I play video games. I enjoy them. I like them lots. I especially like the kinds with artificial intelligence. Why? Because you get scenarios like the ones I'm about to list.

Grand Theft Auto IV
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I've found that when you're in a car and you honk, any pedestrians around you will stop and give you the middle finger (or equivalent). Honk again, the process repeats. Hold down the car horn, the pedestrian's trapped. What's more, you can eventually amass a huge crowd of passersby, all exhibiting rudamentary signs of their displeasure with similar caveman-like gestures. And as long as you keep honking, they literally cannot leave. No, they are doomed to forever gesture their disgust with your actions. It's fun. Get yourself a crowd that way, and I find a molotov cocktail is a good way to clear them out.

Go instigate a fight and get a guy to run after you. Then, run to the nearest vehicle and stand on top of it. The guy will punch the car in his attempt to punch you, which pisses off the driver of the car you're standing on (though oddly, the driver is always okay with you standing on his car, and doesn't get concerned that a guy is trying to hit his car until a swing actually connects. Hmmm). When the guy trying to get you punches the car you're standing on, that will cause the driver to become enraged and get out of his vehicle to assault the guy who was trying to get to you. On top of that, it leaves you a free car to steal. If you ask me, I'd say that scenario pretty closely resembles reality and the way people really do behave in such situations. Not.

One of my favorite things in GTA4 are the cops, believe it or not. They're extreme, violent, ruthless, completely unfair, and act without having any information. Here's a little spin I like to put on that: I went up to a lady with a portable oxygen tank and casually shoved her. Naturally, she got a bit pissed and, being the feisty old bag she was, she came after me. I ran to the nearest cop, stood in plain sight, and let the woman attack me. Well, the cop saw this and thought the woman was the one assaulting me, so she maced the old lady and threw her to the ground, sending her oxygen tank flying, and proceeded to arrest her. Now, come on, admit it. That's pretty true to life, right?

How many times have you been on the street and an ambulance runs over several pedestrians in their race to get to one? Never. Yet, somehow, that's exactly what happens in this game. Same with the cops. They don't care who they plow into or what they run over. They will be damned if they don't get to their target.

When in a cab and impatient, telling the cab driver to speed up results in the cab driver exceeding the speed limit and driving like a maniac. He'll take down street lamps, signs, drive into other cars, etc. It's amazing how much caution they throw to the wind on your whim.

In that same vein, I've discovered that when you're on a date or a mission with a partner and you're supposed to be driving but you take a cab instead, the AI of your partner/date doesn't pick up on this and they still think you are driving. Then when you tell the cabbie to speed up and he proceeds to hit everything at 90 MPH, your partner/date yells at you for it. "Hey, Niko, watch this car, man!" Pretty good stuff.



Assassin's Creed
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With little exception, you can pretty much kill anyone and get away scott-free as long as you assume the scholar position. This is especially funny when you abuse this to kill person after person, many of them guards. You eventually have a small pile of bodies all around your feet, and yet the guards around you are surveying the scene and shouting things like, "Who's responsible for this?!" I guess the scholar standing in the middle of all the chaos is to be assumed innocent because, you know, he looks like he's praying and stuff.

Not exactly AI, but I do have to mention it simply because it makes me LOL to this day. Occasionally, you have to rescue citizens, some of them helpless women on the verge of getting gang raped. Well, before you rescue them, they're getting groped. On one such mission, the game bugged out on me, and even after I saved her, the groper was still groping. So his hands were all over while she was just standing there thanking me and telling me all this long-winded bullshit. Very lulzable.



Hitman: Blood Money
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There is one point in the game where you have to sneak into some building full of patients. I think it was a mental hospital, but I'm not sure. Anyway, you can wear your suit all over the place except for one sector, where you have to be appropriately dressed in the white gown. Evidently, if you don't want to wear a white gown in that area and you enter in anything else, it is an offense punishable by death. How dare you not obey and wear the gown? You must die!

