After playing lots of Descent for the newest episode of my Ancient DOS Games webshow, I can safely say that the enemies equipped with Vulcan Cannons early on are easily some of the most annoying enemies I've ever encountered. With virtually every enemy in Descent, they will shoot at you the instant they see you, but you can dodge out of the way because it takes a second or two for their shots to reach you. Since the Vulcan Cannon instantly reaches from point A to B, when an enemy equipped with one sees you and fires you have no hope of avoiding damage, eventually leading to complete and utter shield failure in areas that are loaded with them, like level 6. >:(

That said, Descent also has respawning enemies, but you have to trigger the respawn effect and the things they respawn from only ever respawn five enemies before stopping, so taking care of them is easy once you can control when they get triggered.

Quick link for anyone interested in watching the Descent ADG Episode: http://www.pixelships.com/adg/ep0007.html

And speaking of annoying things, I nominate Descent 2 for having the most annoying secrets to access in any game I can think of, since so many of them only give you one shot to get in, and if you screw up, you gotta reload to try again. :P

Not an enemy but ... In Junior Pac-Man, if the bonus hits a power pill, the power pill is destroyed with the bonus.

Knights of the Sky

Archie, a.k.a anti-aircraft guns. Not because they're lethal, but because they hit you by pure chance. At least the asteroids and mines in Wing Commander are avoidable; you see one rolling ahead, and you can bank around to avoid collision. In KOTS, on the other hand, the flak bursts are zero indication of their actual chance to hit you. You can fly straight into a flak burst and go unscratched; you can also avoid the said burst and still get hit. Worse, AA fire usually inflicts such kind of critical hit that makes you fail your mission. For example, once I took a mission to destroy enemy truck convoy. Just seconds before I reached the convoy, I was hit by AA fire that damaged my aileron in such way that my plane can climb but cannot dive. How am I supposed to strafe ground targets when I cannot dive? In another mission, I was to destroy an enemy observation balloon, then got hit by AA fire in such way that my plane keep rolling to the right.

On the other hand, I've been hit so many times by AA fire when I was still far away from my target, and the hits were usually not critical, so it's almost like the game designer did it on purpose, argh!

Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Very aggressive, very annoying. They attack you on sight and due to a bug it takes them forever to get into melee range. Whenever you play as a melee charachter, they become a pain in the ass. Especially at lower levels. They drop feathers valueable to any alchemist because of levitation effect, so killing them from long range is often not an option either, as you probably won't get the loot.

Zerglings. Definitely, zerglings. Being zerg rushed sucked. They don't do much damage on their own, but when someone unleashes a few hundred of them on you at the same time, you're doomed.

It isn't an enemy, exactly, but SSI goldbox games were notorious for being brutal with random encounters. Especially after a big boss battle, god help you if you didn't save.
Scenario: you defeat the Mulmaster Beholder battle, you're down to like 20 HP between your entire party, and one guy is dead but you still have a cleric left so you might make it if you can just rest. Walk two steps, oh no, random encounter, you're boned.

HATED that. Random encounters were the absolute worst in those games. Another thing I thought was ridiculous in Curse of the Azure Bonds was one area of the game that had seemingly an endless supply of Dracoliches (undead dragons). I farmed so many of those for XP that I think my party consisted of 3 dual-class ranger/mages (rangers in those games with that D&D rule set got mage spells up to 3rd level I think, dual-class once you get fireball and you have a tank-mage with extra offensive spells), 2 cleric/mages and a fighter/thief. Really unstoppable combo if you have the patience to level up 3 characters while you babysit them with 3 level 12-13 chars (mage, cleric and some fighter type) then once you get them leveled up in their 2nd class, repeat with the original group. Then run around turning everything into red paste. Good times.

The little green frogs and white bunnies in Jill of the Jungle. 1 or 2 are easy; more than 3 will eat your health quickly (unless you find some shelter).

The spiders in Duke Nukem 2. Not only are they very annoying and hard to get rid of, if you land where there are a bunch of them they will all jump on you and suck your health away.

Bosses in CONTRA without using up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start 🤣
impossible for me to finish without using the classic konami cheat.

sliderider wrote:

Zerglings. Definitely, zerglings. Being zerg rushed sucked. They don't do much damage on their own, but when someone unleashes a few hundred of them on you at the same time, you're doomed.

Unless there's a couple of lurkers defending your base.

Conroy Bumpus

RacoonRider wrote:

http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080601173025/elderscrolls/images/2/22/Cliffracer.jpg Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls […]
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Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Very aggressive, very annoying. They attack you on sight and due to a bug it takes them forever to get into melee range. Whenever you play as a melee charachter, they become a pain in the ass. Especially at lower levels. They drop feathers valueable to any alchemist because of levitation effect, so killing them from long range is often not an option either, as you probably won't get the loot.

Yeah, these guys were pretty annoying - I remember just running from them but by the time I got to the next town I'd have half a dozen chasing me 🤣

Easily fixed though, go into construction set and you can edit their aggressiveness level. I set it to about half the normal level, so they're still around but more likely to just ignore you unless you attack them first.

Other annoying enemies...
Plasma aliens in Blake Stone that constantly respawn from certain walls, and the plasma spheres.
The star things in metropolis zone in Sonic 2.
Scouts in TF2 😜

Recently I started playing Might and Magic VII : For Blood and Honor.

It seems every enemy I see is annoying. It's brutally hard in the beginning. They also come in packs of unbelievable numbers.

Currently getting pummelled by those spirits. Aaarrgghh....

