Never-ending enemies: A cheap way to make a game harder?

I just got done with a particulary buggersome boss battle in Crackdown.  When I reached the area where the boss was, there were plenty of guards shooting me up, so after I took them all out, I went to hide from the boss's firing so I could rest up.  When I came out of my hiding spot.... there were the same guards again!  I was also trying to look around the room to figure out how to get up to the area where the boss was, but being able to look around the room while you're getting pelted with all sorts of guages of bullets is rather harder to do.  I finally won, but dammit if it wasn't annoying.

Crackdown isn't the only game that has reoccuring enemies, but don't you find it stupid that in some games where you know the enemies should run out never do?  Aren't you tired of having to expend your energy constantly fighting off a never-ending army of foes when all you want to do is figure out how to defeat a boss, or look around the room to solve a puzzle or find a way out of a room?  I'm all for fighting a ton of enemies... if I know they'll stop coming, but if it's to the point where I got to beat up and die so I can figure out what the hell's going on so then on my next life, I can hope I can kill the boss or escape in time, well, I'm not for that at all.

I hate re-spawning. It's one of the very few things that annoyed me in Ninja Gaiden, half the time you're trying to figure out where the hell you're supposed to be going - if you screw up, you have to fight through the same area you just came from. Lame. If I clear a room, let it remain cleared.

It comes down to what the videogame is all about. If it's a game where fighting gives you benefits like experience points, then having constantly respawning enemies isn't such a bad thing. However, it's always a bad idea to punish the player for doing well, which respawning enemies can be. I think the rule should be that enemies should respawn after you're done with the area, so that if you want to re-fight those battles, you can, but you don't have to. Respawns should probably be triggered by where the player is, rather than a time limit, ideally. They should watch for games that require backtracking. Respawning enemies can go either way in those games. In Metroid Prime, respawning enemies kept things interesting because you could fight then in different ways, and it kept the game from being purely about going from point A to point B. It can be annoying in RPGs, especially since early areas are nothing but a time-consuming cakewalk. All you do is hammer the attack button a couple times.

Respawning enemies can work, but it should be the exception, rather than the rule. 

While I absolutely hate it in games like Ninja Gaiden, where if you accidently walk into the wrong room you have to fight your way out all over again, I didn't mind it in Crackdown.  If you could just kill all the enemies and then fight the boss, it would be so extremely easy that the game would be even shorter than it is now. 

In short, I don't mind respawning enemies in an open-world game, but I hate it in linear-type games.
 

I couldn't agree more. Nothing ticks me off more than respawning enemies. I hate having to defeat the same enemies over and over just to accomplish one little task.

I think it all comes down to the AI and the battle system (if there is one.).

In Ninja Gaiden: Black (only version I've played), they had that same thing going on. The thing that made it okay with me is that it was still fun to play them. If the battle is fun, who cares if the devs implement it? Dynasty Warriors is the only game franchise that comes to mind that shouldn't ever do this.

It depends how the recurring enemies are used. In RPGs, you generally need them to level up, although sometimes the constant random battles suck.

Constantly spawning enemies in an FPS or something like you described are cheap ways to make games harder, but my pet peeve that people use to boost difficulties of games are to increase the damage you recieve, and lower the damage you take. I personally think to make a game, such as an FPS more realistics, boost both the damage you and the enemies take out. I don't care if you are some huge space alien, a high caliber sniper rifle or machine gun is gonna cut through your body just as bad as it would a space marine.

If not for that, why not just increase the AI (I still say AI and physics need to be addressed more this generation in comparison to graphics). The same old take more damage for difficulty has been around since like the advent of video games without any evolution... 

I completely agree. The single most thing I hated about Dead Rising was that there wasn't a finite number of zombies... The game would have been soooo much better had it stuck to its Dawn of the Dead roots and let you mitigate your zombie problem by both eliminating them for good and barracading off sections to stave off the remaining dead! I love the concept of Dead Rising, but the fact that the zombies were never-ending killed it for me (not to mention that it just felt like an unfinished game).

Dead Rising 2 can benefit from the following:

• A finite number of zombies: Although I would like the number of zombies to be persistant, I'd also want it to be a large number (something appropriate for the story and gameplay)
• The ability to use your environment to set barracades and traps (some sort of micro-management mini-game... if you've seen Dawn of the Dead (Romero version), you'll know why I say this)
• FPS aiming scheme (in other words, let me have the precision and aiming style you see in games like Halo, R6, and Half-Life)
• RPG elements that dictate your ability to set these traps, barracades, along with increased proficiency in combat skills
• Time shouldn't be such a harsh element this time around: In the first, it was VERY difficult to navigate to the incidents that came over your hand-held radio, because; A, you couldn't find the damn place and B, it all happened in real-time... it should be more forgiving this time around so as to promote exploration and sprawling storylines
• MULTIPLAYER CO-OP!!!! Who wouldn't want to survive a zombie infestation with a pal?!?!?!?
• Interactive environments!!! The game was set in a mall... why on Earth weren't we able to go into elevator shafts, air ducts, and all of the other hidden areas a mall has?!?!? Again, I emplore you to watch Dawn of the Dead and you'll know exactly why I want this included
• Zombies rot, so a disposal mini-game should be in place (again, see the movie to know why)! You can't have your charecters getting sick during this outbreak, can you?
• Take the emphasis from arcade action to surviva-horror/RPG/Sim

Depends on the genre. If it's like the JRPG where leveling up is key that's needed. Or if it's like the platforming genre where the player needs to be constantly entertained it's needed. So really it all depends.

Depends on the genre. If it's like the JRPG where leveling up is key that's needed. Or if it's like the platforming genre where the player needs to be constantly entertained it's needed. So really it all depends.

 Dencore

True. I can't imagine a Castlevania game without countless foes.  

True. I can't imagine a Castlevania game without countless foes.

SteelAttack

Agreed the game will suck then. Some games NEED respawning enemies, it's just that most Western genres don't need them.

I remember in Goldeneye where you play the Facility level, and at the end all those guys kept coming. I used to try to stay alive as long as i could and kill as much i could. My current record is around 620 killed.GIJesse77

Ah yes. Goldeneye and those few, insanely annoying respawn levels. How I loathed them.

Some games need Respawing enimes like Mario, Castlevania and Battlefield 2, and Star wars battlefront but not all like on golden eye when you kill and enimey it should never come back that was good in Call of duty it was very possible to kill all the nazis and have them not respawn in the same point

Dead Rising does have a finite number of zombies... the population in the town, which just happens to be a ridiculously high number like fifty three thousand some odd.Oilers99

It doesn't. There's an achievement for killing that many but that doesn't mean that's all there is. The zombies regenerate when you leave that area.

And yeah, it is definitely a cheap way of making a game harder. A similar example is on God of War where on the later levels, rather than having harder enemies, you just had more of the same, which felt like quite a cop out.

No, I don't believe never ending enemies is a low-road towards increasing difficulty. No one complained about the Flood in Halo after all.

There's nothing more cheap than the plain jane "kill off the underlings strategy to clear the way" bit. If never ending enemies force the gamer to exercise more strategy in their approach while expanding upon conventional appraoches to gameplay, then I'm all for it.