in the AI using cars that exceeded the HP regulations for the races, eg the Vector M12 LM on the Trial Mountain Endurance Race (It's supposed to be on the car list for the Special Stage Route 5 All-Night race, where it is actually legal, and it is so for the Japanese and European versions, while the Citreon Xantia appearing in that race actually belongs in the Trial Mountain enduro), making it almost impossible for you to win.
    • A special example goes to Rome Circuit on the Historical Car event. horsepower limit? 295hp. One of the opponents has a Ford GT 40, which happens to have the maximum allowed Horsepower (Except when you buy the car. It shows at the dealership it has 295hp but it actually has 305hp! Which means you can't use the car on the race). But it's horsepower isn't the problem. Ford GT 40 is a road version of a LE-MANS RACING CAR! So you're facing a road-going version of the legendary car that won 3 consecutive Le-mans in the 60s. HAVE FUN! Want a tip to win this? Buy the Mini that costs half a million credits. It doesn't have 74hp, it actually has 200hp and it's nimble enough to face the GT 40.
• Full Auto for the Xbox 360 suffers from this a bit. Rubber-Band A.I., while prevalent, is not the biggest problem - enemy cars in Career mode are also equipped with what appears to be much, MUCH stronger armor than the player's vehicle, making blowing them out of the way a time-consuming task. For example, it takes an enemy vehicle approximately 3 rough hits with the hood-mounted shotgun to completely annihilate the player (the same number it takes a player to destroy another player in Multiplayer mode), but it takes the player 5 precise hits to a single side of an AI car at minimum to take them down. Also, the player's car can completely lose its front armor after hitting only 2 mines dropped by an enemy and explode when hitting the third, but enemy cars can run over multiple mines and suffer no visible damage. They also may or may not be subject to the "Weapon Overheat" period resulting from firing a weapon too rapidly without a break. Factor in the AI cars' exclusive ability to destroy the player simply by ramming them and their unannounced ability to change their driving pattern while the Unwreck function is used (designed for the player to undo mistakes by rewinding time), and it's quite a bit to handle. Fortunately, the AI cars are also busy blasting away at each other, often leaving them damaged enough for the player to swoop in and finish them off. The cheating AI seems to be exclusive to Career mode. Multiplayer and Arcade modes appear to give the AI cars the same speed, abilities, and armor as the player (only 3 shots from the shotgun before exploding, 3 mines = death, etc.), but Career mode steps it up with the cheating elements. Very odd...
• Motorm4x is one of the few games that feature Rubber-Band A.I. in time trial mode, whereby at the end of each trial you're treated to a results table with the other drivers' times, some of which are likely better than yours. Beating those times, however, you find out that the other drivers have improved as well and you still didn't win. A particularly ridiculous example exists in one of the last races, where the developers even make a big point in the race description of how the best time so far of just over 6 minutes is extraordinary for this trial, the average being around 11. Finishing at just under 6 minutes, you find out that you've didn't even make the upper half of the results table, nobody posted a time over 8 minutes, and the time you really need is 5:30.
• The AI opponents in Sonic Riders have been known to literally vanish from their previous position on the track in order to go zinging past you when you least expect it. Since aside from breaking the laws of physics the computer races flawlessly without outside interference, this makes the game particularly frustrating, as even without the cheating, there's pretty much no way to win if you don't take the lead in the first lap and race flawlessly from there on out.
• TrackMania DS has you playing the same circuit multiple times in an attempt to earn bronze, silver, and gold medals. While the bronze and silver ghost racers generally play fair, the gold ghost racer is blatantly faster despite driving the exact same car as the player, forcing the player to use unconventional tactics and shortcuts in order to win.
• The A.I. in Diddy Kong Racing will go through all oil slicks, mines and bubbles as long as they aren't on the screen and extremely close to you, making the green balloon power-ups nearly worthless.
  • Also, possible example: it is damned hard to make any useful gain on Tricky the Triceratops when using the volcano track's tunnel "shortcut".
• Even though Sleeping Dogs (2012) isn't primarily a racing game, the underground racing circuit the player can optionally join and the friggin cops employ rubber-band tactics, so much that it's much easier to just to slow down, wait for the cops to catch up to you, then ram them off the road rather then simply outrun them. In the racing side missions, you'll notice that you always start last and they always accelerate faster then you (no matter if you are using the best motorcycle in the game). On straight-ways, you could be going at the max possible speed and be using the same vehicle, except they'll still overtake you, then slow down right in front of you. Incredibly infuriating if this happens near the end of the race.
• Hellooooooooo Split/Second (2010), whose idea of Rubber-Band A.I. is to give opponents virtually limitless Power Play ability, the wicked sense to wait until the final stretch of the last lap to use it on you and only you, and to make Elite Races impossible for anyone who isn't a robot.
• In Twisted Metal 2, the player's use of certain special moves is governed by a meter which slowly regenerates, to prevent you from spamming them. The AI is under no such limitation, leading to situations like being stun-locked to death by an infinite stream of ice blasts.
• Twisted Metal 3:
  • In addition to pulling the same infinite energy meter bullshit as the previous game, this game is where it becomes very blatant that the enemy vehicles have unlimited specials. Get anywhere near Axle or Club Kid and they'll fire off 3 or 4 of their specials in quick succession, effectively causing unavoidable damage.
  • The final level has a trick module installed that resurrects any killed driver with full health unless you go around the area and destroy a number of panels. It's not immediately clear the drivers are even resurrecting or that the panels are what is at fault, so prepare to waste a few lives fruitlessly combating immortal opponents until you figure it out. Oh, and when we say "resurrects any killed driver", naturally that means "any killed driver except the player".
• In Wacky Races Starring Dick Dastardly & Muttley for Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 has Dick Dastardly in his boss levels starting the race during the countdown, while you have to wait until the narrator says "Go", Justified since it's Dick Dastardly, he has to cheat somehow.
  • It can also be apparent in normal races (Specially Wacky Cups) that a COM Controlled Creepy Coupe will almost always have a (Mostly) unfair lead on the race, since it possess the best Top Speed in the game, and the A.I. seems to ignore its crappy Acceleration and Grip stats.
• In Project Cars, the AI drivers don't slow down or lose traction when they hit the dirt or rumble strips, can out-accelerate the player on straightaways even on the default difficulty, and are exempt from the penalties incurred by the player for corner-cutting.
• In Downtown Run, there are the usual tactics - the computer can always drive faster than you (in the same or even inferior cars) and will corner near-perfectly every time. It doesn't abuse power-ups either, but is prone to miraculous bursts of speed or precision cornering if you start to actually get good at playing the game. If you're even better at racing than that, the computer will sometimes even teleport; it's marker on the lap counter will jump forward sporadically until it catches up to you. It will also be less effected by power-down items, and recover from their effects much faster than a human player possibly can. (The nails will seriously affect a player's driving and the spike trap will always cause a player to spin out and stop. But a computer driver may swerve very slightly and then continue on at high speed).
  • Then, in Chase-style races, it dives outright into Your Rules Are Not My Rules - if the player is controlling the Hunter (a Police Car), they need to get in front of the computer car and bring the computer car's speed down below 70mph in order to increase the "danger" meter (maxing out the meter causes the player to win). Admittedly, it's fairly easy if you can get ahead of it to just trap it against a wall and park at right angles across its front. However, when the player is playing as the Hunted, the computer will operate not 1, not 2, but three police cars together, and to cause danger to your car it doesn't need to slow you down, it just needs to get in front of you; which can be extremely easy for it as the police car also has a higher top speed than any other car in the game!
• In Daytona USA 2, if you play on Endurance or Grand Prix mode, you have to deal with a draining fuel supply and tire erosion. These will force you to make a pit stop sometime during the race. But the computer racers don't have to worry about fuel or tires, so they never have to pit.
• Wacky Wheels: On harder difficulty settings, the AI-controlled vehicles will constantly get ahead of you. If they get behind you, they will accelerate until they've passed you. Even if the player cheats to get a string of jumps and turbos to get far ahead, they can then watch the minimap and see the computer-controlled cars rush forward at ludicrous speed until they've caught up and taken the lead again. Only well-timed sniping can make a first-place finish possible.

Real-Time Strategy

• Anno 1800 has this with Expert Level AI. Sometimes they will expand to a second island without having the necessary resources at this point of the game.
• In Mud and Blood 2, there's a reason why the game tag line is "Unfair Random Brutality"...and it's this: Many a game has ended upon the arrival of German tanks or large numbers elite infantry onto the screen at unfortunate times, and randomized artillery barrages and air strikes can ruin even the most well manned defensive line.
  • There is actually a mechanic around them doing this - the Six Man Rule gives a chance of bad stuff happening every second for every unit over 6 you have that's unconcealed by cam nets. Blitz Waves though, those are just there to ensure you'll lose at some point.
• One egregious example occurs in one of the final GDI missions of Command & Conquer, wherein the AI possesses the unique ability to build structures very far away from its own base, and covering a Tiberian deposit with an obelisk of light (a strong defense turret that can easily destroy your harvester) somewhat early in the mission. While the AI player can normally rebuild structures without placement restriction, these structures aren't pre-existing.
  • In Command & Conquer: Generals the AI stealth general can build combat cycles immediately armed with suicide bombers just like the demolition general. The player stealth general can't do this.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: The Brutal AI in skirmish mode cheats unabashedly, to the extent that it is a valid strategy to sneak a spy into their refineries and reap tens of thousands in free credits that can be used to build up one's army. It also appears to be able to see the entire map without scouting.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The game suffers from blatant Artificial Stupidity like units cheerfully letting themselves get shot to pieces by enemies without running away or retaliating, doubling back to take the longest way possible around an obstacle, or attacking the first unit available instead of the ones capable of shooting them... when you control them. The AI has no such problems, its units are masters of target acquisition, and because that wasn't enough, doesn't need line-of-sight to use its offensive powers like human players do.
• Empires of the Undergrowth openly acknowledges this when setting up the difficulty of a free scenario: you will be asked to define which AI behavior you prefer, and all descriptions mention cheating. One of the difficulty levels for the AI is even called "cheater".
• In the Nintendo DS game LostMagic the enemy AI mages always have the home field advantage, being surrounded by their respective element (eg: the fire sage is surrounded by lava that she can walk on without taking damage, instead getting healed each second), which wouldn't be cheating in itself, but it lends extra annoyance when they cast spells on your from across the map with no mana constraints. The lava or shifting sands becomes a lot more annoying when you have to walk carefully around it at the same time as getting fire dropped on your head or long walls being cast to bar your way. Your player character can cast any spell that the AI can (once you have the right runes), but you have a very limited range on almost all your spells and your mana limits you to casting only 2-3 spells before needing to recharge. Of course the AI isn't nearly as intelligent as the player character and they don't have as wide a range of spells to choose from, so if they didn't cheat like they do the game would be far too easy.
• In Pax Imperia Eminent Domain don't be surprised to see the AI opponents early spamming colonizing ships and cruisers at a pace you can't equal even if your net income is way greater than theirs. At least they can't upgrade them with the finesse a human player can, resulting in late game in subpar modules combinations.
• Warcraft II:
  • The AI is bad enough with its ability to see the whole map and ignore resource requirements as it is, but the Ogre Mages are outright evil in the AI's hand. The player can only cast spells with the Ogre Mage, Wizard, Paladin or Death Knight by selecting one unit at a time, selecting the spell, and targeting it. Not so with the AI, oh no. The AI is fully capable of having every single Ogre Mage cast Blood Lust on the entire Orc army at once, and they spam it constantly.
  • AI opponents also can see through Invisibility! Try sending an invisible biological unit into an enemy base — for instance — and Death Knights will be able to Death Coil them as if they're completely visible. The enemies aren't placed to really exploit this in the stock campaign but user-made custom scenarios can have casters preplaced as a defense against infiltration.
• Warcraft III: On Insane difficulty, the main difference is that the AI harvests and gets gold twice as fast: for every ten gold mined, it gets twenty.
• Republic at War: Unlike the player, the AI can advance its tech level without research facilities.
• In Rise of Nations, the game straight up tells you that on the two higher difficulties they will get a resource handicap. Inverted, however, on the two easiest difficulties: the human gets the handicap instead.
• Inverted in the Dawn of War - Dark Crusade and Soulstorm campaign modes. On Easy, computer players receive a penalty to the hit points of their units while yours get a bonus, Normal does away with the penalty for the computer but still gives your units extra hit points, and it is only Hard that levels the playing field and gives units the default health bars on both sides. This is to make up for the fact that all but the weakest battles are fought two-on-one.
  • Although played very straight in Dawn of War skirmish games, where the computer has a serious case of The All-Seeing A.I.. If you try to turtle up in your base, the AI will simply sit just out of sight outside the entrance, slowly amassing all the forces it can. The instant you leave to attack its base, its army will run around the corner and attack yours. If you continue to stay in your base, the AI will eventually realize it has superior numbers than what you have, and will then attack. Cheats available in single player allow you to clearly watch it reacting to the movement of your army that it can't possibly see. This is on top of it always knowing exactly where your base, and any extensions, are without needing to scout for them and to know where stealth units are in order to target them with radar scans and the like.
• In Lords of the Realm 2, the nobles will always seem to be able to field large armies against you, even after you've defeated several of theirs, especially on harder difficulties. If you invade one of their counties that doesn't have a castle built yet, they will often force conscript a large portion of the population to fight you with, along with sending all of the food to one of their counties just to spite you. If you take over one of their counties, and they have a county close enough, they will often immediately attack the county you just took over before you can even get a chance to put defenders in the castle, and promptly retake it back from you.
• In Colobot, there is a mission where you have to chase a rogue robot who's flying away with the Black Box that is crucial to continuing the mission. After the robot drops the Black Box and flies away, he will continue to float indefinitely even after his battery should have clearly ran out.
• Starcraft 2: This can be true of the difficulty settings in the multiplayer option, as even the Elite AI has response times above a human:
  • In melee, you can deliberately specify the "Cheater" difficulty, granting perks such as infinite vision, infinite money, or even both at once. In spite of these overwhelming advantages, some players like to challenge themselves to beat such opponents 1 versues 7 where one slip-up may spell instant disaster.
  • Some of the most blatant cheating is in the coop mode. The AI doesn't actually have to build any units, they get airdropped onto the field, and then commence walking to the enemy base, and the waves get progressively stronger and stronger. Additionally, no matter what units the AI was given (Terran, Zerg, or Protoss), and regardless of the build the AI was set to when the match started, the AI gets to use the Hybrid. The higher the difficulty setting, the worse this can get. Furthermore, if you have any cloaked units, even if they were never revealed to your opponent, you can expect the AI to add detection to its next wave just to overcome this.
    • In the Void Launch mission on Hard difficulty or higher, during the last wave its likely the final escape shuttles will be accompanied by Dominion Fleet Battleships similar to the Jackson's Revenge, Motherships which will be cloaking everything around them, or the Leviathan which has the ability to pretty much strike every unit at once. You'll get about six of these spawned simultaneously, all of them have really high armor ratings and health, and a poorly upgraded or funded army is going to get quickly destroyed on the final round. The only option for an under-performing army is to try to outrun these flagships and aim for the escape shuttles, then desperately flee to the next set, otherwise you're probably going to require your whole army to dead-focus on one of these flagship enemies just to kill it. Even if you're using Abathur, you're quickly going to see how powerful the AI's Leviathan's are in comparison to yours.
    • During the Dead of Night mission, the AI gets access to special night-units during the night portions of the mission. These range from Kaboomers (High HP and acid to break structures), Hunterlings (leap into your supply line and start ruining your base), Spotters (fly and can disable your structures), and Chokers (grab a unit and drain its health, particularly dangerous against heroes). Destroying these units has to be done, but ultimately the AI is going to spawn several more after their defeat, and certain ones can come in pairs or sets, making them worse to deal with.
    • Even if you're standing directly on it, any enemy units on a control point in Lock and Load will overload it. Considering you have to have both allies on a point just to capture it, it can be frustrating for an Overlord to swoop in over a siege tank and steal the point without being able to defeat it. The exact same problem is present in Chain of Ascension, if you match your opponents army number-for-number, they'll still push the point backwards until eliminated.
    • Glevig and Molten Sal are clearly both using the same character model taken from Yagdra in the Heart of the Swarm campaign, and both have similar attacks. One will quickly find that Molten Sal has no cooldowns with his Incendiary Acid, allowing him to strike a large number of units with little difficulty over-and-over.
• AI War: Fleet Command straight-up tells you it cheats, as part of its core game loop. On higher difficulties, it hits every item listed and then some, with units that the player can't obtain being produced for free and targeted perfectly at things it shouldn't be able to see. The main advantage you have that stays at all difficulty levels is the AI's crippling overconfidence; you have to build your strength while making sure you do not convince the AI that maybe it should stop putting off the part where it finishes you off. The game does justify it, however, in that the war really is that asymmetrical; the AI hold at least one entire galaxy and probably more, with the industrial might and intelligence to match, along with a warp grid that lets it bring anything anywhere within its domain, and having bigger fish to fry is the main reason it didn't finish you off.

