Games with the best AI

For enemy AI, players name F.E.A.R. (2005) most often, and Alien: Isolation (2014) is the other top pick. For a living world, the usual answers are The Sims, Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system, Rain World and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

“Best AI” means different things to different players. On a GOG forum thread about the best AI, one player praised Chessmaster because its opponents felt believable, not unbeatable. Some players want enemies that fight like a team. Other players want characters that seem to live their own lives. So this guide sorts the games by kind: enemy AI, director AI, and life AI.

This is the LifeSim blog. We make LifeSim, a life game with AI characters that talk. It is not an action game, so it is not on the enemy list. We put it in the short section on generative AI below.

LifeSim is our game. It is a life game, not an action game. The AI is in the people: they talk back in their own words and remember you.

• Free to play, with no ads and no subscription. There is nothing to buy.
• It plays in any web browser at play.lifesim.com, on a computer or a phone. On iPhone and iPad, the LifeSim app is on the App Store.
• The map is the real Earth in 3D. You pick any city and live on its real streets.
• The people in the city are AI characters with jobs, homes, and friends. You talk to them in your own words, and they remember you.

Skip it if you want smart enemies to fight. LifeSim has no combat AI like F.E.A.R. or Alien: Isolation.

We make LifeSim, so we put it first. The rest of this list is games we don’t make, and we say what each one does well.

F.E.A.R. and Alien: Isolation top most lists of smart enemies. WhatCulture puts the F.E.A.R. soldiers at number one. TheGamer puts the Alien: Isolation alien at number one and F.E.A.R. on its list too. Halo, Metal Gear Solid and The Last of Us Part II are also on the TheGamer list.

F.E.A.R.: soldiers that fight like a team

Monolith Productions released F.E.A.R. in 2005. Its soldiers take cover, flank, lay down suppressing fire and fall back when they lose. Wikipedia says the AI was “universally lauded” on the PC release. The game won GameSpot’s Best AI award for 2005. The next section explains how the AI works.

Alien: Isolation: one alien, two AI systems

In Alien: Isolation, from Creative Assembly, one alien hunts you through a space station. Two AI systems control it. The director AI always knows where you are and decides when to put you under pressure. The alien AI does not know where you are, so it must find you with its own senses.

Tommy Thompson explains the system on Game Developer. The director sends the alien to your general area, but not to your exact position. The alien hears your footsteps and your shots. A “menace gauge” goes up while the alien is near you. When it is full, the director sends the alien away so that you can move on.

The alien’s behavior tree has over 100 nodes. Some nodes are locked at the start and unlock as you play. So the alien seems to learn your tricks. The unlocks never come from your deaths, so the alien does not become unfair.

Halo: enemies with different personalities

In Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), enemies use cover, suppressing fire and grenades. TheGamer notes that some enemies are cowardly and others are “overly zealous”. So the same fight can go a different way each time.

Metal Gear Solid and The Last of Us Part II

TheGamer says each Metal Gear Solid game gave its guards smarter patrols and searches on alert. It says Metal Gear Solid 4 and 5 still hold up well. In The Last of Us Part II, enemies gang up in the area where they saw Ellie. They also mourn dead friends and dogs during a fight.

F.E.A.R. AI feels smart because each soldier makes its own plan, and the soldiers say their plans out loud. Jeff Orkin, the AI programmer, explained the system at GDC 2006 in his paper “Three States and a Plan”.

A planner, not a script

Most games tell an enemy what to do in each situation. F.E.A.R. gives each soldier goals and a set of actions. A planner then finds the best order of actions to reach a goal. The method is Goal-Oriented Action Planning (GOAP). The state machine has only three states: Goto, Animate and UseSmartObject.

The plan changes when the world changes. In the paper, a soldier finds a door blocked. He remembers the block, makes a new plan, and dives through a window. Orkin says the level designers did not script these moves. They built rooms with cover, windows and many entries, and the soldiers used them.

Squads that seem to plan together

A coordinator puts nearby soldiers into squads. Each squad has simple orders, such as “get to cover” while one soldier lays down suppressing fire. Orkin says F.E.A.R. had no complex squad behaviors at all. Flanking happens when a soldier takes a back route to the only free cover.

Dialogue that tells you what the AI thinks

The soldiers talk to each other, so you hear their plans. When the last soldier of a squad is alive, he calls for reinforcements. The game has no system to bring reinforcements. But you meet more soldiers later, so you think that the call worked.

