Enemy infighting has to be the most underrated game mechanic.

[Lightning Count]

There's nothing better when fighting multiple enemies than tricking one into hitting the other, then getting out of the way and letting them fight it out. Then once of them wins, take them out and move on.

I love doing this in Condemned, enemies can be manipulated into these situations quite easily with some smart movement.

Also Watch Dogs 2, when I need to infiltrate a gang hideout, call the cops or another rival gang, hide somewhere safe and watch them tear each other smart, then sneak in while they are distracted.

What are your favourite games for using this tactic, ERA?

 

[Lobster Roll]

I've been playing Control recently and I love getting pain-in-the-ass enemies down to 1HP, using Seize, and letting them do my dirty work as I throw desks and fire extinguishers at the distracted enemies.

 

[BigTnaples]

Yep. Love this in every game you can do it in.

Any game where you can cause this, from TLoU, to Turok, Days Gone, Bioshock, etc.


Love this mechanic.

 

[Abuguet]

Maybe not the same but I loved the parts in Left Behind and TLOU2 where you can pit enemy AI against the infected. Made me feel like some sort of Super Saiyan Rambo.

I remember in a basement (no spoilers, I swear) instead of fighting, I threw a bottle behind some dude and then let the chaos ensue.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

This was painfully underutilised in every TLoU game


Also, Herbert Moon, the racist/antisemite shopkeeper in Red Dead Redemption, has like x1000 normal NPC health when taking damage from other NPCs for some reason.

RDR1 post-game spoilers:

 

[Laserbeam]

Yes.

Been using it in Days Gone to great success. Hide in the bushes, crossbow somebody in the neck with that poison bolt and watch the carnage.

 

[McNum]

Doom, obviously. Classic Doom to be exact.

Some maps become much easier if you can get the monsters infighting. One memorable one in Doom 2 has a Cyberdemon and a Spider Mastermind in the same room, and heavily encourages you to get one to hit the other and just hang back and watch the fun as the two episode bosses from the original Doom start fighting each other.

 

[SecretCharacter]

Enemy infighting was the only way I could beat the dreaded well in Bloodborne. It was still very hard even with that, but getting that little trick off made it MUCH easier.

 

[BasilZero]

It wasnt much but it was funny seeing Agni and Rudra knocking each other out in DMC3.

(Was playing DMC3 and fought them just a few moments ago :P)

 

[santi_yo]

GTA IV.

I loved starting wars between gangs and the police. AI shootouts everywhere.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I've been playing Control recently and I love getting pain-in-the-ass enemies down to 1HP, using Seize, and letting them do my dirty work as I throw desks and fire extinguishers at the distracted enemies.

Click to shrink...

Even better: Seize those stupid enemy HP regenerating Hiss Bubbles and they will heal you instead.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

Its pretty awesome

 

[Lobster Roll]

Even better: Seize those stupid enemy HP regenerating Hiss Bubbles and they will heal you instead.

Click to shrink...

I'm usually so dead set on rage-killing it with shatter that I don't even consider that hahaha ... the moment I see that thing I'm laser-focused on removing it.

 

[Crushed]

It's absolutely essential on higher difficulties in classic Doom. It's present (but harder to trigger due to lower enemy counts and the environments and attacks being more complex) in 3 and 2016, but you can make it happen if you try hard.

Then in Eternal, they liked to really show it off as something happening in areas before a fight starts... but it's just an endless pointless animation with no gameplay function, they don't actually hurt each other at all. That was a massive bummer.

 

[Midnight_Chomper]

I think I did it in Far Cry 4? Getting animals to attack the enemy in camps? That was always great fun.

 

[DontHateTheBacon]

No joke, EVERY time enemies hit/fight other enemies, I joyfully point it out verbally. It's the best.

 

[Mr_Nothin]

The Division does this the best and there's no contest. Watching mobs fight in the Dark Zone and being apart of some of those fights was amazing

 

[TransEuropaExpress]

There were so many great instances in the original Doom. I used to love hyper-speed running through an entire huge room to aggro a ton of enemies, bolting back to the same door with minimal damage taken and listening to the mayhem from the other side as half of them slaughtered each other.

The coolest was when a spider was involved and just mowed down everyone.

 

[Septimus Prime]

FFXIII has this one spot on Gran Pulse where a King Behemoth is fighting a Megistotherium. The former is way stronger than the latter, but this particular encounter lets you sneak up and launch the King Behemoth and lets you potentially beat one when you're still too weak to be able to do so.

 

[MJnR]

Ubisoft's open-world games have a lot of infighting.

 

[Kaswa101]

There's a lot of this in Assassin's Creed lol. Always fun.

 

[GlitchyDegree]

I'll echo Watch Dogs 2. Starting wars in the middle of the street is so much fun!

The classic Doom games also do this very well!

 

[Hellwarden]

While you don't exactly instigate it, one of the big reasons people love Halo is watching the AI duke it out in those games is a blast.

 

[mentok15]

Halo is good at this, with big battles between groups.

 

[Jogi]

Dante's Inferno actually does this well too. Pretty hilarious most of the time too.

 

[C J P]

Every Assassin's Creed game that doesn't have the berserker dart is a minor tragedy.

 

[Deleted member 21709]

I loved it in Marathon 2, when the B.O.B.'s fought back. That was an epic revelation when I first booted the demo.