Roguelikes

• The Final Boss of Dicey Dungeons has five dice that always roll 6s along with powerful moves that deal maximum damage at 6 or require 6s to activate, while your dice are only rolled normally.

Role-Playing Games

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails:
  • Trails in the Sky - The 3rd: Many of the boss fights in the Door subquests give the bosses seemingly unlimited CP, allowing them to use crafts repeatedly, sometimes even after they had just used an S-Craft, which uses up all a character's CP by definition.
  • Trails to Azure: When playing Poker at the casino, you can fold once per 'level' for a nominal loss of tokens and replay the hand, the computer seems to enjoy allowing you to fold only to give you an even worse hand if you do.
  • Trails of Cold Steel: You can't beat Sara in Chapter 2. Even if your party is strong enough to knock her HP down to zero in New Game Plus mode, as soon as her HP hits zero, she unleashes a one-hit KO attack that immediately incapacitates your party. In the event that the party has an attack cancelling/reflecting effect in place that blocks the attack, she will repeatedly use that one-hit KO attack without giving the party a turn until the effect is cancelled and the party is defeated.
  • Trails Into Reverie: For the mech fight against Zoa-Gilstein, he will dodge attacks even if it's his weak spot, thereby preventing himself from getting stunned.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, a boss, Mitch Conner will cheat constantly. Every time he lands an attack, he'll add a random status to the target. (eg: "That causes gross out, actually"). Sometimes he'll negate damage too. ("Heh, that was lame, so it didn't count").
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII
    • The wrestling minigame in the Gold Saucer. It's set up in a rock-paper-scissors style of punch-kick-block, but at stage 4, the AI will land a hit when previously your attacks would cancel out. If you manage to beat Stage 4, Stage 5 takes the cheating to a whole new level - the opponent is invincible, and all of their attacks cancel out yours, so it's physically impossible to win!
    • The chocobo racing minigame. From time to time, Joe will race against you, and his black chocobo, Teioh, isn't slowed down by obstacles and will always have higher stats, even if this means breaking the limit. With weaker chocobos, this means the race is lost before it even started, and even faster chocobos can have a hard time with him. Fortunately, this is a downplayed example thanks to some workarounds: if your stamina is high enough, you can accelerate to your maximum non-boosted speed, while Joe stays at his base speed. If you hold down some of the shoulder buttons your boost meter heals up, allowing you to overuse it - constantly, for some Chocobos - for an easy win. Plus, a Gold Chocobo is not held up by obstacles, so although Joe still has better stats, a player can still beat him far easier than with other chocobos.
  • The Triple Triad card game in Final Fantasy VIII has some examples 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.
    • If the "Open" rule is in effect, they must choose their cards in advance as you do. But should you play without Open in effect? The AI chooses their cards WHEN THEY PLAY THEM, and they can choose any card in the levels they have access to (sans rare cards). This means if they potentially could have picked a certain card, they WILL have magically picked it every time they need it without open in effect. Thankfully, "Open" is in the starting region by default, so make sure to spread it to every region!
    • 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...
    • Random does actually force the AI to pick at random (assuming Open is also in effect) it's just that many stronger opponets simply aren't programed to have low level cards at all and thus random can't pick them. To be fair, you could card mod away all your weak cards so that Random will only ever have strong cards to select. But if you ever play with random AND without open, then the AI will not only pick what it wants, but it will do so mid-game on top of that. Cheating bastard, indeed.
  • 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. 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).
    • Certain Superboss monsters can ignore status defenses, guaranteeing a successful petrification or instant death, even if the target is supposed to be immune. Deathproof armor will not save you from the superboss Fenrir.
  • The Chocobo spinoff title Fables: Chocobo Tales has the minigames. When you're against the Goldfish Poop Gang, they're competitive, but fair. When Volg joins in? You're screwed.
• The Bravely Default series:
  • The first game, Bravely Default, features the Dark Knight job, which uses Cast from Hit Points to deliver powerful darkness-based attacks, and when low on HP can use the Minus Strike attack to inflict damage equal to its missing HP. Like all jobs in the game, it has to be acquired by defeating the boss who uses it. Because Health/Damage Asymmetry is in play and Alternis is a late-game boss, his Minus Strike almost immediately reaches the damage cap, while the health and damage caps being the same means the player can never cap with it. Alternis also pays much less HP to use his other moves than the player does. However, as the major gimmick of his boss fight, the game recognizes just how unstoppable Alternis would be if he simply braved four times and used, getting a Total Party Kill unless the player took a lot of extra steps to reduce the damage. So while the computer is cheating, it's doing so to make the fight's gimmick focused on being able to bounce back from getting downed.
  • Bravely Default II features the Hellblade job, which is a modified Dark Knight and shares the same forms of cheating.
• The big battle at the end of Tales of the Sword Coast (the expansion for the first Baldur's 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.
  • Various NPCs have stats that should not be physically possible within their class. Some have in-game justification. Most don't.
  • From Baldur's Gate II and onwards, all high-level enemy 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. It's probably to counter the fact that the NPCs can't "pre-buff" (cast support spells shortly before a fight to avoid having to waste turns on them) like the player.
  • 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 is a result of the developers removing the spell and citing 'potential abuse' as the reason. How mage after mage uses the spell to teleport seemingly all over the world is justified by saying that they use it to teleport into nearby shadows; they then disappear.)
  • Jon Irenicus at the end of Baldurs Gate II somehow has infinite magic missile spells memorized. On the other hand, if you've reduced an archmage powerful enough to grasp at godhood to casting magic missiles at you...
  • Certain characters (increasing in frequency the further you get in the games) will automatically cast True Sight if an invisible character tries to sneak up to them, even when the character shouldn't know that someone is nearby.
  • In Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the further you get in the game the more enemies you'll run into that are arbitrarily immune to vorpal strikes and other instant death effects.
• This trope is hilariously invoked in the Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. Legion's online gaming profile indicates it has been hit with multiple infractions because it was so skilled the game designers thought it was cheating. While it later challenged and overturned those relating to superior micro-management, reaction time, and tactics, it accepted a suspension for taunting its inferior human opponents during an event.
  • In Mass Effect 3 you have the infamous Banshee magnet hands, which got patched, then got replaced by the Praetorian magnet claws. Double tapping Geth Rocket Troopers and Geth Hunters with unlimited cloak. Hell, even Geth stunlock in general.
    • The Marauders use a Phaeston assault rifle that's so devastating that they are the equivalent of the player's version upgraded to level 32 (max level for players is 10). Similar case with all the enemies on higher difficulties, but especially evident with enemies that tend to sustain fire, such as the Marauder and the Collector Captain.
• 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!
  • This becomes especially critical in the final fight, in which the only way to get the "True Ending" is for elements, either yours or your enemy's, to be cast in a certain order. Invariably, the AI will cast an element to mess up your order if you try this on your own without doing it the "proper" way of using your opponent against himself. Players who don't figure out the somewhat obscure system of how to get past this will never be able to get the "True Ending", and it is never explained at any point during the game.
    • All things considered, though, only a handful of Chrono Cross bosses were unfair. The secret boss from whom you obtain the Mastermune is the only character in the game that will instantly counter literally any element you throw at him, based on his own system of preset counters that will always immediately follow any element you use. Not knowing this ahead of time and attacking normally is a very speedy return to the main menu, but you are given no warning whatsoever of this unique ability a single enemy in the game has. On the plus side, once you figure out what he's doing, it's very easy to game the AI and turn it into a cakewalk.
• In Ragnarok Online, some monsters can use player skills, at a level higher than what you can get. For example, the MVP Boss "Drake", has a Level 10 Waterball skill, when players can only get up to Level 5. The endgame dungeon Biolab features "High Wizard Kathryne", who has the Jupitel Thunder skill. Players can get that skill up to Level 10. Hers is Level 28.
• In World of Warcraft, at the Argent Tournament, the jousting opponents will run in random directions to set up a charge or a ranged attack, which is fine, except that sometimes they will choose to run right off the tournament grounds. Guess what happens. Hint: it doesn't end in a tie.
  • At the same Tournament, the mechanics mean that the player must maintain a small range to use power attacks, wait several seconds between using them, and execute slow, ponderous turn after one of said attacks. The AI can execute pinpoint turns (on HORSES), to execute both attacks at the same time while outside of attack range and immediately stop to attack you again.
  • The Faction Champions encounter of the actual Argent Tournament raid pits you against 6-10 randomly-assigned race/spec combo NPCs that typically adhere to a set of PvP-ish aggro rules (ignoring threat to focus-fire people with lower health/armor, etc.) While this would be fine on its own, to drive the point home, you are subject to the rapid diminishing returns on crowd-control spells typically employed in player encounters... and they are not. It's not uncommon to have such a spell last 2-3 seconds if its target hasn't already been rendered outright immune, while people on your side can be locked down for 30 seconds or more at a time by the enemy's spammage of the same skill.
  • Mobs have a tendency to use moves that a player of their equivalent class can't use at that level. For instance, the naga mages in Blackfathom Deeps can use the spell Blizzard at around level 23 or 24. Player mages don't learn Blizzard until level 52.
    • To be fair, mages used to have this ability at 23-24. It's just a matter of the instance mechanics not updating with the player mechanics.
  • Mobs can also be race-class combinations that are not available to players, for instance, the human shamans in Stranglethorn or the undead paladins found in certain areas in Lordaeron.
  • Mobs can shoot a target through walls while a player's target must be in their line of sight.
  • If a mob attacks you from behind, their melee attacks have a chance to apply "daze" which slows your movement speed down by 50% and also forces you off your mount if you were riding one, and it can't be removed by abilities that remove "movement impairing effects". This chance increases as the higher their level is than yours. Even a max-level player can be Dazed by mobs in the early areas, even if they otherwise pose no threat to them whatsoever, making them nothing but a hassle. TA player can't daze a mob or another player outside of a few class specific abilities, such as a hunter's concussive shot or a druid's wild charge when used it cat form, but those dazes CAN be removed by abilities that remove movement impairing effects.
  • Mobs also have many movement and pathing advantages over a player: They can walk and swim faster than you (excluding mounts or speed enhancing abilities, but they also have daze for those), walk over most kinds of mountains, cliffs, and structures (they don't need to jump either), and when they either can't find a path to you, get stuck, or start running back to their regular position, will evade all of your attacks and instantly heal.
  • If a mob stuns or spell locks you, they do not have diminishing returns to shorten the duration of another stun or spell lock that gets put on you right after, unlike a player. This is particularly noticeable when facing many mobs who can all stun or spell lock you right after one another.
  • Mobs that are 4 or more levels higher than you have a chance to deal crushing melee blows to you, which deal 1.5x their normal damage. The chance of a crushing blow happening increases as the difference between the mob's level is higher, up to the point where every hit against you is a crushing blow (aside from critical hits, which are still 2x normal damage). Of course YOU can't deal a crushing blow against either a mob or another player no matter how much higher your level is than theirs.
  • Aggressive/Red mobs that are 4 or more levels higher than you (not passive/yellow mobs, who don't attack you unless you attack them first), will start gaining ridiculous amounts of ranged spell evasion for each level they are higher than you as well. This is probably to discourage lower level players from killing higher level mobs (because melee spells and attacks still have to get through a mob's dodge and parry rating to hit them while ranged spells do not), but it's still an unfair advantage over you. Of course players who are many levels higher than another player will only gain normal amounts of ranged spell evasion (the same as a passive mob of the same level).
  • In 4.0 Tank specs gained access to passive talents which reduce the chance to be critically hit by 6%. Although said passives do mitigate crits altogether for tanking purposes, if you keep track of how often you hear your character's "being critically hit" agonized scream while solo questing, you will know that there is no way in hell the baseline crit chance of mobs is actually that low. Unless you're a Tank spec (or have maximum Defense Rating, prior to 4.0), your actual chance to receive a critical hit will be at least double that.
  • Pet battles take place with the player not knowing what move their opponent, computer or other player, is going to choose. However the computer can see the player's move before selecting its own move and will use evades or similar abilities to counter large attacks rather than using their standard move set.
• Metalheart: Replicants Rampage: When the player gets to the first part of civilization they will note the following: By moving, the PCs will be penalized and completely lose their dodge bonus to range attacks, and when the guards are moving, the player will almost never hit. Small scorpions with poison at the start are easier to hit lying down from about 10 meters 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.
• 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. 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 an infinite game of Force Push tennis.
  • Also, similarly to enforce lightsaber combat, if you do attack them with normal weaponry, their powers and sword strikes are suddenly mega-effective and you will die in five seconds.
  • Also also, and there's no excuse for this: each lightsaber type has a different Force-assisted unbreakable kata. Enemy force users can use any of these with any saber, even when the movements of doing one of the sword katas with a lance should rightfully make chop suey of the user.
  • While enemies don't seem to do it, some of your allies can split their lances into two sabers. You can't.
    • If you've got the single saber, your three fighting styles are subject to Multi Form Balance: Fast style is weaker, strong style is slower, balanced style is, well, balanced. High-ranking enemies can use strong style at lightning speed and kill you in two blows.
    • Naturally, these katas are all for the single saber, normally impossible with Dual Wielding or a lance. Yes, high-ranking enemies can use the single-saber katas with the staff or two swords (again, the end of the staff that passes through the enemy wielder will not harm him.) Fast style's kata and speed + strong style's power + two swords = The enemy's movements become a blur and you die instantaneously.
• 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.
• Tales of...
  • 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. The player can not do this themselves.
  • The major antagonist of Tales of Vesperia , Alexei is famous for ripping out his Mystic Arte, Brilliant Cataclysm, multiple times in a battle and he can do it up to 10 times on higher difficulties. Brilliant Cataclysm has a huge area of effect and does enormous amounts of damage. He cheats in multiple ways. First, he can use a skill that is a powerful attack and a healing spell at the same time without consuming TP, often spamming it to a point at which he heals faster than you can damage him. If you set your AI to stay away from the enemy, they will move in on him before he uses Brilliant Cataclysm to ensure that they are within the area of effect. If you get close to actually winning the battle, he can activate Brilliant Cataclysm without having to go into Over Limit, and it will override an All-Divide (that is supposed to halve all the damage dealt by both you and the enemy), usually killing your entire party in a single blow.
  • In both Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Vesperia, the traditional climactic Duel Boss ( Asch in Abyss and Flynn in Vesperia) can actually interrupt your Mystic Arte and counter with their own, which is downright absurd. Getting Luke's Radiant Howl off on Asch is made damn near impossible for this reason; he interrupts you every time.
    • In Vesperia it is literally impossible, as the player will lose control while the boss overlimits and uses his Arte even if he was stunned or on the ground, he would immediately recover. In Abyss it's possible though if the boss isn't in a position to attack by being stunned or in the air. Simply chain the MA from a full connection of Luke's Light Spear Cannon and the boss will still be in the air for the final hit and unable to counter.
  • Your allies cheat like rotten bastards in Tales of Xillia when you link with them. AI link partners will position themselves flawlessly behind your target, time their attacks to the frame to help with your juggles, use free abilities they otherwise don't have access to, and will move to defend your back the femtosecond a hostile decides to go for it. In fact, the system relies so much on AI omniscience and hidden abilities you can't link with player-controlled allies.
• The Struggle in Kingdom Hearts II. When you get your opponent down to 0 HP, they are frozen for a few seconds so you can collect more orbs, before reviving with full health. When YOU get knocked down to 0 HP? You lose instantly.
• Rave Heart: Later bosses can take actions at the start of a round or if they take enough damage, even if it's not their turn.
• 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.
  • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic_ Pazaak is ridiculously biased toward the computer. It's played similar to blackjack, but with a side deck to modify the total value and the top is 20. The computer always goes second, so you're more likely to bust than it is. If you go bust, the computer wins without having to take its next turn, but then this applies to you, too, so it's more than likely a rule than cheating. It counts cards, so it knows when it will get a 20. Finally, it gets 20 more often than you do. The only advantage you have is that your side deck is better by the time you leave Dantooine. There's also a guy in the first game who actually does cheat... more than the computer usually cheats, that is. Fortunately the player can cheat by saving before each game.
  • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords is far better about this. You now trade turns with the opponent and 20s are equally likely on both sides. The only minor unfairness is that the NPCs have cards you flat out cannot buy; you have to beat them for their best card. Some are real killers, too, like a tiebreaker card that beats even a straight 20 on your part. Cut content has Atton lampshade the unfairness of the first game. He accuses T3-M4 of counting cards and forcing him to go first in pazaak. The little droid will then proceed to clean him of credits anyway.
  • Interestingly enough, if you read Atton's mind, it turns out that he counts cards as well. Admittedly he wasn't actually playing at the time...
  • A dealer droid seen in the X-Wing Series is mentioned having "cheater prods" that are used on, what else, cheating players. This may be more of an example of the Computer Stopping Cheating Bastards.
• This is part of the premise of Extra Mode in Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the 9th game in the Touhou Project 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 A.I. Roulette and extremely weak, so it will usually die within seconds of the timer running out.
  • A common flaw in the Phantasmagoria installments is that the AI can literally dodge like the machine it is, meaning that barring the use of an A.I. Breaker, a computer opponent can choose when to eat a bullet.
• In Spyro: Year of the Dragon, 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 frustrating 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.
  • Can be inverted by the player, by refusing to start the race, walking onto the track and standing under one of the auto-boost stars sitting above the track for 5 minutes, the auto boost effect stacks and activates once you start the race, so you can beat the race without ever doing a single trick. The Player Is A Cheating Bastard, indeed.
• The flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik cheats a lot (even discounting nasty surprises from the random mission generator, like being strafed on the airfield, before you can even get off the ground). CPU planes ignore much of the hardcore simulationist aspects of flight, no matter what settings you use: they never fall into spin (which allows CPU to pull fairly ridiculous aerobatics even on planes unsuited for that); their pilots do not suffer from blackout/redout and have 360-degree field of vision, allowing them to unerringly foil surprise attacks and notice you even in heavy clouds; they pretty much ignore the severe winds and other adverse effects of the weather; they also can fly at maximum engine power as much as they want, while human-controlled planes, on the other hand, risk overheating and damaging your engine on realistic settings.