EDIT : Just remembered - the "Shadow" and "Wraith" in Pool of Radiance : Ruins of Myth Drannor. They drain your stats. And they also have high THACO roll requirement. It's a real pain to get them hit. They on the other hand seem to be very good at screwing you. Whenever it's their turn, all you do is pray that you won't get hit.

The problem is you get to meet them early in the game, and this game is very punishing at the beginning and at lower player levels.

Those god damn stars with spikes that are almost impossible to avoid in Sonic 2.

Yeah, I hated those Cliff Racers too. Once I got the Dwemer crossbow, I would happily knock them out of the sky.

For me, I think the most annoying, temper tantrum inducing enemy was the stupid dog in Hover Bovver for commodore 64. When you are trying to finish a lawn and avoid the kids running around, the dog will just touch you and your character is frozen and you can't move and one of the stupid kids would take your lawn mower away and you lost. I would play this in grade school and I had fits of rage that would not be seen again until Twisted Metal 2 in 1996. I would literally pound the C64 and smash the joy stick against the desk. That C64 still works to this day, it is an amazing, indestructible device.

About Twisted Metal 2 PSX, back in 1996 I was a miserable 16 year old idiot and I was really loving Twisted Metal 2 but hated Mr. Slam's infinite freeze attack. If you were at the wrong place and could not react fast enough you were fucked as he would throw 3 or more freeze attacks at you. That was a very fast paced game when it came out. When they named the Holland level "Field of Screams", they were serious. The only two hiding places in the level are two windmills that have weapons and one health and the second you drove into one of them, all of the bots would attack the windmill and destroy it and you had to face 8 or 9 bots in a huge open field. Lots of raging went on during that level. I always used Shadow, the hearse.

Here's another one:

Wild boar from the first release version of Gothic 3. Absolutely lethal 😁
As you may remember, in Gothic 3 a successful attack on a target starts a cooldown timer, during which the target can not attack. The attack speed of wild boars in release version was insane, so, once attacked, the player actually had no chance to survive! The worst part is, some of these beasts are small and hidden well behind grass, bushes, etc. However, it was not like you could lose a lot of progress, the game had so many bugs you had to save all the time anyway.

Aliens versus Predator (1999) as Marine.
ANY enemy is deadly annoying...

Any enemy with a rocket weapon is just plain broken in Gunmetal.

Even if you have the heavy chassis RPV a single rocket will either halve or completely destroy any one of your armour facings.

RacoonRider wrote:

http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080601173025/elderscrolls/images/2/22/Cliffracer.jpg Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls […]
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Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Very aggressive, very annoying. They attack you on sight and due to a bug it takes them forever to get into melee range. Whenever you play as a melee charachter, they become a pain in the ass. Especially at lower levels. They drop feathers valueable to any alchemist because of levitation effect, so killing them from long range is often not an option either, as you probably won't get the loot.

This. This a thousand times. I remember reading a few years ago that Bethesda admitted the Cliff Racers were both over-used in the game it spawned too many of them vs the original intention, but they apparently couldn't patch it), and over-spec'd. I honestly refuse to play Morrowind without the mod that turns them into passive wildlife (like deer and rabbits) anymore.

The boars in Gothic 3 would probably be a close second. 😒

Contributions:

- The "Psion" in Mass Effect 2 is a total pain in the arse - it doesn't re-spawn, it regenerates during combat, and while its doing that, its invincible (but for EXTRA points, it can still attack). And its attack is wide-range area of effect in a 360* wave. And it carries both "Barrier" and "Armor" so a lot of your attacks cannot be used against it. Hope you like reloading. 😵

- The RPG snipers in the original FarCry are also terrible. Rail-accurate to a few miles (at least), heat-seeking, omniscient, etc.

Oh, and since Morrowind was mentioned, how has this nightmare of an enemy not been brought up:
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Gaenor 😈

On the terror drones in Red Alert:

- Chrono miners can "dump" them by chrono-jumping to the refinery.
- Service depots will deal with them.
- Walls will stop them.

RacoonRider wrote:

http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080601173025/elderscrolls/images/2/22/Cliffracer.jpg Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls […]
Show full quote

Cliff Racers from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Very aggressive, very annoying. They attack you on sight and due to a bug it takes them forever to get into melee range. Whenever you play as a melee charachter, they become a pain in the ass. Especially at lower levels. They drop feathers valueable to any alchemist because of levitation effect, so killing them from long range is often not an option either, as you probably won't get the loot.

The cliff racers are very annoying indeed, but as DonutKing said, easy to make non-agressive which simply improves the entire gameplay experience. There's also a premade mod available that does the same thing.

There's another annoying annoying enemy in Morrowind: the Greater Bonewalkers, which damage your Strength attribute when they hit you. As long as your strength is below 100 this is merely an annoyance, since you will have to drop loot on the floor and pick it up later if you don't have any restore strength potions. But once you're a bit into the main quest, and you got your strength stat above 100, these buggers actually become VERY fearsome as they can get it below 100 again... permanently!

Really Morrowind should've had more of these enemies. Once you're at level 50 or so and you can kill anything in 2-3 hits, every enemy just turns into an annoyance. But the strong emotional response these things consistently manage to invoke in me is unmatched.

RacoonRider wrote:

Wild boar from the first release version of Gothic 3. Absolutely lethal 😁

Oh yeah good one RacoonRider, getting crotch-bopped by those bad boys was game over and very rage making. Great game that though once the community was finished patching it, one of my faves.