TheMadDoctorsCat:

Sonic 1 had good enemy placement? You have rose-tinted specs my friend. The flying bug-things in the first Green Hills zone set the tone - shooting an unkillable projectile attack just as you were about to jump up and hit the bug. And don't even get me started on the pink pig things with spikes on their backs in the third level.

Generally gree about S2 and S3 though (apart from the star and boomerang enemies in "Metropolis Zone" in Sonic 2, they sucked.)

Ah but those instances you mentioned in Sonic 1 weren't so much bad enemy placement as bad enemy design. After all, neither were thrown in your face so they were unavoidable. After all if you're jumping to hit the bug then you've seen it right?

To put it another way, when I play the older Sonic games I generally come across very few occasions where I believe the enemy placement was unfair. The enemy AI or design maybe, but not the placement.

It's not a shooter, but here goes. Playing Diablo II one time, I got killed (gee, Inferno, what's new? Yeah, I know) Anyway, I'm trying to get back to my body, and it's been swarmed by every monster in the whole level. Not kidding here. I refused to die again, but it did take like a half hour to kill them all without my good equipment on. My reserve equipment was OK, but nothing to what was sitting on my dead carcass. Also, in the same game, it really sucked to be low on life with no potions and no time to go into inventory to use a portal cuz of being chased, and finally find a way point, but it's covered in monsters.

Halo 3 on Legendary. Arrival. Trying to take on one large Flood on Legendary is enough. Trying to take on THOUSANDS is impossible.

Jobz:

The Iron Ninja:
Tenchu Z (Ninja game for the 360) had this mission where you had to sneak past a forest road checkpoint guarded by other Ninja. I sneakily killed off all the patrols and was gingerly attempting to climb up the side wall of the checkpoint to catch the guards inside by surprise. Unfortunately a bear found me. I both hate and adore that bear at the same time.
On the one hand it broke the perfect score I had going
But on the other hand it's a fucking bear, and that is awesome.

That game drove me to the brink of controller-through-television-set violence more times than I care to remember. It was so bloody frustrating.

Really? I loved it. I actually find playing it rather relaxing (somehow)

Ultrajoe:
Snipers in Halo 3...

Nothing like feats of skill on legendary only to be head-shotted from 9 miles away by some jackal so you can have the privilege of doing that shit all over again.

GAH! So frustrating. Legendary with all skulls on is simply impossible with those snipers. Enter their field of fire and DIE.

But i did it... by damn did i do it... only took me 12 hours a level but by lucifers pubic hair did i do it...

*applause* My main tactic is just to run in and strafe, spikers blazing. SIX beam rifle headshots as I turn a corner. I nearly threw my controller through my friends' flatscreen.

MurderousToaster:
If you've ever played "tactical" shooters, you'll know what I'm getting at. E.G in R6 Vegas 2 I was attempting to storm a building quickly so I walked in through the door. boomf. Dead. Shotgun pellets in my face. Reload checkpoint, try again. Sometimes a game can do this to the point of extreme frustration, whether they spawn in in a stupid, badly-designed area or whether they have a shotgun pointed at the door before you walk in.
What's your most annoying enemy placement scenario?

So, you walk up to a door in Rainbow Six: Vegas, don't use the snake cam to see what's the other side before you go through, and then moan when you die?

Weak.

The correct answer is "I love the guy with the shotgun standing right in front of the door, because he's going to get that door in the face when my breaching charge goes off".

GenHellspawn:

LOOY:
COD4 defiantly, enemies often spawn behind you and on Legendary it's just really frustrating to be killed by a guy that came from a building you just cleared.

...What?

Enemy's infinitely spawn until you reach a certain point in the level. But they often spawn from a spawn point that was behind you. On easier settings you simply kill them, but on Veteran they just pop up in the middle of gunfights while your reloading and wounded.

In pretty much any Mega Man game, those enemies that pop up out of bottomless pits are totally unfair. They hit you in mid-jump, knocking you back just enough to make you fall into the pit and die. There are few things more frustrating; You start a stage, everything's going great, haven't taken a single hit so far... Only to be killed instantly when you're trying to clear a seemingly empty pit.

I'm not sure if this really counts, but "random encounters" in pretty much any JRPG tend to piss me off.