  • They also micromanage their trim and engine settings much faster and more precisely than a human can possibly manage and can outclimb aircraft that normally climb much faster than their own.
• The "enhancements" to the Sentinel remake Zenith include fog, which can be so thick as to make it difficult or impossible for the player to see what's happening; the game can be totally unplayable because of this. Of course, the Sentinel and any Sentries are totally unaffected by even the densest fog...
• The Dragon Quest series gives you a rare opportunity to put the cheating AI to work on your behalf. Normally, you have to enter battle commands for your party at the beginning of each round of battle. However, in several of the games, including Dragon Quest VIII and the Nintendo DS re-releases for Dragon Quest IV, Dragon Quest V, and Dragon Quest VI, the AI doesn't have to commit to an action until it's actually time to perform that action. Enemies that can break the rules that the player has to abide by is nothing unusual, but if you set your party members to AI control, then they get the same advantage that the enemies get - and because your party members will almost certainly have a greater range of skills than the monsters that you're fighting against, they'll be a lot better at taking advantage of it. It's arguably a better idea to tell the healer to be controlled by the AI, as they'll be able to think on their feet instead of having to think at the beginning of the turn and guess which heal is the best one to use.
  • Another useful trait is the AI knowing which enemy has the current least HP (the player needs an Enemy Scan to know that) and concentrating on that one. This leads to Artificial Stupidity when a monster that could die in two regular attacks is instead hit with an MP-intensive spell that reduces it to zero several times over.
    • The AI is better in Dragon Quest XI. in this game everyone picks actions on their turn, even non AI controlled characters. But the AI still can cheat for you. It knows the hitpoints of all enemies, and is smart enough to NOT overkill when set to Fight Wisely. Your casters will even melee an enemy when they have MP left to cast or will cast a cheap and weak spell if it will get the kill (and never miss when trying it!). Or use a multitarget spell that's barely strong enough to kill one of them. Or bust out with a percentage chance critical hit skill on a Metal Slime and have it not miss, because it knows that the crit is coming and will kill it. It also is aware of enemy weaknesses that you may not be without a guide, and will exploit them if it knows the skills to do so. It still doesn't know how to combo very well, and won't use consumable items though, except when it has bottomless bags of them as a guest party member, but its ability to predict its own crits is quite useful.
• White Knight Chronicles gives players strictly set ranges for melee weapons, bows, and spells. Get outside the range, and you can't use that attack. The computer characters, using the same attacks, have no such limits.
• In Baten Kaitos Origins, the AI can apparently see your decks and figure out what to do, which is problematic thanks to the way the combat system is set up. As any veteran player can tell you, it loves to take out any character with a healing item. There are ways around it, but they mostly involve stalling and, in the long run, waste valuable turns.
• Inazuma Eleven has a show off section of the opponents in almost every matches. They steal the ball from you, zip pass your team as soon as you kick off, and score a free goal as Endou suddenly forgets to use his skill to stop those shots.
  • This also plays in your favor, from time to time. Some story related events require you to use new skills that result in goals/saves/steals/dribbles, no matter the players' levels. Justified in that from the second game onward the games started following the anime's story much more strictly.
  • Neo Raimon, Red Team, and White Team in the third game. The team you're facing have alternate versions of Inazuma Japan players, they have a larger GP and TP pool, plus they have some of the most powerful moves in the game and they're fully evolved. For example, Neo Raimon Hiroto has Tenkuu Otoshi V3, Boost Glider V3, True Planet Shield, and Chowaza!^note A skill that powers up moves by 20% at the price of 20% more TP. Luckily, this is at least mitigated by the fact that most of the moves used by these alternate versions are some of the most TP consuming moves in the game (sometimes even more thanks to Chowaza!), and they only have two (one for Red Team and White Team) subtitutes.
  • Before that you have to fight The Ogre. The first match against them was already difficult, now imagine doing that again; except now they have infinite TP to spam moves such as Killer Fields (strongest grass-type dribble), Ground Quake (one of the strongest shot blockers, comparable to Kabeyama's The Mountain), and High Voltage (strongest wind-type save hissatsu).
  • In the Chrono Stone game, playing against Inazuma Legend Japan in the post-game story mode can be a nightmare. All of their players are as strong as a Keshin Armed player, without the Keshin Armed. Luckily none of them can use a Keshin, but it also means that unlike them; you don't have much time until you're screwed. Even if you Mixi-Maxed and use your player's Keshin Armed, you might still be screwed by a small margin. The bright side is that they're nowhere near as bad in the Taisen Route, but good luck getting there; because you need to finish the post-game story if you want to play them there.
    • Imagine the above scenario with Inazuma Legend Japan, now give all their players a Keshin and give their captain a Mixi-Max. That's basically you against Tsukigami no Ichizoku (Nepuu) or Vamp Time (Raimei), and here you thought Inazuma Legend Japan was hard.
  • Shinsei Inazuma Japan and Chrono Storm in Chrono Stone is a downplayed example. These two unlike the teams mentioned above aren't unfair, but it doesn't change the fact that they evolved moves that couldn't be evolved. Such as Kinako who Mixi-Maxed with Master Dragon that has Kirakira Illusion G3^note Which is impossible to do since Master Dragon isn't recruitable until Galaxy.
• Tecmo's Captain Tsubasa is Nintendo Hard because your opponents have infinite Guts, meaning they can keep spamming special moves while you're struggling with saving your best moves for an offensive tactic. Their overall stats overpower yours, and their aces usually have such superior shooting power that it doesn't really matter if your team has a goalie. Even when you have the famous SGGK Wakabayashi, some really powerful strikers can still easily blow him away. Characters that used to be powerful like Matsuyama and the Tachibana Twins, by the time you get them on your team, can barely get their shots past a keeper.
  • CT-2 is very harsh. There's no offside, so if a goalie catches the ball you throw at him, he'll send it directly to an offside player with whom you can almost never catch up.
  • This carries over into Touhou Project fangame based on Captain Tsubasa, Touhou Soccer Moushuuden... except the resident SGGK (Yukari) is usually on the opponent's side. You get only China, who has problems stopping anything that isn't a normal shot.
• The "Silence" status (and by extension the Silence geo effects) in the first Disgaea works differently depending on whether you or the AI are affected by them. For the player, it seals off skills, be they magic, weapon-based, or character-specific, entirely. For the AI, all it does is prevent them from using magic. All other skills are fair game.
• Custom Robo Arena has computer players who literally cheat by turning up with illegal parts. You yourself cannot unlock these parts until you have already beaten the primary story and moved into grand battle mode.
• Several Yu-Gi-Oh! games - most notably 7 Trials to Glory and World Championship 2004 - allow the AI to use multiple copies of limited cards, which they will periodically abuse to destroy everything on your field with Dark Hole and Raigeki. Almost all Yu-Gi-Oh! games also have "luck" as a stat that enemies possess, meaning certain enemies WILL draw their best cards at the exact moment that you get ahead.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • A common element in the Shin Megami Tensei games is that physical skills (apart from basic attacks) are Cast from Hit Points... unless it's an enemy. They get to use physical skills for free. This may be because unlike magical skills, which have a fixed SP cost, physical skills tend to cost a percentage of your HP, which would put the enemies at too much of a disadvantage.
  • There is one opponent who regularly breaks the level cap of 99. While some may break it once (generally in the Famicom or Super Famicom games), this one has broken it in every appearance. It's YHVH, who debuted in Megami Tensei II at Level 150 and returned in Shin Megami Tensei II at Level 108 and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse at Level 100.
  • Some games are not completely transparent with their damage modifiers. There have been instances of an enemy being resistant to Almighty damage, despite the fact that it's an Infinity +1 Element and nobody should resist it. Some enemies have hidden damage modifiers, and take reduced (or increased, in a few cases) damage from elements that they aren't resisting or weak to.
  • In Persona 4, one of the reasons why the Contrarian King, the first optional boss, is That One Boss is because his Rampage is far more powerful than it should be. While Rampage does light damage 1-3 times, the Contrarian King's version does 300 damage per hit, easily enough to one-shot you if you don't have the ability to null physical damage. The Contrarian King only has 24 Strength, and his Hysterical Slap, which also does light damage, is far more survivable, which proves that the computer artificially inflated Rampage's damage.
• This is prevalent in Dark Souls, and it just adds to the game's difficulty. Disregarding the broken hitboxes (as in an enemy can still grab/hit you even if the weapon misses, but you're barely near it), some of the laws of physics that apply to the player do not apply to the enemy AI. Arrows shot by the player go where ever you shot them. Arrows and bolts shot by the AI will curve in mid-flight in order to hit you. Also, when you swing a sword in cramped places, it will bounce of the wall and leave you exposed. For AI, their weapons will just phase through the wall. Also, you have a limited amount of magic. They, of course, do not. The tracking of their attacks is ridiculous at times (particularly in the sequel). Several heavy weapon enemies give the impression that the player can simply move behind them while they are drawing back (and to be fair, in quite a few cases you actually can). Instead, the player will watch as they miraculously pivot 180 degrees mid-swing to one-shot them. It certainly forces you to master the timing of your dodges. Another issue is monster weapons that behave differently when used by the monsters, such as swords that cause bleed for monsters but not when the players get them, even though they are supposed to be the exact same weapon.
  • In Dark Souls II NPC invaders often have more poise than their armor actually should have. More than that, NPC invaders have seemingly infinite stamina and mobility, having shorter recovery time after their attacks. To add insult to injury, mages have infinite casts, the most infuriating example being Armorer Dennis, who appears in Forest of Fallen Giants and can one-shot players with a single cast.
  • Similarly there's the boss fight with Ancient Soldier Varg, Cerah the Old Explorer, and the Afflicted Graverobber from the "Crown of the Sunken King" DLC. They're tough opponents overall, but it's also extremely difficult to stagger them and impossible to stunlock them, their stamina is huge if not unlimited, and their movements aren't even inhibited by the water that covers the lower level of the boss arena, which is really a problem given that one of the best strategies to use against them involves hit-and-run tactics.
  • In all Souls games, enemies can "lock on" to a player from much, much farther away than a player can lock onto them. This is most obvious in Dark Souls 1's Silver Knight archers, who lock onto players from so far away they can barely be seen, and Dark Souls 3's Fire Witches and their over the horizon, heat seeking pyromancies.
  • In Dark Souls 3 the Poise effect was removed and replaced with a similar effect that only operates during (certain) attacks, but a few monsters didn't get the memo and have Dark Souls 1 poise at all times.
• In A Witch's Tale, the CPU always knows exactly what your total is in the blackjack game.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 also has this in the player's favor. A big part of the game's battle system is being able to knock down enemies. However, some enemies will have an ability referred to as "Spikes" that, when you knock them over, deals damage to everyone nearby them. The only way for a player to know this is to knock down an enemy and get hit. The CPU allies, however, somehow know this by default, so the real way to figure out an enemy has a spike ability is to note that Reyn never uses his Break-topple combo (something his AI is actually pretty good at) or that your party members never knock down enemies you use "Break" on.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • First, the Killcam. Did you ever laugh when you first saw a guard being bitten and tossed by a dragon? You won't be laughing when it happens to you. The system that governs when it happens only takes into account damage done with no regard for resistances: armor rating, perks you have, shield up, behind cover ... therefore, an attack that you should've been able to survive suddenly becomes an instant death because the killcam triggered instead, even if you have God Mode enabled. This especially becomes prevalent and cheap-feeling if you bump up the difficulty so enemies do more damage, as suddenly even low-tier bandits will instantly and unavoidably kill the player given the opportunity. Incidentally, this goes both ways: you can trigger killcams way earlier than you should, as it doesn't take enemy resistances into account, either. Using a two-handed weapon makes this go even further, as its absolutely massive (pre-resistance) damage output will let you instantly kill enemies well over half health even if you're doing barely more than chip.
  • NPCs also have an amazing ability to dodge arrows. Not dodge as in "step out of the way", dodge as in "jump several feet to one side, like a sideways Flash Step".
  • Any level Ward spell, even the weakest, will completely block any Dragon Shout. That works for you as well as for NPCs. What they can do that you can't is know instantly when a Shout is coming their way. So any enemy magic-user can see you start a Shout and create a Ward to block it before you finish the Shout.
• Invoked in the No Mercy route of Undertale. The final boss of the route (Sans the skeleton) knows about your ability to reset, and therefore knows that they can only hold you off until you get past them. That doesn't mean they're going to make it easy for you. They screw with the game's mechanics to make the battle as frustrating as possible in the hopes of making you either Rage Quit or reset. They break the rules by:
  • Starting off the battle by attacking the player after their opening monologue, rather than letting the player take the first turn like every other enemy in the game.
  • Starting off the battle with one of their most powerful attacks (which they lampshade, questioning why people don't always start off with their most powerful attacks).
  • After the player survives this opening attack, they start interrupting their opening monologue by suddenly attacking at a random point, in order to draw the player off-guard.
  • Attacking the player during their turn by taking advantage of the fact that the "heart" symbol (which represents the player's soul) is also used as a cursor during battle, thereby dealing them damage by having their attack pass over said heart between turns.
  • Blacking out the screen during attacks, switching between attack patterns in the meanwhile.
  • Changing the size and shape of the box that the player moves around in to dodge attacks.
  • Changing the gravity of the box that the player moves around in to make it harder for them to dodge attacks.
  • Unlike every other enemy in the game, the boss dodges the player's attacks, which would otherwise one-shot them. They lampshade this, asking the player if they really expected them to just stand there and take it.
  • Eventually they refuse to ever end their turn, thereby preventing the player from taking a turn of their own. Of course, at this point, the player realizes that if the boss isn't playing by the rules, then maybe they don't need to either... Wait until he falls asleep, then you can take your turn anyway. He'll dodge like he always does, but then you attack a second time that turn, which he doesn't dodge.
• The Glitz Pit segment of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door gets pretty blatant with this, some unjustified and some justified:
  • For unjustified, are the restrictions are placed on Mario's party. Instructions from simple things like "Appeal three times" to disastrous things like "don't attack for three whole turns" will be given to you and failing to meet these means you won't go up in rank (or win the championship belt) even if you defeat the opponent. While it's implied such restrictions are placed on all fighters when Sir Swoop shows up, it never shows up otherwise and you'll never see an opponent holding back for three turns.
  • For justified, are blatant cheating done by Rawk Hawk, the Armored Harriers ambushing you immediately after a battle to take you down "now that you're tired", and Bowser jumping in to fight you despite not even being a registered combatant. Grubba lets all of this slide because said characters are Heels, and because rule-breaking adds drama that sells tickets. Of course, Mario never gets the option to do such things, save for the option of simply stealing the belt rather than competing for it which only forces you to compete anyways after your party member scolds you.
• In Neverwinter Nights, Aribeth has a special Implosion spell with a high chance of instant death. Immunity to death will not save you, spell resistance will not work and your only chance is having a high fortitude save. On the other hand, the Implosion spell used by a Cleric player allow the enemy to have a saving throw. The problem being that Aribeth is a Paladin, and thus should be entirely unable to cast it.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, Ishmelga the True Final Boss is arguably the first boss of the entire Trails Series to outright cheat by having his two flunkies cast buffs and reflects on the main body despite it being the players turn including invoking a Brave Order that doesn't even cost a player turn. This in turn forces players to go for the other two flunkies to take out the buffs and reflects before Rean and his team take on the main body.
• Disney Heroes: Battle Mode: In the Campaign modes, checking the enemy character stats at the results screen after each battle reveals that all of an enemy's skills' levels are equal to their own level. The problem? For the player, the blue (3rd) and purple (4th) skills are capped at 20 and 40 levels below the character level respectively. This doesn't have too much of an impact on skills that merely have a success rate dependent on skill level relative to target level, but on skills that outright increase stats it results in a massive increase, rendering those enemies incredibly difficult to beat, in many cases.
• In the flash game Territory War, the CPU-controlled stick figures always manage to hit your team whenever one of them throws a grenade.
• The RPG \ Puzzle Game hybrid Marvel Puzzle Quest has the AI opponent having a greater chance of creating cascades of matches, causing both damage to your units and loading up the computer characters to prepare them to fire off most if not all their abilities (while the player's cascades usually only give enough AP to use maybe two abilities).
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Certain Servants have Skills that have a small chance of inflicting instant-death to an enemy, and all Servants and enemies have a Death Resist stat that helps them decrease the chances of such skills triggering on them. Knowing a Servant's Death Resist is only really relevant when using them, as when fighting the same Servant as an enemy, their Death Resist will be cranked up so high that the instant-death effects of those Skills are pretty much useless. Not that it will stop them from being able to inflict the Death status to you.
  • The Guts status makes it so that if a Servant reaches 0 HP, they will not die and be left with a small amount of HP (can range from 1 to 1,000, depending on where the Guts status came from). As Guts for an enemy will only trigger when a single Servant's Command Card chain ends, killing an enemy with Guts using a single Servant cannot be done in the same turn (one can work around this with a Noble Phantasm, but the Noble Phantasm must be the attack that lowers their HP to zero and can't be the last Command Card in the chain). If there is only one enemy on the field and they trigger one of your Servant's Guts while still having at least one action left, nothing is stopping them from immediately attacking the same Servant again to reduce their HP back down to zero and kill them. Note that this will not apply if you only have one Servant left and the enemy triggers your Guts with their first action, as the game will immediately end their turn rather than let them deal the killing blow and render your Guts pointless.
• In Octopath Traveler, several attacks by the Optional Boss gods have secondary effects which are nowhere to be seen when the player defeats them and earns their respective jobs. This is most noticeable with Balogar and Winnehild, wielding Status Infliction Attacks which the actual Runelord and Warmaster jobs don't get. Dreisang's Elemental Break also reduces both elemental defense and elemental attack, whereas the eponymous Sorcerer skill reduces only elemental defense.
• Miitopia AI-controlled Miis are able to know when the random passive moves of their allies will take place, since they'll use attacks in ways that otherwise would make no sense, like a Scientist using the Ignite Formula, which causes the attack of an ally to also damage the two adjacent enemies) just the time that the ally is going to use an attack on the enemy in the middle. Or a mage using a weaker spell because the allies will use the "Lend A Hand" assist to power it up. This, however, is a rare instance where the computer's cheating is actually beneficial to the player.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Every Non-Player Character who partakes in the Gwent minigame that has a Hero card in their deck is guaranteed to have that card in their opening hand, but won't necessarily play it in the first round.

