I believe the most useless EVER are the Marines in Halo (2 mainly).
When they are in the turret, they focus on anything BUT the enemy, e.g. fish or passing butterflies.
When they drive, they hit a wall and stay there long enough to get blown to a pile of giblets.

You need an other option. The most useless AI I've ever come across was the friendly AI in Star Wars Battlefront 1. If you didn't do everything then the entire mission would fail, with no other option.

All friendly AI. I have never seen a game do it without something fucking up.

Have you SEEN the Left 4 Dead 2 AI???

3 words

Sheva Fucking Alimar

Far Cry 2's

Oh, wait...

I've played a few of these games, but for me it's SW Battlefront II. At the end of EVERY SINGLE GAME I ever played in that where it was me and the computer AI versus the enemy computer AI I ALWAYS had the most kills by far. I'm talking about me having 100, and the next closest kill count being 12. It was pitiful.

You need an "other" option.

For me the most useless AI would be the ones in Two Worlds.

*sighs exasperatedly* there's even more proof...

Uhhh,.... I can already see the ten million people saying "Sheva"

On that list and out of the games I played, Battle front 2 enemies and friendlys.

Phantom Dust. Basically they would no attack and just use you as a human shield for attacks. All well and good if I am trying to protect him but I am not. They are supposed to be my partner and they do nothing but help the enemy.

Everyone in Oblivion is just mind-bogglingly stupid. I can't count how many times I've seen characters get stuck on a small ledge, start running into a corner, run straight towards their attackers, and so on.

the L4D2 teammates stand next to me for like twenty seconds when a hunter is on me, let me get downed. Then me friend comes and saves me himself. Then Rochelle heals me for one second, stops, starts, stops, starts, then Nick shoots me, gets the witch pissed, it attacks ME, then he heals himself for 20 health. A boomer comes, he beats it down towards me, then shoots it. A jockey will come and get me, and will kill it when I have 10 hp left, then Rochelle will heal herself because while this happened, she took 20 damage. Then they shoot a spitter in front of me at the safehouse door when I need to heal, and I die.

Well, actually I can say that the AI in L4D2 is actually pretty good if you play as intended, of course I don't play that many action games with AI partners but compared to other games like the aforementioned RE5, this is a bit of awesome friendly AI programming except maybe in the concert stage at the end of the Carnival campaign (with 3 bot partners even on easiest they do not seem to understand the concept of stop fighting the F@cking zombies and hunters and simply withdraw to the chopper).

Any AI can be tricked (like in the video). That is a pretty counter intuitive thing the guy did, and while the AI should be able to go around (or try to) I can understand why it can't figure that out.

Truthfully though without going into really obscure indy games, I would say that the worst AIs are oftentimes the simplest. I mean in things like Fallout 3 the game is a technological marvel (well to me) but simple things like companions following you is absolutly borked.

I'd give honorable mention to pretty much every escorted target AI ever conceived. Without a doubt any one or anything I have to keep alive in a game and protect from attackers more or less behaves like a lemming running for the nearest body of water.

The AI in Oblivion/Fallout. In Fallout 3, at the start of the game I chose to kill the overseer, and his guards didn't do anything. Just stood there. It wasn't until I hit one of them he did the whole "KILL HIM" thing. Stopped playing the game after that. I've been told its great but I'm a petty guy!

The enemy AI in Battlefront.

It was so bad, I could kill an entire army of clonetroopers by myself. I didn't even need help from my allies.

MelasZepheos:
You need an other option. The most useless AI I've ever come across was the friendly AI in Star Wars Battlefront 1. If you didn't do everything then the entire mission would fail, with no other option.

They were terrible

I believe there should be an "other" choice.

But for the given options, probably the L4D2 AI. Thanks for watching a hunter rip my nipples off, Rochelle.

Metal Gear Solid, with the "I can see 3 feet in front of me" guards. And their selective blindness towards boxes

-Stranger-:
Everyone in Oblivion is just mind-bogglingly stupid. I can't count how many times I've seen characters get stuck on a small ledge, start running into a corner, run straight towards their attackers, and so on.

Make sure you're not drinking any liquids while you watch this...

Xandus117:
The enemy AI in Battlefront.

It was so bad, I could kill an entire army of clonetroopers by myself. I didn't even need help from my allies.

The series in general is pretty notorious. I single-handedly won the war on Hoth in the sequel. Sure I had to park an AT-AT at the gates and just blast away, but I won.

Useless is not the same as bad.

You could have the best AI ever, but if the pathfinding is fucked, a simple " if > then" script would be better than the waste of time it replaces.

Bad AI.. first show me some good, intelligent AI. Until then about 95% of all games will fall in to this category.

HardRockSamurai:
Have you SEEN the Left 4 Dead 2 AI???

Shit, that was toooooooooo funny.

Left 4 Dead 2 allies. They're definitely dumber than the first game's AI. They refuse to pick up medkits, yet waste entire one's on you or each other if you lose 25 health. And god help you if you get pinned by a hunter and someone else is down (but not incapped), or another SI rears their ugly head, as bots prioritize both helping downed teammates and chasing SI over knocking a hunter of your back.

Battlefront.

I actually thought that Oblivion and Left 4 Dead had great AI.

You can't really have all of the The Elder Scrolls games combined as one option. Oblivion - for example - had more advanced AI than all of the previous games.

I would say SW B2 because they did absolutely nothing but get hit by my bullets

@ Julianking I actually was about to put that. lol. But no you said it for me and anyone else who has played it. Sheva sucks.

I'm going with "Other". Just came off SWAT 4.

I'm trying to set up a multiple room entry with one team going through one door, and the second team going through another...except, when I ordered Team 2 to set up at a door, they entered the room as it was quicker to cross the room itself then walk around.

Team 2 was cut to ribbons
Team 1 was killed as they were determined no to move from the now open doorway
The hostage was shot in the crossfire
Then I died trying to restore some order.
All because the AI was unwilling to take the longer, safer route.

The AI in Call of Duty 2 and 3 (and I'd imagine in the previous games, though I never played them). They rarely hit anything, but perhaps more frustrating is the fact that they always wait on you before they advance anywhere. This fits the definition of 'useless' pretty well. If you just sit behind cover and wait, they will just stay where they are, dying frequently and occasionally killing an enemy. If they succeed in killing all the enemies, they'll just sit there some more. They're there to make the game feel bigger, more like a real war, but this behavior may actually make it feel smaller, since you have to do all the fighting.

I also think that Halo 2's friendly AI can't be the most useless, because it's not even the most useless in the series. I actually think it's the most useful in the series, because they actually have weapons that they can use effectively, and fight enemies that they can fight effectively.

Now, Halo CE... THAT has useless AI, because no matter how they fight, they are usually equipped with a weapon that is only effective at spitting distance and does very little damage to the Covenant. When they finally fight an enemy that will actually die when they shoot it, it's an enemy that often kills them in one hit.

Mercs 2 friendly AI is fucking retarded. I once spent an entire minute waiting for a guy to get into my helicopter. He kept running back and forth and then around the chopper, but WOULDN'T GET IN!

Edit: Come to think of it, the enemy AI is pretty thick as well, but can be uncannily intelligent. It's odd that enemies who stand out in the open firing at you (and missing) and think that the best tactic when in a jeep is to drive into your tank repeatedly can hit a speeding helicopter with an artillery tank.

MelasZepheos:
You need an other option. The most useless AI I've ever come across was the friendly AI in Star Wars Battlefront 1. If you didn't do everything then the entire mission would fail, with no other option.

I ended up doing that anyway haha. Forgot I had allies most of the time.