 

[RomanticHeroX]

I played through Final Fantasy XIII just a month or so ago, because it was one of the last in the series I've never finished. It introduces you to the idea of enemy infighting early on as part of the 20 hours of tutorials, but then virtually every other time you find enemies fighting one another on the map, as soon as the battle starts they all immediately turn to fight your party and don't interact with each other at all. I wondered if it was a bug of some kind, because clearly that's not how it's supposed to work, but apparently it's not broken, just stupid. God that game is trash.

 

[The Shape]

In Watch Dogs 2 there's a cool feature where you can make a character a target for a gang, then when the gang arrives you can call the police and watch as everything goes to shit and everyone kills everyone else. It's neat.

 

[Birdie]

Pokemon did it a few times in recent games...Seviper teaming up against Zangoose on their side in Horde Battles, and Corsola calling for SOS only to get a Mareanie who attacks them.

 

[Kapryov]

I love it as well. It makes the world feel more alive and not just about you.

It's practically essential for open world games, even if just for animals hunting other animals.

 

[azfaru]

I loooved this in Monster Hunter World. It was my first MH game and it was awesome seeing them fight each other. That game really did a good job creating a believable ecosystem.

 

[JumbiePrime]

Momster Hunter World does it great . Seeing the turf wars for the first time was something special I thought ..

 

[Tawpgun]

 

[Poimandres]

A big reason why STALKER is one of my favourites. There's all sorts of beasties and bandits roaming around that will frequently fight and kill each other regardless of the player being involved. Nothing like hearing gunshots in the distance and coming over the hills to see a bandit camp being set upon by a pack of wild dogs.

 

[Lys Skygge]

I love attracting hordes to human enemies in Days Gone

 

[werezompire]

This was always fun in Blue Dragon. Combine multiple enemy groups into one battle & then if you had certain combinations of enemies, they'd weaken, attack, or even outright kill each other. And at the end, you reaped the rewards of multiple battles.

 

[Darth Karja]

Doom, obviously. Classic Doom to be exact.

Some maps become much easier if you can get the monsters infighting. One memorable one in Doom 2 has a Cyberdemon and a Spider Mastermind in the same room, and heavily encourages you to get one to hit the other and just hang back and watch the fun as the two episode bosses from the original Doom start fighting each other.

Click to shrink...

This is the exact map I thought about.

 

[deathsaber]

Yep, I love when there is separate enemy factions with different AI tendancies/loyalties going at it (with the PC as a sort of wild card hostile to both).

Gordon Freeman vs. aliens vs. military/human forces in Half-life

Master Chief vs. Flood vs. Covenent in Halo

Joel/Ellie/Abby vs. Human enemies vs. infected in TLOU

Ripley vs. Alien vs. Humans vs. Androids in Alien Isolation

These are the standouts to me.

Its so criminally underused in TLOU (but so great during those sections)- tossing bottles to get Clickers running amok around other humans (kisses fingers)

 

[The Albatross]

I love this mechanic in games too. I remember using it a lot in Half-Life 2 and loved when enemies that were hostile to me would end up engaging each other.

 

[Deleted member 77016]

I miss monster infighting in the new Doom games. There's nothing quite like tricking a cyberdemon into mopping up most of the mobs for you and weakening it in the process.

 

[FarSight XR-20]

Psychosis Gun from Perfect Dark would cause the enemy to join you.

Dishonored has something similar too iirc.

 

[Lightning Count]

I love this mechanic in games too. I remember using it a lot in Half-Life 2 and loved when enemies that were hostile to me would end up engaging each other.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, there was also the Antlions which are played controlled, love using them against combine soldiers.

 

[Jintor]

i was always fascinated by gang battles during the GTA3 trilogy era, it was probably the closest to actual emergent gameplay that series got

 

[Aloysius]

The moments you could do this with infected in TLoU2 were incredible. I am pretty sure there was only a couple. Maybe it seems special because its rare, but I would have liked to see more of it.

 

[Deleted member 16876]

Doom is the first thing that came to mind. I wish the current Doom had more of it.

Also loved the infighting in Days Gone. It added a lot to the lore. The zombies in that game even fight each other along with other humans and animals.

i was always fascinated by gang battles during the GTA3 trilogy era, it was probably the closest to actual emergent gameplay that series got

Click to shrink...

GTA3 doesn't get enough credit for how much freedom it gives the player in missions and free roam. It is so much better than current Rockstar Games design.

San Andreas had something cool too where you can see police go after people. It is even cooler if you input the cheat code where crimes rise in the world.

 

[FaultLineBlues]

Lmao first thing my mind went to was two skeletons shooting each other in Minecraft

 

[EternalWinter]

Monster Hunter World TURF WARS! Such an amazing thing to see in that game.

 

[Jintor]

Doom is the first thing that came to mind. I wish the current Doom had more of it.

Also loved the infighting in Days Gone. It added a lot to the lore. The zombies in that game even fight each other along with other humans and animals.

GTA3 doesn't get enough credit for how much freedom it gives the player in missions and free roam. It is so much better than current Rockstar Games design.

San Andreas had something cool too where you can see police go after people. It is even cooler if you input the cheat code where crimes rise in the world.

Click to shrink...

yeah the riot cheat code was a bit too chaotic but it was fucking awesome just rolling around dodging rocket launcher shots from complete randoms

 

[TheBiInBilingual]

Not technically the same but I absolutely loved this in Shadow of Mordor (turning Orcs against each other) or in Horizon: Zero Dawn using corruption arrows on machines.