LOOY:

GenHellspawn:

LOOY:
COD4 defiantly, enemies often spawn behind you and on Legendary it's just really frustrating to be killed by a guy that came from a building you just cleared.

...What?

Enemy's infinitely spawn until you reach a certain point in the level. But they often spawn from a spawn point that was behind you. On easier settings you simply kill them, but on Veteran they just pop up in the middle of gunfights while your reloading and wounded.

I've never once had an enemy spawn behind me during CoD4 so either you missed a couple on your way through or you're walking through the level backwards.

That said, I do think CoD4 wins the worst placed enemies award for that bastardly corridor in the nuke bunker.

Do the grenades from Call of Duty 4 count as enemies? I tried playing Veteran and the only thing that stopped me from getting through any parts of the game (especially that damn fight on the second mission in the TV station) was the bastard grenades. Those things can seriously fly through walls to land perfectly at your feet, killing you instantly, and the game has an incredible habit of giving enemies an infinite supply, and putting two or three at your feet in the span of a few seconds, so that if you want to try to throw one back, you get blown up by the second and third. This is compounded by the fact that in 99% of cases, the only place to run is out of cover, where you get promptly destroyed by machine gun fire. I swear, I know Veteran is hard, but it's beyond the point of unfair; it's a complete fucking nightmare that relies more on luck than it does skill. I dunno, maybe the PC version is harder because you don't ave that magic "snap to target" button that does 95% of the work for you, but still, the grenades ruin it for me.

Oh, while I'm at it, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky also has horrible grenades, although the intent is definitely not malicious and has to do more with enemies following the same AI scripts in the same way. Stumble onto a group of 10 people and the first thing they do is throw grenades at while maybe one or two provide enough suppressing fire to ensure that you can't just stand in one place to pick them off. If you're stuck in a fairly narrow space, playing the game becomes an exercise in quick-loading.

Doom II on Nightmare difficulty. It's nearly impossible.

the last level in gta4. why cant you fly a helicopter jacob!!!!

Doom 3. Seems like everytime you find a health item just centimeteres off the most linear path, you'll have something spawn behind you the moment you pick it up. Not impossibly unfair, but more often than not eliminates the reason to pick up "hidden" health items.

Also, the Great Reactor Room thingy (i won't spoil) just before the last bossfights in Force unleashed have so many enemies standing around that you are almost forced to run through the thing as fast as possible without stopping to kill someone.

Dealin Burgers:
Hell yeah, that bunker is a total drag.

cod3; every single time i stormed a building they moved the AI to exactly the last place i looked. and then you had those alleys that they would pop out of completely unseeable doorways. bloody nazi.

snipers in all the Medal Of Honor games, you take two steps after a checkpoint and you are somehow pinged with 5 shots from unbelievable distance.

Ultrajoe:

But i did it... by damn did i do it... only took me 12 hours a level but by lucifers pubic hair did i do it...

Director: We've got to do the "Jiminy jillikers" scene again, Milhouse.
Milhouse: We already did it. It took seven hours, but we did it. It's done!
Director: Yes...but we've got to do it from different angles! Again and again, and again and again and again!

GloatingSwine:

MurderousToaster:
If you've ever played "tactical" shooters, you'll know what I'm getting at. E.G in R6 Vegas 2 I was attempting to storm a building quickly so I walked in through the door. boomf. Dead. Shotgun pellets in my face. Reload checkpoint, try again. Sometimes a game can do this to the point of extreme frustration, whether they spawn in in a stupid, badly-designed area or whether they have a shotgun pointed at the door before you walk in.
What's your most annoying enemy placement scenario?

So, you walk up to a door in Rainbow Six: Vegas, don't use the snake cam to see what's the other side before you go through, and then moan when you die?

Weak.

The correct answer is "I love the guy with the shotgun standing right in front of the door, because he's going to get that door in the face when my breaching charge goes off".

The fact is, he was beside the door. Standing right beside it, not in direct view of the Snake Cam.

harhol:
The sniper level in MOH: Allied Assault.

That entire map was an exercise in repeated failure and frustration.

And I had almost forgotten about that one too. 2 hours of using my head as a German sniper detection devise.

While maybe not exactly what the OP was looking for the racing level in Mafia comes to mind. You had to drive the whole thing perfect or you lost, and all it took was someone giving you a gentle nudge to send you flying off the track.