Simulation Games

• In the X-Universe, boarding operations against Xenon capital ships fail automatically if there are less than eighteen (out of twenty-one max) surviving marines when they reach the computer core.
• In the Ace Combat games, enemies usually can maneuver better than you can using the same planes and lock-on much faster. Some, like Solo Wing Pixy's Morgan from Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War or Alect Squadron's Fenrirs from Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, even have capabilities you'll never get to use.
  • Another pretty blatant example: in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies it's impossible to even hit, let alone shoot down, any member the Yellow Squadron until about 3/4 of the way through the game.
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: It's only obvious with bomber aiplanes at low altitudes, but the AI pretty much ignores terrain. Watch in awe as an evasive C-10 flies through the ground and comes up a mile away without missing a beat. Obviously, your weapons cannot reach the plane through the planet itself, which sucks if it's a mission target and you're almost out of time.
    • The most obvious example in the game is in the mission where you have to follow Pops around an island. You then see him literally fly through first a mountain (not a cave) and then the ocean, and think to yourself "but I can't do that".
    • A very rare bug in Ace Combat Infinity replicates this with the Scinfaxi - it will just refuse to actually surface as it's supposed to, still able to launch its missiles and UAVs while making itself completely immune to everything except your machine guns.
  • This seems to be exaggerated in Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation with how much advantages the enemy AI is given. Speed match you in any plane instantly? ^note Commonly used to either outrun the enemy or dump speed suddenly to upset their pursuit similar Check. Fly in such a way that breaks the laws of aerodynamics? Check. Guaranteed hits if you're flying below a certain speed or heading? Check. This is quite obvious with the fight against the Super Prototype fighter, the Strigon Team, and the enemy F-22 and Su-47s. But there's glaring flaws in all of them that you can shoot down said Super Prototype with an A-10.
  • The AI can also execute Pugachev's Cobra (in any fighter) to dump speed and upset your pursuit. Guess what the player can't do? While the devs did want to allow players to pull it off in Ace Combat 2, given the player character's "official" plane in that game is a close relative of the one that invented the maneuver, they weren't able to implement it in time for release and never tried it until Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. However, executing it is awkward at best (you have to be barely above stall speed and then execute a series of commands that wouldn't look out of place in a fighting game) and is more useful as a last resort to upset enemy pursuit.
• Digital Combat Simulator makes up for its Artificial Stupidity by giving AI opponents infinite energy and fuel, enabling them to pull of some ridiculous moves that shouldn't be possible given their speed and orientation. In some scenarios, the cheating gets to the point where the AI aircraft cannot be shot down - they simply limp back to base minus a wing, a nose cone, and their engines.
• Similarly, AI planes in Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. can accelerate and maneuver at speeds that should be not only pasting the pilots but breaking the planes apart; they can instantly change direction 90 degrees or more if they're supposed to be fighting you, and your allies will instantly go to full speed when you give them an attack order.
• Littlewood: Tarott Monster, the in-game Card Battle Game, usually has both the player and their opponent with ten starting Hit Points. The game consists of using the cards to reduce the opponent's Hit Points until they run out and negate the opponent's attempts at doing the same. There is a group of Non-Player Character opponents called the Big Five whose members start each game with twelve to twenty, while the Player Character is stuck at ten no matter how much they level up their Tarott Monster skill. Also, Gameplay and Story Integration has not forgotten the fact that the setting's top Tarott Monster player is a sixth character and gave the guy significantly more hit points than the strongest of the Big Five.
• One quest in Majesty, "The Siege", pits you against the sovereign of another kingdom who can do all the things the player can—construct buildings, recruit heroes, place reward flags, etc. Except that this enemy sovereign starts with temples, a fully-upgraded palace, and apparently bottomless coffers. Oh, and his trade caravans have twice as many hit points as the player's.
• In Flight Simulator X, AI airplanes, especially from Third Party DLC, will occasionally turn off the runway and onto the taxiway where you are holding short of the runway to line up and wait. The AI continues on his merry way, while the game yells at you for crashing!
• In Kairosoft's Pocket Arcade Story. Let's get this out of the way first: Yes it is, during tournaments. Your player tends to have such crap AI that you have to tell the player what to do constantly, and that depletes a "stamina bar". If the bar gets depleted your player's fighter becomes stunned for a bit. The computer side's AI is far more competent and does not have a "stamina bar" to bog him down. It becomes extremely egregious in the final tournament in that the computer's fighters have a permanent power boost... and your player's fighter doesn't.
• In World Neverland, if you wait until you're Elderly to have any children, it's only possible to have one child—and you need to use a miraculous item called a Birth Egg to conceive. However, when you first begin the game, some of the NPC couples will be Elderly in age, yet have more than one child—a child who, due to their age, would have had to have been born when their parents were both Elderly. Since they also have older siblings, this shouldn't be possible. It's only at the start of the game that it cheats in this fashion, since Elderly couples who have children later in the game obey the rules and will only have one child.