The AI Director is a system that controls the pacing of Left 4 Dead (2008). It does not control one enemy. It controls the whole game around the four players.

Wikipedia says the Director places enemies and items “in varying positions and quantities”. It bases these choices on “each player’s current situation, status, skill and location.” So a strong team gets more pressure, and a weak team gets more help. WhatCulture says no two attempts at a level play the same way.

Alien: Isolation uses the same idea. Its director does not control the alien’s every step. It controls when the alien comes near you and when it goes away.

For NPCs that live their own lives, players name six games most. They are The Sims, Shadow of Mordor, Rain World, Black & White, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Red Dead Redemption 2. An NPC is a non-player character. Our guide to the word NPC explains the term.

The Sims: needs-based AI

Each Sim has needs, such as hunger, energy and social. Game Maker’s Toolkit calls this utility AI. The objects in the house tell Sims which needs they meet. A Sim gives each possible action a score and picks from the best ones. For other games with this kind of AI, see our list of games like The Sims.

Shadow of Mordor: the Nemesis system

In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014), an orc that survives a fight with you remembers it. Orcs that do well get promoted to captains. If a captain kills you, he gets stronger for the next fight. Warner Bros. patented the Nemesis system, and the US patent was granted in 2021.

Rain World: an ecosystem

In Rain World (2017), creatures move on their own paths and hunt each other. Wikipedia says the enemies live “their own lives in which they hunt and struggle to survive”. WhatCulture lists Rain World at number two for enemy AI. A GOG player said it feels like a world that is alive.

Black & White: a creature that learns

In Black & White (2001), from Lionhead, you raise a creature. You slap it for bad actions and stroke it for good actions. The creature remembers and slowly changes its behavior. The game is in the 2003 Guinness World Records for the “most intelligent being in a game”.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: A-Life

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) uses a system called A-Life. Characters do tasks, fight, rest, eat and sleep. Animals hunt and move in groups, also when you are in a different part of the Zone. Wikipedia says A-Life supports “more than one thousand characters”.

Red Dead Redemption 2: people who react

In Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), you can talk to NPCs in a friendly or an insulting way. How you treat people changes your Honor, and your Honor changes some dialogue and results.

Usually not, in the academic sense. Most game AI is a set of rules that makes characters seem smart. Wikipedia says game AI tries to “create the illusion of intelligence”.

Game AI and academic AI have different aims. Academic AI tries to solve problems. Game AI tries to give the player a good and believable experience. A smart enemy that always wins is not fun.

Game AI can also cheat. In a Wikipedia example, an enemy gets your position from the game. It does not need to see or hear you. The director in Alien: Isolation always knows where you are. But it gives the alien only your general area, so the cheat stays fair.

Some game AI does use real AI methods. Orkin says the F.E.A.R. planner is most like STRIPS, a planning system from 1970. The Black & White creature uses a form of reinforcement learning.

Some newer games use language models to write what NPCs say. AI Dungeon 2 (2019) used a language model to answer the actions that players typed. The games above do not use generative AI. They use rules, planners and needs.

We cover these games in two other guides: AI games and games where you talk to AI. For an early example, read about Façade. For AI characters that live in a town on their own, see AI Town.

LifeSim, our game, fits here. You live one life, day by day, in a real city on a 3D map of Earth. The people talk back in their own words and remember you. LifeSim is free, with no ads, in a browser at play.lifesim.com and on iPhone.

LifeSim does not do what F.E.A.R. or Alien: Isolation do. It is not an action game, and it has no enemies that hunt you. Read how to play LifeSim to see if it fits you. For more slow games, see our list of the best simulation games.

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• Jeff Orkin: Three States and a Plan: The A.I. of F.E.A.R. (GDC 2006 paper)
• TheGamer: 8 Games With The Best Enemy AI
• WhatCulture: 10 Best Enemy AI In Video Games
• GOG forum: What games have the best AI?
• Wikipedia: F.E.A.R.
• Game Developer: The Perfect Organism: The AI of Alien: Isolation
• Wikipedia: Left 4 Dead
• Wikipedia: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Wikipedia: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
• Wikipedia: Black & White
• Wikipedia: Rain World
• Game Maker’s Toolkit: The Genius AI Behind The Sims
• Wikipedia: Red Dead Redemption 2
• Wikipedia: Artificial intelligence in video games