Splintercell in the last level in the basement when the lights go out and then the bad guys get NV goggles. If you didn't kill/sticky shock the right guys before they got them on it ended up where you hide in this one spot you can see the guys you need to kill but can't snipe them as your bullets hit the top of the box your hiding behind.

In multiple 2d platformers, you often get a difficult to evade hit when you just started that jump. Or in any platformer, an enemy near the edge. I don't have any clear examples, but everybody should know what I mean.

Dealin Burgers:

I've never once had an enemy spawn behind me during CoD4 so either you missed a couple on your way through or you're walking through the level backwards.

That said, I do think CoD4 wins the worst placed enemies award for that bastardly corridor in the nuke bunker.

Marine mission after War Pig. Enemies WILL spawn behind you while you're trying to evade/heal from the bullets fired by the enemies in front of you. Not that you'll notice this, enemies spawn everywhere in that level and sitting in one place for more than 5 seconds means you get at least 5 grenades on your head.

The first time I played through, the Beach of Nova Prospekt I thought was hardly fair, and died very quickly at the part where Gordon saves Barney from Snipers in Half Life 2.

I doubt any of you guys will get this one, but the Brightmoon Tor levels in Final Fantasy A2.

Pick just about any MMORPG (WoW included). Warhammer Online is probably the worst. There are enemies conveniently placed throughout the entire path that you need to get to the real boss. Each is spaced just close enough that approaching one (for melee) triggers the one behind it. Of course, you're character only has melee abilities, so you don't have a choice but to trigger it. Cue the clearing of the room as one mob chains to the next. Finally, you get to the boss, finish him up (easier than the room before him would have suggessted), and find out the entire room behind you has already respawned.

I think that's the biggest reason I can't stand most MMOs.

Donkey Kong Country was also really bad for that. Levels that demanded you go really fast (to make all the timed jumps), and they would toss some touch-me-and-die baddy right in the path of your super-fast jump. It either resulted in the level being excrutiatingly slow to advance, or else each new step would induce another death and another attempt at the level, until you had finally discovered the placement of each enemy and could finally run rampant through the level.

I think too many games rely on death as the first step in a puzzle. Death is supposed to be a punishment for getting it wrong -- a good game should always leave you fearing death, but never experiencing it. When each necessarily-nieve step begins with death, you often feel the game is punishing you just for existing. It truly is poor level design -- a good level would make you aware of the danger and only punish you for ignoring it or failing to overcome it. It would be like a teacher giving you a failing grade because you failed to answer the question that you weren't yet told.

I second whoever said the grenades from Stalker:Clear Sky. Due to each enemy having the same AI scripts, all of which are completely independent, whenever one guy throws a grenade ten more are insured to follow. Whats more they will all land exactly at your feet.

Vegas 2, T-hunt. The fact that the enemies always spawn when you enter the room, no pre-loading. Its impossible to be ready for them. Also they always seem to spawn next to you, with shotguns...

-IN Guild Wars, there are many areas that not only have you fight 20-30 mobs at once, but it's really really easy to aggro every single enemy in the instance at once during Prophecies and Factions. (in Nightfall, you have to be TRYING to get mobs of 20-30 enemies at once)

-In Valkyrie Profile, a very large enemy in Lezard's Tower is placed RIGHT in front of a door and there's almost no way around him. Not to mention Lezard's Tower is one hellatious dungeon.

MurderousToaster:

The fact is, he was beside the door. Standing right beside it, not in direct view of the Snake Cam.

It's not like you can move the cam or anything

SWAT 4 has random places where it puts enemies (Like Rainbow Six's terrorist hunts) and sometimes you just can't always spot them with that optiwand.

Then you get ass-raped near the end of the mission, and you smash your computer.

Ultrajoe:
Snipers in Halo 3...

Nothing like feats of skill on legendary only to be head-shotted from 9 miles away by some jackal so you can have the privilege of doing that shit all over again.

GAH! So frustrating. Legendary with all skulls on is simply impossible with those snipers. Enter their field of fire and DIE.

But i did it... by damn did i do it... only took me 12 hours a level but by lucifers pubic hair did i do it...

damn that's right. they're just cheap shots when its on legendary. it takes away from the game when its that ridiculously hard to get through.