Stealth-Based Games

• In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the game uses its highest difficulty as a free license to do whatever it wants. Ignoring the super-vision and super-hearing, the game takes it to the extreme with the stealth suit; even if you've got a 99% Camo Index (READ:Snake is invisible even to a thermal extent), an average mook investigating something as little as footstep noises will see straight through your entire disguise if he gets within a 15 meter radius.
  • MGS4 is especially guilty with its warzone areas; despite being in the middle of a Militia-PMC battle, enemies will happily drop everything to open fire on the elderly spy not bothering anyone. This can thankfully be somewhat mitigated by finding a disguise and/or giving rations and the like to the militia, but the PMCs cannot be swayed in this manner and will continue focusing on you when you're detected (even in disguise), even if it means their own death by ignoring the fifty other guys who are actually shooting at them^note Oddly enough, this is justified: the PM Cs take their orders from Liquid, who's a dick like that.
• Absurd NPC AI makes a return in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Even with a large open world to explore and sneak through, enemies can easily sniff you out no matter where you are once they discover a kill, even if it was done with a suppressed weapon. They'll wander around a bit, but eventually they'll hone in on your location and start moving toward you. Enemy vehicles are especially cheap. Gunships can rip you to shreds, even if you shoot from a dense forested area. Tanks can literally snipe you from the edge of the game's draw distance, and unless you're wearing the strongest armor, it's a one-hit kill.
• The Hitman series is very fond of this, especially in the earlier games. Something as innocent as holding the wrong item in the wrong disguise means you're in for either a great deal of scrutiny or unprovoked assault.
  • The World of Assassination Trilogy tries to avert this trope, with distinct differences between "trespassing" (if you're caught, guards will escort you out and only attack if you resist) and "hostile area" (guards attack you immediately if you're caught). Sniping is also a bit of a cheat, as any guard witnesses hone in on your exact location with no rhyme or reason as to why. With the exception of Dubai and Mendoza in 3, you are still the only person in the universe guards care about; the most noticeable example is areas where you have to be frisked to enter - Non Player Characters will walk right past the same guards without them so much as turning their heads.
• Up until the third installation, the Splinter Cell series was guilty of this as, upon entering the sight of a mook above 75% visibility, he will begin firing immediately whilst everyone in the area promptly charges directly towards you and can now see you in the dark. The kicker? Running anywhere but to the next area means they'll constantly pursue; even if you hide out of reach, they'll follow as close as possible and wait for you to come back. Indefinitely.
  • Also, 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.
• Sniper Elite V2, thanks to both the game's focus on sniper kills and this trope, is almost impossible to play as a stealth-based game, outside of the few areas where there is loud enough background noise for you to mask your shots. In particular, you have the ability to toss small rocks to distract unaware enemies, but no matter where you throw them at or from, any enemies whose attention they grab will immediately know where you threw it from, investigate, and find you.

Survival Horror

• In Alien: Isolation, hostile humans can shoot you from over 100 feet away in dark areas, but unless you're a master at the game, you'll likely have a hard time shooting back at said hostile humans from far distances in the dark. Also justified in-universe due to anyone left alive aboard Sevastopol having to be an exceptionally great shot if he/she wants to escape the station with his/her life.
  • The xenomorph will teleport when trapped, and sometimes even out of nothing when not trapped (although in this case it's probably a glitch).
• In Dying Light, Virals are sound sensitive and will react to explosions, but will be alerted to you rather than the source of the explosion. Throwing the Distraction with explosives does not work, even if you are very far from the explosion: throw a gas bottle from the roof of a building down into the street, and all the Virals will spontaneously and immediately know exactly where you are and begin climbing to reach you.
• Haunting Ground: Each of your stalkers has a single instant-kill ability that cannot be dodged, averted, or prevented in any way. It can strike at any time, like, say, when you are nearly done with the block-pushing Puzzle Boss and have to start all over again. What makes this particularly Egregious is that your Canine Companion Hewie can attack enemies during any other attack animation to help you, and there is an accessory (the Diamond Choker) that is supposed to prevent these moves from happening. It doesn't.
• Soma: Terry Akers will teleport out of any room in Theta if you lock him inside.

Third-Person Shooter

• In Syphon Filter's second and third game, certain enemies can target-lock the Player Character for head shots even when they are constantly moving. If the player want to do a head shot, they need to manually aim (using target-lock will automatically aim at your enemy's chest), which means the Player Character will not be able to move while doing so, being vulnerable for rear attacks.
• Uncharted
  • In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the crossbow is a powerful weapon that can kill most enemies in one hit. In the player's hands, it needs to be reloaded after every shot and reloading takes some time. Guardians wielding crossbows are capable of firing several shots in quick succession, easily killing the player if they're not careful.
  • Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception has a level set during a sandstorm that greatly limits your visibility and only yours. Enemies can still track you as usual and as the level is also full of snipers there are multiple times where your only hint to an enemy's location is the fact that bullets are coming from that direction.

Turn-Based Strategy

• 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. They'll hit you back and more than likely screw you over.
• 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 card him repeatedly. Some other characters are given ribbons, granting them immunity from the law.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics A2, enemies will regularly be given 'bonus' turns at the beginning of a battle before you can act in any way, on top of their statistically unlikely shenanigans. Probably the worst of it is the fourth round in the Brightmoon Tor, where the enemy is given twelve bonus turns, Game-Breaker abilities that cost no MP, and massive level advantages that did not exist in the previous stages. One of these abilities casts Haste and Protect on their entire party, resulting in an approximate minimum of twenty-four bonus turns before you can do anything.
• Inverted Trope in XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM2. In addition to obvious advantages like fewer enemies, more money and better soldiers, the game fudges probabilities in the player's favor. The easiest two difficulties have a percentage increases to your chance to hit as well as giving buffs to defense and accuracy for your last solider if the rest of the squad dies. All but the hardest difficulty have a built-in system that makes Gambler's Fallacy not actually a fallacy as each miss on a shot with at least 50% chance to hit will give a stacking buff that increases your squad's accuracy until a shot hits. Ironically this all typically results in players assuming the higher difficulties are unfair when actually it's just that the easier ones are cheating in your favor. Of course, both have a Game Mod to disable the cheating.
• Valkyria Chronicles:
  • The game makes up for its oftentimes rock-stupid AI by cheating at every opportunity. The most obvious example is that Imperial forces can call in unlimited reinforcements, while the player has access to 20 units at most. In some missions enemies have an uncanny ability to snipe you from halfway across the map (try leaving a sniper unit in the sniper nest in Chapter 4 and see how reliably tanks from all the way on the other side of the map can blow them away.) And then there are Enemy Aces, who all have freakishly high evasion, the worst one being Sytreet the Lynx, who can and will dodge literally everything you throw at him while standing out on the open with no cover.
  • In every other port of the game, enemy interception fire stops as soon as you aim your weapon. In the Steam port, however, it continues on until the firing reticle appears, which in some cases can be enough for the enemy to kill said unit before they can even do anything (and get ready for your Lancers to soak up plenty of bullets in the excrutiatingly long time it takes for them to ready their lance.) Naturally, this doesn't apply to your own interception fire, and your units will politely stop firing the instant an enemy unit gets ready to aim.
  • Selvaria has a unique version of the Heal All order that heals all units to full health. Your own version of the Heal All order only heals a third of every units health. You don't even get to use this order in the DLC campaign where you play as Selvaria.
• Nintendo Wars: In the first two Advance Wars games, the AI flagrantly ignores the rules of Fog of War. In such maps, you can neither see nor attack enemy units unless they're in your visual range. The AI, however, does not have this restriction, and will thus snipe you with impunity from halfway across the map even when your troops are well out of its vision. The only saving grace is that it does follow the rule of being unable to see or attack any units in cover, such as forests and reefs, unless it has a unit parked directly adjacent to it, so hiding your valuable units in these spots is crucial just to level the playing field. Dual Strike at least toned it back somewhat: the enemy AI still knows exactly where your non-hidden troops are, but it can no longer attack them if they're not in visual range, making parking your units out of cover much less suicidal. It wouldn't be until Days of Ruin, however, that the AI finally started following all of the rules.
• While the main story of Soul Nomad & the World Eaters isn't especially guilty of this, the randomized "Inspection" maps are:
  • An effect available to both the player and the AI is called "Antimatter," and it grants everyone in a squad a huge evasiveness buff at the cost of making them a One-Hit-Point Wonder. At least, as long as they're not the boss of an Inspection map, in which case they will receive a huge evasiveness buff with no drawbacks whatsoever.
  • If an enemy squad is killed with a counterattack and one of your squads is supposed to move next, then the game will push their turn back to let another enemy move first. This is most noticeable when you're severely overleveled, watching as every enemy on the map charges to their death one after the other, while the indicator at the top of the screen insists your turn is coming up any moment now.
• In Front Mission, enemy armies are allowed to ignore the weight and engine limitations of their Wanzers, effectively allowing them to equip their units with whatever they want without having to manage these limits, are allowed to use unique armaments like the Clinton-Type, and can deploy as many supply trucks as they want while you're limited to just one. Reasonably justified, as they're a proper military force with supply chains and professional mechanics supplying and maintaining their units, while you're a mercenary group who has to do all of your own acquisition, customization, and repair by yourselves and out of your own pockets.
• Mordheim: City of the Damned is a game that wants you dead and doesn't care what it has to do in order to achieve it. Dataminers have confirmed that the game shamelessly rigs the dice rolls and lies to you about it, so your party will miss one 80%-accuracy attack after another while the enemy warband will continue to land blows that supposedly had a 50% chance or less of hitting, with a comically high crit chance too. Also, because only your warband is persistant and every opposing warband is generated fresh for every mission, the AI will go out of its way to screw you over as hard as possible at every turn even with actions that would be self-destructive, because it doesn't have to worry about long-term consequences. The Mordheim AI's objective isn't to win, it's to make you lose.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Grand Theft Auto:
  • In the majority of the games, whenever you are tasked to chase someone down, the car they use will usually have the power to plow through traffic like a truck, even if they are using a sports car. This is a case of Scripted Event gone wrong (some car chases have the target be immune until you're allowed to hit them) as it makes it look like the game is favoring the enemy while you have to avoid all the traffic and keep up with the winding roads. On top of this, the enemy AI will always have perfect handling no matter how fast they are going while you trying the same stunt will make you spin out or flip over.
  • This also extends to the side missions involving racing against other people. Even if you are using a car that is exactly like the competition's, their cars can never be destroyed while yours can. They are also much harder to force into a spin (it's certainly doable, but they correct a lot better than street traffic does), and the AI has perfect handling. To compensate, the AI tends to get rather dumb at certain choke points.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a rather blatant example with a tanker truck. The mission involves driving up alongside it and having your passenger jump to it. To facilitate the constant speed and direction of the truck, it can magically hit the oncoming traffic so hard you'd think they were rigged with Hollywood-style flip devices. While the truck is certainly no slouch in our hands, the best you can hope is to get them roll over, and that's on a side hit. Another example is a mission where you pursue Freddy on a bike, where Freddy can ram a firetruck out of his way or swerve while driving at high speed. If you take his indestructible bike, you'll find that it isn't indestructible any longer.
  • There's also the infamous glitch that's persisted in the series since the third installment where an on-foot police officer you pass by may suddenly warp over to your door no matter how fast you're going, pull you out and bust you against all laws of gameplay and physics.
  • The Rhino Tanks are the definition of Badass in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, being incredibly rare to find unless you get a six-star wanted level, or obtain one from the military base (which will give you a five-star wanted level). However, these vehicles are very heavy and definitely not nimble when you drive them. However, if you manage to outrun the police, FBI and army in your souped-up Infernus and tear through the countryside, prepare to have the horror of your life when a Rhino Tank bursts out of the woods and charges straight for you at speeds upwards of 120 miles per hour.
• Minecraft:
  • Skeletons will spin and shoot you with pin-point accuracy and a reaction time no human could ever achieve.
  • Even if a monster isn't looking at you, it'll still lock-on to you if you get close enough.
  • Piglins can detect broken and trapped chests, shulker boxes, barrels, and chest minecarts, even with solid walls standing in between said Piglins and said storage containers.
• Each of the Yakuza games has mahjong in it, but the difficulty of table you sit at may as well be In Name Only. The computer can have riichi (meaning they have one tile left to end a closed hand) and can just as easily end up not only winning it just as likely you'll end up giving it to them, especially if they have a high enough dora.
• In later Far Cry games, if you miss once close enough to an enemy with a suppressed weapon, the enemies will start congregating towards where you were shooting them from, as if they somehow knew the shot came from. If you keep harassing them, they'll continue to "follow" you.