In that same location, if you push or otherwise antagonize any of the patients, they will go tell on you to one of the orderlies. I once pushed a guy - merely pushed him - and when he told the orderly, the orderly said, "What? Not on my watch!" and proceeded to murder me. Come now, all I did was push him, do you really have to break out the baton? Besides, it's a mental hospital for crying out loud! Do you beat all the patients who go use a bit of physical force once in a while? Sheesh.

Let me ask you something. If there were a pile of dead bodies at the base of a shed, and about 6 feet up from them, a bunch of bullet holes and red splatters at head level, would you stand RIGHT there? Apparently, you would, or so think the AI programmers. We got out our sniper rifle and blew head after head off. The first guy went down, and a second guy came over to examine what happened, standing so his head was EXACTLY aligned with where we shot the last guy. We took him out, and a third guy came to take his place. Lather, rinse, repeat and we eventually had an entire pile of bodies and evidently a whole line of people waiting to stand in the "magic spot."



Morrowind
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I admire the programmers and what they tried to do here, but it didn't work. They want the NPCs to interact and respond to you when you touch them, but unfortunately, they just don't realize when it's you bumping into them or them bumping into you. I remember sitting in someone's house once, crouching down and staring at the shelves with my back turned to all humanity (I'm a total klepto, so I was waiting and waiting for the moment I could steal something of interest.) So, I'm sitting there, back turned, waiting, when I suddenly hear in a gruff voice, "This better be important!" I turn around and some dude had entered the shop and come up behind me and bumped into me.

The Dunmer do NOT forget or forgive. I once insulted a dark elf to the point that he was so angry he wanted to do me bodily harm. I ran into a house for safety, where he couldn't follow, and ran up to the roof. I looked down, and there he was, standing and waiting at the door for me to come out. I went inside, ate, slept a few hours, and when I came back out, he STILL wanted to kick my ass. I left the continent for a while, and months passed. When I found myself back in that town many months later, the first thing I see when I get in the gates is a Dunmer running my way angrily. 'Twas the very same one and he was holding onto his grudge as tight as ever. I also wonder how he knew I was back in town so fast. I had just stepped foot through the gate. What a memory!



Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Las Vegas
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At one point in this game, you have to scale the side of a large hotel building. You're way up high on the outside, and there is a restaurant inside. A man is sitting right by the window eating dinner and occasionally looks out. The goal is to not let him see you as you pass. Well, naturally, I wanted to kill him, but nothing I did would work, so we just called it off as no one being programmed to die. We were right, sort of. We ended up fluking it out by using a grenade that did blow up and managed to kill him. The thing is, since no one in that restaurant had been programmed to die, no one had been programmed to react to anyone dying. So, all the guests and waiters just went about their usual business despite this dude being blown out of his dining chair.


So, what are some memorable experiences you have had with video game logic?

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And now for that promised rant. I know you guys just love it when I go off on something or someone. So, though it's totally unrelated, I just have to rant at the guy in the freecreditreport.com commercial, because he's been pissing me off for a good while now.
(THIS asshole, if you're unfamiliar: [link])

If he were real, this is what I would say to him:

So, let me get this straight. You call her your dream girl, and then you immediately go on to passive-aggressively complain about her and insinuate that you would be happier if you hadn't married her after all. You blame her low credit score for your lack of happiness. Well, where is your credit? Why is it all her responsibility? And isn't that kind of an important thing to know about your partner before entering into marriage?

You should be grateful that her parents even allowed your loser asses to stay with them - probably rent-free - instead of pitching you out on your asses and letting you learn a life lesson the hard way. Instead of sitting around bitching about your partner's problems or flaws, maybe you should pick up your own dick for a little while and take control of life instead of playing a victim of circumstance. And how do you think your "dream girl" feels, running back and forth doing your laundry while you sit around in a garage band that's going nowhere with your loser friends, playing a song about how miserable you are with her? Grow up, quit blaming other people for your problems, and take some responsibility for yourself, jackass.


Okay, I feel better now.


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