Miscellaneous/Unsorted

• Any skill-based action game that has a leveling system, but the stats you gain is not as important as the level itself. Suddenly, any Mook that is even 3 levels above you will be able to one or two shot you, while you do piddling to no damage in return. This is especially egregious if your dodges have very few/no frames of invincibility, your opponents have a melee range longer than yours, the game has snap-to mechanics that allow them to slide forward and melee you even when you have dodged the maximum distance from them, the enemy has very subtle/no wind-up animations to warn you when to block/dodge, or the game's warning indicators are too dull or dark that they blend into the environment, camouflaging critical information in the heat of battle. Even if you can work around those mechanics, your enemies will have friends who attack your blind side, use ranged attacks, or dump AoE spells to leave you no room to escape, so all you can do is either take the damage or die. This probably originated with MMORPGs, and was meant to discourage players from entering high level areas, but in recent games seems to be used to pressure people to buy microtransactions and XP boosters.
  • When you are higher leveled than your enemies, they can still take away chunks of your health, while you deal considerable damage in return (but by no means one or two shotting them). The real insult to injury is that if you get to the maximum level, some bosses will still have higher levels, so you have to deal with the aforementioned problems, plus a boss who moves fast and has all sorts of powerful attacks that can kill you sometimes without you even knowing what happened.
• The hacking tool Cheat Engine includes a tutorial that eventually leads to a few "games" to train and test the player using the software - in this case, the computer is cheating by default by making the games unwinnable. In addition, two of those games has a special cheating system to ensure that the player won't win even on an intended route: the second game using insta-kill megabombs when one opponent is downed, and the third having the enemies high-speed dive-bomb the player after touching all required platforms.
• IXL only gives 1 - 3 points for each correct question, and takes away 8 points for each wrong question. Let the Rage Quits and Percussive Therapy ensue.
• The Doujin game Mikuman (a parody of Mega Man) parodies this. Rin faces against the boss of the second stage — Mario — who loads a state every time you hit him. In truth, you are supposed to lose, until Miku saves you.
• Mega Man ZX Advent: Thetis makes sure to fight you underwater where he has such an edge, it's almost unnatural, and he employs constant hit-and-run tactics while you're trying to keep your footing (on the three tiny ledges they give you) above a Bottomless Pit. The only form capable of circumnavigating this is Chronoforce thanks to the aquatic nature of the battlefield being tailor-made to it.
• Dynasty Warriors games have the bad habit of allowing the computer-controlled opponent to recover or receive random power-ups in a duel... where there is no feasible manner in which they could have obtained these items, as there are no boxes or dead enemy soldiers in duel mode.
  • Then we have Dynasty Warriors Online. Let's not beat around the bush, the computers cheat like a Mississippi gambler (no offense to Mississippi), but a sack of bricks is smarter than than the A.I. (where Mississippi outshines the computer). They collect resources from no source at all, and you can very visibly see while beating them up as it alerts you when they pick up flasks (needed for in battle upgrades). On the other hand this time it's justified because the A.I. simplemindedly pursues one goal: capturing bases. Bases don't give anything until you capture them and even then it's health regeneration, so it balances out.
    • Also, musou generals. These characters, the original cast of the Dynasty Warriors game from 5, don't show up normally. But when they do, they are difficult. They use their original movesets, which is (aside from a few choice weapons) impossible for players, and they have ungodly stats. They have high health, high defense, high attack, high damage. This makes them capable of killing all but tanks in one or two hits. Additionally, they have high flinch resistance, which means you can't prevent them from attacking by knocking them around. This makes them very hard to defeat without using a weapon with a build designed around it. This would be much worse if not for, again, the fact that they only show up on special occasions. Thankfully, unlike players, you only have to beat them once in a match. After that, they're gone for good.
  • The empires series. Pretty much every game has at least one advantage the player will never have.
    • DW4E gives you a maximum of 10 officers and 10 Lieutenants. Your enemies? 3 officers and 3 Lieutenants for every territory they have. On the flip side, you never lose your officer maximum. even if you're down to one territory.
    • DW6E has enemies never lack the troops they need. Even if you taunt them for years at a time. The only time it will be ungodly unfair in your favor is if your officers are several levels above theirs.
    • DW8E is actually pretty fair, but it does do a lot to keep you from winning in anything except battle. Using your various strategies and tactics out of battle will never cause a kingdom to collapse even when it should. Using isolate to cause the ruler to remove every single officer under him will only cause him to take on a free officer for the sake of having more than one character in the A.I. kingdom. Otherwise, the game is pretty good about not giving the computer access to anything that will give them an unwarranted advantage.
    • Samurai Warriors 2 Empires has enemy officers rise in levels at ungodly speed. Even if they never fight anyone.
  • In the main games, enemies will sometimes reappear in the same battlefield. While it's sometimes justified via story (Meng Huo's seven defeats), some are not (Zhang Liao has reappeared on the battlefield).
  • Sometimes your strongest general manages to fall to a foot soldier just because you didn't get there in time. That same general, on another faction's story, manages to endure five waves of enemies in that same map.
  • Lu FUCKING Bu! Every time he appears, you can only think "I'm doomed!", as he takes down your allies one by one. But when you get to play as him... He's not that strong. Yet he is always the strongest one when used by the CPU.
  • Inversion with Tadakatsu Honda. He is a decent challenge in the hands of the CPU. But for a player using him? It's like a walk in the park with a walking brick wall with a library of powerful moves! That's not even getting to his Special Actions!
• The Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy might be devoid of this in most cases but when you hit the multiplayer version, you have bots that can suddenly give you a one-hit kill even if you have a very high hit points augmented with shields. For example, a saber throw could just give at least a 9 deduction with a 60 damage at most but here comes the computer with a simple saber throw that reduced your 100 HP and 75 shield points down to zero. Another example would be a single moderate slash could give you an instant killing blow even if your HP and SP are so high that chances of dying is virtually zero wherein that critical slash is just capable of reducing your Hit Points down by 80 or 90 at most.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors for the PC and the Commodore 64 bluntly advertised its cheating as a feature listed on the back of the game box, warning potential players that "Freddy cheats!"
• Wii Sports does this a lot, usually by changing the path of the object in question. Baseball has to be one of the worst offenders - how do you get a foul more than 20 times?!
• In the stadium part of Anti-Idle: The Game, the AI opponents will not only accelerate in growth much faster than you can but can also go over the cap allowed for stats. Trying to beat an opponent with a top speed you can't even approach is frustrating. This is on top of the already frustrating difficulty, even on the easiest setting.
• So you are playing the poker mini-game in Dragon Quest VII, and you are having an incredible doubling streak: You have doubled 6 times already, and have 640 coins, and the current card is a King. You simply can't resist the temptation of doubling once again as the odds are just incredible. You naturally bet for low. The next card is an Ace. You lose. You scream in frustration and resist your urge to throw the controller at the screen. Well, more the reason for that because you most probably got cheated. You see, when you start doubling the game decides in advance how many times you are allowed to double, and if you get that far you will lose no matter what you choose (if you choose low, it will deliberately give a higher card, and vice-versa). This can be corroborated with an emulator.
• Infamously, Metal Gear Solid has Psycho Mantis, an in-game example of this trope who not only reads your button input to perfectly dodge attacks, but also reads your memory card in order to mock you and your taste in games; justified in-universe, as he's a psychic soldier who's reading the mind of the player character, Snake. To defeat him you have to move your controller to the second port, which bypasses his "psychic" powers.
• FIFA 07: If you're needing a goal in the last twenty minutes or so of play on a decent difficulty, it is virtually impossible to tackle the opponent, or to string together two half-decent passes. You're also much more susceptible to concede goals from nowhere, from players who usually wouldn't dare shoot in normal play.
• The classic Commodore 64 baseball game Hardball was virtually impossible to strike out in later innings as the AI would never swing at anything outside of the strike zone and would hit practically anything inside, racking up singles and doubles with ease.
• An enemy Navi in Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge will 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.
  • You could technically argue that the greater Battle Network justifies that: you're not using the Navi proper, you're using a Navi Chip (which is a simplistic replica). It's still a valid example, since higher tournament Navis (and the Free Tournament dummies) are all rolling with enough Deck Space to make Hub Style blush.
• Played straight and lampshaded in TRON: Legacy:
  Sam Flynn (failing to duplicate his disk just like the AI): Aw come on, is that even legal? ^note  Actually, it is, the discredited Tron 2.0 called it a Sequencer.
• On space maps in Star Wars Battlefront 2, computer-controlled fighters with fixed-forward weapons actually have about a 90-degree fire arc. Also, sometimes your own auto-turrets will kill you.
• This report is on what just might be the most hilariously badly-programmed rigging in the history of blackjack. Evidently, the dealer has an ace up its sleeve - or rather, about four of the Ace of Diamonds.
  • The most hilarious (and by that we mean cringe inducing) is the player having his blackjack beaten by the dealer's soft 17.
• Sometimes in the Blood Bowl computer game, the AI does something no sane human would do (e.g. a hand-off and pass with dwarves past a high-agility interceptor, while it's possible to score another way) and succeeds. Although the nature of Blood Bowl mechanics is such that actually succeeding on just about anything is certainly possible, especially with re-rolls, the computer seems to succeed almost every time it tries something so unlikely that even the most desperate human would dismiss the possibility out of hand. Furthermore, frequently the AI has set up so it can attempt this but then doesn't even try, so it's not like the AI has some bizarre preference for high-risk moves. The sequence of dice rolls in any given game is set before it begins, so the most likely explanation for the computer's overall behavior is that it consults the list of rolls then randomly decides whether to exploit that knowledge or to calculate odds like it doesn't have access.
• In Madden NFL, the AI on higher difficulties will know exactly what play you called and respond accordingly. If you audible back and forth between run and pass plays, you can watch the defense react to them even though none of your players moved. This happens early in the game, long before they could figure out a tell. Similarly, the AI can audible into, out of, and within the Wildcat formation, which the player cannot do for Game Balance reasons. There are many, many more examples.
  • It can actually get worse: when during the season your team has gotten to a 10-0 or better record, the computer will switch into what Bill Simmons calls the "There's no fucking way" difficulty, which takes the previously mentioned quirks up a notch.
• A European sci-fi comic played an interesting inversion. The hero and his friends are trapped aboard a ship where the AI in charge decides to kill them all by cutting off the oxygen supply but offering the hero a chance to earn both air and freedom by beating him at chess. Stuck and on the verge of losing, the human cheats: he claims that the AI's last move is against some obscure medieval chess rule that he just made up, and thus that the AI has forfeited. They are all released, but the AI is last seen fulminating and grumbling that "nobody cheats against me... nobody cheats against me..."
• Many argue that having lightning reflexes when it came to buzzing in is how IBM supercomputer Watson managed to completely curbstomp Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Feb. 2011. Though he was a good sport about it, Ken later suggested some ideas to level the playing field should a similar experiment ever occur.
• In Lords of Magic each faction has a legendary creature that can only be summoned once per game, (except Water's which can be produced freely). Unless they're computer controlled, in which case they'll make as many as they want, even having multiple copies of the unique creature in a single party. They also summon their Great Temple's magical creatures from the city's mage tower instead of the more distant temple so they can defend it immediately.
• Armored Core is a series where you build a Humongous Mecha and go wreck stuff, and when one of the big themes series-wide is Crapshoot AI of course it's going to cheat. Examples include having all the optional parts on one of which takes up all the slots for optional parts, ungodly boosting speed and aiming ability, somehow getting almost destroyed and becoming better or reactivating, use overweight mecha, using stationary weapons while moving ^note this was possible for the player in older games or turning a piece of the environment into a One-Hit Kill weapon.
• Inverted by the Rollerball-esque future-sports game Pararena: no matter which size of target you select for your own goal, the computer will resolutely play with the smallest and most difficult size.
• Sonic Adventure:
  • Tails' version of Windy Valley has you race against Sonic to the end of the level. There's spaces where you can literally fly across the level to get a big lead. Sonic responds by shooting right up near to your position judging by the indicator on the bottom of the screen.
  • Later on, you race against Eggman on Speed Highway... and he actually doesn't cheat.
• On the similar-to-Countdown-but-not-actually-Countdown wordgame website apterous, the strongest computer opponent, Apterous Rex, will always spot the longest available word, will always solve the numbers game perfectly (or get as close as possible if it can't be solved exactly) and always spots the conundrum in under a second. Hilariously, if you somehow manage to beat Rex to a conundrum, it will sometimes accuse the player of cheating.
• Kid Speedy, one of the Videlextrix games not directly linked to on Homestar Runner, puts you against 3 CPU opponents who run at constant, randomly-chosen speeds, and you have to come in at least 3rd place by grabbing healthy food items to increase your speed and avoiding fatty food items, which slow you down. Unfortunately, sometimes all three of the other racers will run at speeds higher than your possible maximum speed, the game will not give you nearly enough healthy items to have a ghost of a chance of competing, or it will completely flood the screen with unhealthy items to the point that there's no possible path through them.
• Gets quite egregious in Mount & Blade:
  • When defeated in battle, Lords escape capture approximately 80-90% of the time. The player is captured and loses money or gear as a result every time.
  • Lords respawn automatically with a full party of their kingdom's units with a mix of tiers and types (infantry/cavalry/missile). If the player is defeated, even if they hold a fief for one of the factions, they must manually recruit and level their troops unless they had the foresight to garrison some at their castle (if they own one, and then risk an attack from the rival faction on the now weakened garrison). You could have a dozen highly prosperous towns, and must STILL go door-to-door begging for recruits.
  • AI parties don't require food to maintain party morale.
  • The AI can enter the parry stance with weapons that are flagged as "No Parry" in the Equipment screen. On higher difficulties, Looters can parry with kitchen knives and no shields.
  • If the player starts his swing first the AI will still land his hit first a substantial percentage of the time, even if the player's weapon is faster.
  • The AI can stop mid-attack and immediately change directions. The player can stop an attack and change directions as well, but must engage in a block to do so, which forces a small but noticeable delay no matter how fast the player is. The AI is not subject to entering the block animation to change attack direction, allowing them to instantaneously change their attack direction.
  • AI troops never inflict friendly fire. This gets really bad if doing melees at the arena, which are allegedly free for alls. Until four AI opponents decide to charge across the entire field to gang up on the player, and can swing through each other to beat the crap out of you.
  • For the most part, the relative speed engine used to calculate damage is fair, but then there are instances where you are swinging your weapon at a target riding at your same speed for almost no damage, when an enemy doing the same thing to you in the same situation would put you in a tight spot, especially if you are using a bow at the moment.
  • AI archers have both X-ray vision and sniper scopes. They can find you from a significant distance, even if line-of-sight is completely and totally blocked.
    • For that matter, no matter how far away your army is, and no matter what sort of terrain you're fighting on, your opponent's entire army will always adjust to every move the player makes when positioning his troops, making outflanking another army impossible. Additionally, when charging AI troops will always know exactly where the last enemy soldier is hiding and zero in on his position like a GPS satellite.
    • Fortunately, this is not restricted to the AI commander. The player only directly controls his own character and all AI troops on both sides work the same way, so the player can benefit from the x-ray vision and total lack of fog of war as well (and the player does get a minimap showing the position of each individual soldier on the map on both sides). Fights in forested and hilly areas will often come down to archer duels in which neither side can actually see the other through the foliage.
• The iOS turn-based strategy Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion has several limitations imposed on human players only. The player can only give orders before a battle turn, requiring great planning in order to anticipate enemy moves. Computer players are very clearly giving orders to units in the middle of the battle turn. Alternatively, the computer knows which orders you gave to your units (still cheating) and gives his units pre-turn orders with this knowledge in mind. Another clear violation of the rules is the computer being able to give orders to all its units on the battlefield, while the player is only limited to 6 orders per turn. The latter is not so much a problem in the sequel Ravenmark: Mercenaries, which is focused primarily on multiplayer matches and small battalion engagements but is very evident in the first game, where the main focus is the single-player campaign and large-scale battles.
• This is the bane of many a Let's Player. Among others, The Runaway Guys made a running gag out of them being "the Anti-Peach Brigade" (as the AI controlling Peach in Mario Party is perceived as having a serious tendency to do this). They also brought up in their Mario Party 2 LP that the computer player is able to 'button-mash' buttons not only faster than a normal human, but faster even than an N64 controller is capable of registering.
• 100% Orange Juice:
  • While the game's heavy reliance on dice rolls means you might always think the computer is cheating, the final boss, Tomomo, explicitly rigs her dice so she rolls high, making it very difficult to directly attack her. There is also an Extreme difficulty that gives this benefit to all of your AI opponents.
  • Mio, in her unlock scenario, explicitly cheats by setting her HP to 999, in a game where stats are measured in low single-digits; for perspective, having 6 HP is considered tanky by this game's standards, and double-digits are nigh unheard-of. It doesn't help that you aren't told this until after you've already beat her; until that point, her HP is displayed as "??/??", and she has a -1 in her Defense stat.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction is infamous for this. The computer can have three Torrential Tribute, three Swords of the Revealing Light, three Raigeki, three Harpie's Feather Duster, three Pot of Greed, three Monster Reborn and/or three Change of Heart while you can have these cards only once in your deck.
• Nintendo Wars features the character of Flak (and later Jugger), considered a Joke Character by many players because his gimmick (his "luck spread" is very high, meaning his attacks randomly deal much more or much less damage than they should) makes the game into a Luck-Based Mission. Standard strategy with Flak, especially when he gets his CO Powers and his luck spread gets even crazier, is to Zerg Rush with all units and pray that at least one crits. However, the computer appears to be aware ahead of time how well Flak is going to do on a given assault, and will plan accordingly. This gets particularly obvious when it activates Flak's Super CO Power and passes the turn after shuffling its units a bit, having detected no cases where its units would do more damage.
• The Kobayashi Maru test in Star Trek assesses how a Starfleet cadet handles a Heads I Win, Tails You Lose situation. The cadet, in command of a starship, receives a distress call from a freighter (the Kobayashi Maru), which has broken down in The Neutral Zone between Klingon and Federation territory, and whose crew will soon die unless action is taken. The politically correct choice is to abandon them to their law-breaking fates; if the cadet chooses to intervene, s/he is preemptively attacked by angry Klingons. Whether the cadet chooses to help or not, the cadet must be defeated and the computer will happily break the laws of physics, probability or reality to ensure a Humiliation Conga-worthy win.
  • James T. Kirk is noted as being the only one to ever beat the scenario, and he's known to have cheated to do so. In a novel that went into how several of the crew dealt with the scenario, Kirk justified his own cheating by pointing out that the computer cheated first. This was later worked into the 2009 reboot film in which he point-blank tells Spock, the test's programmer, that the test itself is a cheat.
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? has the 50:50 lifeline which randomly eliminates two wrong answers, leaving one wrong answer and the correct answer. Almost every time a contestant struggled between two answers, then used the 50:50 only for it to leave them with (or worse, eliminate) the two answers they were struggling between. It happened so frequently over the years that many viewers complained the "random removal" felt more like rigging (a fact Norm MacDonald caught on to), especially at the very end of a themed week where the contestant's only options are really Quit or Fail. Several fans suggested to potential contestants that, if they considered using the 50:50, not to say the answers they were considering out loud. The fact that it originally wasn't random (though this wasn't told to the viewers or contestants) doesn't help any — the answers least likely to get picked were always the ones removed, including when Norm was on.
• Chess on Mac is full of this. The CPU in this game does not tolerate being beaten. For example, the program will automatically call a draw at certain times; this is useful in breaking stalemates - e.g. when it's just the two kings and they're chasing each other around the board - but when you're within three moves of winning and the game has been going on no longer than usual, the CPU declares the match is a draw. This program has also been known to force pieces to simply disappear from the board for no apparent reason.
• In old video games based on game shows such as Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, particularly the Gametek versions, the computer players are subject to this.
  • On Jeopardy!, if a computer player rings in it will either give the right answer to a question or type in nonsense. If you go too far ahead, the game will sometimes make it impossible for you to buzz in at all while the computer player(s) starts closing the gap. In the SNES version, it is so extreme that the computer buzzes in on the first possible frame. This means that, even if you're playing on an emulator and use the tools to play it frame-perfect, it's still literally impossible to buzz in before the computer. Essentially, it cheats so hard that you can't out-cheat it.
  • On Wheel of Fortune, if a puzzle is about half complete, expect a computer player to go on a hot streak, giving correct letters while missing penalty wedges, before solving the puzzle.
  • Similarly on the Genesis and SNES versions of Family Feud, whenever an AI player gives an answer, expect it to be on the board. When the computer doesn't feel like doing that, it will say "I give up" and penalize itself.
• Even old handheld toys based on game shows 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.
• Most electronic versions of Monopoly will use this. Depending on what the AI difficulty is set at, most Monopoly games are meant to have smarter AI that makes better investment decisions when the AI is increased. Some of them also increase the AI's luck when rolling and getting Chance Cards. As a result, it's not uncommon for the AI to never get a negative card during the game and always skip past human players properties. But the harder the AI is set at, the more likely it is that the computer will sabotage human dice rolls and make sure the human lands on tax or high value owned property, turn after turn.
• 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.
• 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.
• This is the whole point of Bastet, a Tetris fan clone with a piece generator designed to always give you the worst possible piece for your situation.
• In the NES game Anticipation, which is basically Pictionary, computer controlled opponents can guess the subject's entire character length 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.^note This can actually be somewhat beneficial; wrong AI inputs will be marked with asterisks, while correct ones will be left as is. On the hardest difficulty, the opponents buzz in the instant the die shows the number of spaces they want to move and can give the answer correctly without even knowing what the category is, how many letters are in the answer, or even before anything is actually drawn.
• In the Dokapon game for DS you can expect that the computer will get the exact roll it needs 99% of the time. Savestates show that the computer always gives you the same predetermined "random" roll, regardless of any luck manipulation that would work in games with fair RNGs. The CPU players are essentially saying, every turn, "I want to move X spaces". At least this doesn't carry over into combat. Technically, this is because the game uses a "random seed" method of determining rolls. The game has a randomly generated number that it uses as a basis to find the numbers for rolls, spins, etc. Since there is some form of pattern, the number rolled at a given time will always be the same, unless the seed changes. That happens when certain actions are performed (for example, using an item before you roll). You can still bet the AI has a say in its roll, though.
• The generally fair AI powerups for Total War games have a few cheat moments (free money, quick build/recruit times etc.) to balance the fact that it's an AI and you're not (presumably). However, a blatant cheat in Medieval II: your own crusader/jihad/warpath armies will gradually lose units to desertion if you don't progress towards the designated target each turn. The AI however can raise such an army, park it near your settlement and wait 50 years until the crusade/jihad/warpath is over, without losing any units, at which point it will be free to turn the army against you. Of course, there's nothing to stop you pre-emptively attacking that army anyway, excommunication aside...
• Another notable example in Total War games would be in Total War: Shogun 2. That army of peasants with spears and bows? No threat at all... until they walk into the fog of war, and 2 turns later return as an army of elite samurai, ignoring the cost and time requirements of actually building such an army.
• Going into higher difficulties in Total War: Warhammer and Total War: Warhammer II means that enemy AI units will get free bonuses to their melee stats (they also get a morale bonus, but this one is explicitly shown as such when hovering above their stats), which means that, in higher difficulties, players will most likely field heavily ranged armies rather than dealing with basic enemy infantry being able to beat their elites.
  • To the player, attrition is a punishing mechanic that makes you encamp your armies every few turns to avoid taking too much damage from it, and makes fighting Chaos / Vampires/ in deep sea difficult. The A.I.s, due to not knowing how to deal with attrition, gets massive reduction to the damage they take from it, no matter the difficulty you play on (even on Easy, they get a 33% reduction to all attrition damage they take, and will only take attrition damage if the player can see the army taking it).
  • the computer will also get massive reduction in unit upkeep and recruitment costs as well as in building construction, making crippling an AI financially impossible.
  • The "Great Power" penalty is a modifier that applies as your territory grows and gives a minus to diplomacy with all other factions on the map (going from a mere -5 if you only hold a couple of towns to a steep -30 or even -60 if you really expands a lot) to prevent the player from snowballing too much, that can (and will) push more neutral factions to dislike and eventually declare war on you. Key word being "the player": checking the diplomacy screen a bit will show that relations between A.I.s are not affected at all by this penalty and that other factions will be as friendly with one that holds a quarter of the world as they would be with a smaller one.
• Scrabble on the PlayStation 1. Firstly the game seemed to arbitrarily decide if something was an authentic word; many common words that are in any dictionary would be denied to the player but the computer could seem to use any combination of letters, even total gibberish such as "gxfsetf", and score. The harder the AI was set to, the more nonsense it would score with.
• Inverted in Getter Love!!, in which you get to be a cheating bastard. Mainly because of the map screen, in which you can see exactly where each of your opponents will be going before you choose a destination. (This aspect of the game would have worked better if, instead, you chose by pressing a button, instead of toggling on the map.^note Let's see: For destinations, you have your home, Itoh Mart, the department store (divided into three sections for information, fashion, and CD&BOOK), China Hao Hao, Panda Amusement (two sections here, one each for gaming and karaoke), Panda Burger, the school plaza, the school grounds, the library, Panda Park, and Café Liquid. A Nintendo 64 controller has a d-pad (four directions), four C buttons (which aren't used for anything in this game as it is), and six other buttons (L, R, Z, A, B, and Start). Fourteen possible destinations, fourteen buttons to select with (not even counting the joystick), it's a perfect match! And that's saying nothing about Artificial Stupidity.
• Infinity Wars features Campaign 8 of the Descendants of the Dragon. While the A.I. uses a triple–Purity Sleepers deck (evident from all 3 Commanders belonging to the Sleeper faction), there's a Flame Dawn Dragon in the Grave (which requires at least 2 Flame Dawn Commanders) just waiting to be resurrected, right from the start of the game.
• Sonic Shuffle had this badly. The game, to differentiate itself from Mario Party, uses cards to move players around instead of dice. However, instead of pulling from a deck, everyone has seven cards and the computer, even on the easiest mode, knows who has all of the 5 cards, 6 cards and "S" cards. Predictably, they will take them at the first opportunity, thus depriving you of any chance to get far in the game. What makes this worse is when you try to pick one from the computer, you can't see their cards. It becomes a crap shoot that may lead you into picking a 1 card or the Eggman card. This sort of setup works for an actual multiplayer set up, not when it's one against the computer.
• Mario's Game Gallery: In Go Fish, it's rather obvious that the AI knows what's in your hand. Often times, it will ask for the card you just drew when you go fish.
• Magical Drop, especially Magical Drop II and Magical Drop III, are prone to cheating AI. The original game is fair, outside of World having an exclusive Special Balloon that eliminates the most numerous color in her field. Magical Drop II, however, introduces AI that goes from playing fair, to moving their clown at speeds well beyond what movement lag allows the player, to flat-out teleporting when facing True Final Boss Black Pierrot. Magical Drop III then takes it up another notch in a bid to make it nearly impossible to put together a No Death Run^note Amusingly, a No Death Run is the requirement to face Black Pierrot in II: not only is teleportation given to mandatory final opponents Tower and Fortune (who are blatantly overpowered even without cheating AI), but the game throws Empress and demoted-to-Optional Boss Black Pierrot at the player if they are doing too well for the game's liking, who likewise show little regard for the game's movement rules.
• Railroad Tycoon puts quite a number of rules, limitations and other difficulties in the player's way that simply don't apply to the AI competitors. This could be justified by the lack of CPU power back in the day and the availability of the game even for the Commodore C64, but still.
  • You can build stations only on straight sections of track. The AI can build tracks out of stations at any angle they want and therefore up to eight lines out of the same station.
  • You can only build one bridge across a river. The next square has to be non-river. The AI can build as many bridges in a line as it pleases, including along a river.
  • You have to choose between three types of bridge: The wooden trestle is the cheapest, but it's single-track only, and it's washed away with floods the most easily. The steel bridge is double-track and sturdier, but it may still be washed away. The masonry bridge doesn't wash away, but it's crazy expensive. The AI always builds trestles with no disadvantages, and they're never washed away.
  • With dispatcher mode on, only one train per track (one train on a single-track line, two on a double-track line) can run between two stations or signal towers. With dispatcher mode off, one train always stops if two trains meet on a single-track line. The AI doesn't run any actual trains at all, so it isn't limited to any of this and needs neither expensive double-track lines nor signal towers.
  • Double-track lines can only have 45° curves; 90° curves are always single track, and you can't build tighter curves. The AI can build its tracks however it pleases, and since it doesn't really operate any trains, it isn't bound to what can be build with double tracks.
  • Of course, while you have to lay your tracks piece by piece, the AI builds entire lines to the next station instantaneously.
  • Your main advantage over the AI is that you can build tunnels under mountains even if they're single-track only. For some reason, the AI still simulates the obvious problems with inclines, but lacking the ability to build tunnels, it has to build around mountain ranges.
• The Hearts of Iron mod The New Order Last Days Of Europe does this pretty rampantly with Ordensstaat Burgund, due to its status as the game's primary threat. In the game's lore and statistics, Burgundy is an icon of Fascist, but Inefficient, being practically a death cult fueled by little more than endless slave labor and foreign exports from neighboring Germany. If the player tries to play as Burgundy, they will find themselves stuck taking massive penalties due to Burgundy's horrible ideology (and trying to reform it to be less terrible tends to just cause it to collapse) and badly stymied by its stagnant economy and lack of food, and it will require a lot of work just to keep Burgundy from collapsing entirely or losing its remaining allies. However, when controlled by the AI, Burgundy mysteriously gains a bunch of boosts that let it ignore all the penalties it should be taking, and won't ever risk collapse on its own terms until 1981 (when its leader, Heinrich Himmler, dies).
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: Many players have noticed that the AI enemy score in Battlez is rigged. When you're at lower league and have lower win streak, the AI often score barely anything while you rack up a lot of points. As your streak grows, the AI starts to reliably score higher than you, or worse, trail behind you throughout the match before suddenly gaining a score spike to overtake you at the very last second, and worst of all, all these can happen when the AI clearly has inferior plants than you (as in, you have your high-leveled Game-Breaker plants and the AI has level 1 or 2 early-game plants).
• In Mario Golf, Bowser will always get a hole in one on the second course during the Mario Open. How he was able pull this off on a 383-yard par 4 hole is never explained, nor is it possible to replicate yourself.
• Most of the newer lightgun games gives a delay when you reload your weapon, making you vunerable to cheap shots and causing you to take unfair damage
  • The House of The Dead III is one of the earliest examples of this reloading delay, ONE BOSS EVEN TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THIS!
  • The indie game Dead Connection is Nintendo Hard just for this reloading delay, a no damage run is very, VERY unlikely but probably possible.
  • The Time Crisis Series also has a bit of delay when reloading (mostly the First Game and Project Titan), but YOU can avoid damage as compensation (via taking cover)

Casino/Amusement Park Games

• Many arcade games are programmed to only make the jackpot or grand prize possible to hit once out of so many games. This is usually set via some kind of mechanism inside the machine, behind the coin box, or in the operator menu activated by a button behind the coin box for games with a monitor. One common implementation is to have a setting can go from 1 (or some other small number) to some maximum value X, or alternatively a "difficulty level" with each level mapping to a numerical setting in that range. Every game, the machine rolls a random number from 0 to X-1. If the roll is less than the setting, the jackpot can be won on that game; otherwise, the machine rigs the game to be Unwinnable. The other common implementation is to allow setting a minimum number of games that must pass since the last time the jackpot was won before it becomes winnable again. This is why some arcades will have one of those "stop the light" games with a four-digit progressive jackpot that hasn't been hit in over 1,000 games in spite of skilled players who can hit the jackpot at least once every 10 attempts on the same game at other arcades.
  • Here's how Cyclone works. The jackpot light lights for the same amount of time as the other lights, but the jackpot window is smaller than the 20ms light window. This is to keep people from figuring out that the jackpot has a smaller window than all other lights, and to keep people from figuring out the skill setting with a video camera. The default is 3ms. If the jackpot light is lit, but you are not in the real jackpot window, the machine jumps to a nearby light. The easiest jackpot setting is 20ms. A one frame link in fighting games is 16ms, and within human reflexes. A 3 ms window can be hit maybe 1 in 10 times, if you actually find it, which is difficult because the game is lying about if you were early or late. If it's set on 1ms, it's impossible to hit reliably without a high precision robot, so that's often coupled with the winnability setting which expands the window to 20 ms to match the light every X games. The game is not legally allowed to make it actually impossible, but it is allowed to make it practically impossible. The default setting (3ms, zero winnability) is legal, but the 1ms+winability setting really stretches the laws.
• 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".
  • The British National Lottery online games do exactly the same thing. For instance, there is a game where you can guess whether the next ball from the machine will be higher or lower, giving the illusion that skill is required to win. However, whether you will win or lose the game is decided beforehand. Sometimes it's funny to deliberately choose the least likely answer and then watch as a highly improbable sequence of balls emerge - again and again.
    • Sometimes you can get an extra high low win by going low on a 2, or high on a 11, forcing a 1 or a 12 to come up, which is then followed by another winner you wouldn't have had if you didn't. When the win for tat guess is predetermined, it's best to go against the odds.
• Coin-operated pub quiz machines were fair for a few years after they first came out, until the makers realized that some Renaissance Man types were making serious money off them. The response was to introduce gambling elements to the games that reduced them to Luck-Based Mission even for people who knew all the answers to the questions. Some games even introduce elements ostensibly requiring 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.
  • When the rules were changed to stop that, they resorted to having a separate database of "spoiler questions." Ones which no one can reasonably be expected to know the answer to. If you get good enough, they start throwing them at you. The game keeps track of the spoiler questions that have already been asked, so it can keep asking new ones as needed to break a winning streak.
• 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. If the last square stacks up, it simply moves another step before stopping after you press the button, oops, you missed. Though this is understandable, as the major prizes tend to be expensive things like game consoles or MP3 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).
  • It's probably the same trick the Cyclone games use, but the manual does not explain what the tightened timing window for when the game doesn't want you to win actually is. But it's almost certainly 1ms or less.
• Claw Machines. Good lord. It's amazing how many people don't know this, but almost all claw machines are rigged in various ways. For instance, many machines lower the claw slowly and then pull it up quickly, tending to drop the prize with this sudden motion. The most common method of rigging a machine is to rig the claw so that it only actually closes tight enough to grip a prize every so often. If the machine is set to grip a prize, an experienced player will almost always win...but these instances are rare. On some machines, you get a chance to win every X amount of plays. Someone in-the-know could let other people play until the machine is ready to spit out a prize, then swoop in and take it. However, most modern machines use a Random Number Generator.
  • Also, it's often easier to grab a prize if it's lying on its side...and more often than not, the items (usually toys) are placed upright or some other way to make grabbing even more difficult.
  • Since claw games are really popular in Japan, quite a few of them are less about luck and more about skill. It boils down to how few coins you need to put into the game to get the item which is carefully placed to be manipulated out, rather than lifted out.
    • To elaborate, claw machines in Japan will often feature a single object placed in the center of a flat surface, and the captured object is then traded for the actual prize. Players are expected to make multiple attempts, nudging the object closer to the goal each time. If a player accidentally moves the object into a disadvantageous position, they can flag down one of the arcade operators to reset it to its original placement and start anew. In the end, you've paid a reasonable price for the item, but the prizes are often specialty pop culture items that cannot be found in retail stores (apart from secondhand shops in the months that follow). If you play really badly (and lose quite a bit more than the item is worth on the secondhand market), it's not unheard of for the arcade to take pity on you and just let you have the item that you've more than paid for.
• Many video slot machines are programmed with weighted reels, so that some stops are more common than others. This is virtually always used to make "near misses" happen many, MANY times more often than an actual win, in order to make the player think he's close to winning and continue playing. For example, the "Red White Blue" slot machine pays out the jackpot for hitting a red 7, a white 7, and a blue 7, from left to right. But for one configuration, each reel only has a 1/64 chance of hitting the properly-colored 7, a 3/64 chance of hitting the blank right above it, and a 3/64 chance of hitting the blank right below it - which means the proper combination is 27 times more likely to line up just above the pay line than it is to be actually hit, as well as 27 times more likely to line up just below the pay line. (And this is a milder case; it's not uncommon to make the adjacent blanks each the legal maximum of 6 times more likely than the jackpot space.) In addition, the white and blue 7's are 6-7 times more likely to show up in each of the other reels - red-blue-white is 49 times more likely to be hit than red-white-blue, and blue-red-white is 126 times more likely.^note Note that the law requires reels to be independent, so the odds of the blue 7 hitting on the third reel, for example, must be the same regardless of what symbols hit on the first two reels. However, it's legal to simply make the blue 7 common on reel 2 and rare on reel 3, and the white 7 common on reel 3 and rare on reel 2, which is how the game achieves these near misses. This does, however, depend on jurisdiction, as in some places the only requirement is that the machine pay off at least the state minimum percentage of play in, and how it does that is of no concern to the gaming commission.
• Japanese pachisuro (a.k.a. pachi-slot) machines spin until the player manually stops the reels, attempting to time the button presses to line up a winning combination. However, the machine is legally allowed to skip up to 4 symbols after each button press before stopping the reel; this is most frequently done to make the third reel skip past a winning combination. (The slot machines in Pokémon also do this, since they're based off pachisuro as opposed to Western slot machines.)
• A particularly glaring example would be the casino game tournaments in the otherwise above-average Hoyle Casino 2011 PC game. While the human player sits at third base, the human must always place bets prior to the AI bots at seats 1, 2, and 4 deciding how much they are willing to stake. You can change your bet amount, but the bots will then do the same. In real tournaments, you're at least given the option of making a secret bet by writing down your bet amount and handing it to the dealers, to prevent other players from basing their betting on how much you stand to win or lose. This option does not exist in Hoyle Casino because, frankly, of this trope.
• The arcade redemption game Tippin' Bloks was fair (i.e. the jackpot could be won on every game), although it would adjust itself to be harder for a while after a couple jackpot wins - it would spawn blocks on the opposite side of the screen, but you still had just barely enough time to catch them. But then many arcades discovered they were losing money on the machine due to people who practiced the game to the point where they could win the jackpot more often than not. This prompted the manufacturer to create a software update, which makes the game drop blocks so fast that they're impossible to catch in time, making the game Unwinnable by Design.
• Animal Kaiser is a terrible offender at this. In order to attack your opponent, you need to get a higher power roll than them. So the game often rigs your attack roll in the opponent's favour, especially against the final one. If you stop your roll last, you'll roll one level lower than your opponent (even when it was supposed to stop earlier- they make it roll to the next number!). If you roll first, the opponent roll one level higher than you. Either way, you're screwed!
  • If you got a "Doubling", which is the highest roll possible? The opponent will also get a "Doubling" and draw with you, forcing both to roll again!

In-Universe Examples

• Zigzagged in The Matrix regarding the "rules" of the system. The agents have free reign to bend the rules of the system and thus can do things humans can't like leap buildings in a bound, dodge bullets, and punch through concrete, but they're still bound by said rules and thus can't outright break them. Freed humans however are capable of outright breaking the rules and doing things like flying, cheating death, or rewriting program on the fly. Of course, outright breaking the rules is so difficult that most freed humans aren't even able to bend them as well as an agent can, which is the reason every human to ever fight an agent has lost. Neo is the first to figure out how to actually break the rules when he becomes The One. Or so he and the rest of the humans think.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Mind's Eye" seems to give pointed shout-out to this trope when Geordi LaForge tries to pass the time on a long shuttle trip by playing a trivia game with the computer. When Geordi acts a little too cocky, the computer blatantly changes the rules:
  Shuttle Computer: List the resonances of sub-quantum associated with transitional relativity.
  LaForge: That's easy—
  Computer: In alphabetical order.
  • An expanded-universe novel dealing with the Kobayashi Maru mentioned a time when Scotty took the test. He used a number of physics tricks (ones that would work in the simulation, but not in real life) to destroy the Klingon flotilla, only for another set of ships to warp in. This continues for hours, until Scotty has destroyed more Klingon ships than actually exist.
• Deconstructed in the Star Trek Online fan fiction The Universe Doesn't Cheat. After doing her damnedest to endure in the legendary Kobayashi Maru test with the chance of becoming captain on the line and losing, the protagonist and her Number One both make the case to their Starfleet judges that allowing the test computer to be this completely destroys the test's Willing Suspension of Disbelief, because it literally will make reality its bitch in its single-minded quest to humiliate the student. As a result, the Kobayashi Maru's primary goal (teach that no-win scenarios exist and that captains are supposed to face them with dignity) doesn't really work.
• In the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "I, Excretus", the crew of the Cerritos is tasked with going through training simulators of various popular events in Star Trek canon. Mariner and Captain Freeman initially believe that these are a Secret Test of Character, similarly to the Kobayashi Maru test, however it turns out that the person who put the crew up to this had blatantly rigged it so that the crew would be forced to keep doing this over and over until they ultimately failed, thus allowing her to keep her job. Unfortunately for the person, she didn't expect Boimler to keep trying his test over and over again, giving the others the chance to get one up on the test runner.
• The Big Bad of the anime film Summer Wars is a massive case of this. Love Machine was programmed to enjoy games and competition, but he's a terribly Sore Loser and resorts to cheating whenever it looks like the heroes might win.
• ReBoot is a show about the inhabitants of a computer, where any game won by the user results in damage to the system and (what is effectively) death of the participants. As you can imagine, they will pull every trick possible to keep the user from winning games. This includes things that are so unfair that it's surprising the User even keeps on playing on that computer, like moving ammo and extra lives from where they're normally situated.
  • ... leading to Megabyte-Bob encouraging Matrix to break the game rules when caught in a game parody of Pokémon and Dragon Ball and the user is clearly going to win. "You're a renegade! CHEAT!!!"
  • ...and Matrix shooting the player from behind. In a miniature golf game.
  • In one amusing instance, due to the game cube coming down on half of the Principle Office while the energy was being siphoned out of the core, they had to retrieve the energy and return it to the half of the office in the game or it will leave with the game. So this meant they couldn't win or lose. Unfortunately, no one told Enzo this, and Bob ended up having to stop both him and the User. It got to the point that the User felt like the game was ignoring him and desperately tried to stay relevant.
• In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, when Grim complains that the game he is playing is cheating, the in-game character actually calls him a wimp and shoots his score, resetting it to zero.
• Teal'c encounters this trope in a season 8 episode of Stargate SG-1. He says a computer simulation is too easy and the computer takes him at his word. Hijinks ensue.
  • Notably the computer cheats so blatantly and repeatedly that in the end they resolve the situation by doing what any self-respecting gamer would do: exploit a bug in the program to cheese the system, sending Daniel in to help while granting him tactical precognition.
• In Sword Art Online's arc Phantom Bullet, there is a minigame called "Untouchable!" where the player has to reach a gunman by running towards him through a narrow passageway. The game has a feature that allows the player to see where the bullets are going to hit, but as the player gets closer the gunman shoots faster - until it shoots at the same time the lines appear. If the player somehow manages to dodge that, the gunman starts firing lasers.
• The show Ace Lightning, about the characters of a video game coming to life, sees the game's creator specifically creating a new leader for the villains in the second season to give them a totally unfair boost in power. Not only is this character, Kilobyte, almost unbeatable, he can defeat most opponents by draining their energy with a touch from his tentacles, he can upgrade the other villains by giving them new powers and weapons, and can weaken the heroes by doing things like making them capable of feeling fear. The only thing keeping the heroes competitive is their human friends inventing new power-ups for them outside of the stuff from the game.
• The Mummy Monster Game: Book 1 features a weird In-Universe version. When Josh wins the final challenge of "The Mummy Monster Game", Osiris's evil brother Seth hacks the game and makes it impossible for him to retrieve his lost companions through the program in retaliation for Osiris being revived, forcing Josh to find a real-life "house of eternity" that will let him enter the pyramid where they were lost.
• The Thing (1982): Kurt Russell's character, R.J. MacReady, is introduced playing chess against a computer at the start of the film. The computer declares checkmate, but if you analyze the board, you'll realize that MacReady would have won the game. In other words, it just declared victory despite not satisfying the condition for it. Understandably miffed, MacReady pours his shot of whiskey into the computer, frying it.
  MacReady: Cheatin' bitch.
• Inverted in the episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Tale of the Pinball Wizard, when Gary is pulled into a video game world where he must rescue a princess from The Sheriff. Everyone in the game world has to follow the rules except for Gary, who can cheat because he is real. He "makes up his own rules" to pocket a second weapon to defeat the Final Boss.
  Gary: When it's real, you can make up your own rules!

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♪~ Hey transistor, how'd that missile miss ya? Yet your hits KO, every go, the way you move ain't fair ya know! ~♪

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