Yes, that's the worst. I think Silent Hill on Playstation had that too. Ammo was quite scarce and definitely did not respawn, yet I think at least the winged enemies outdoors would reappear from time to time. It would have been nice to know that before using all the ammo on killing them.

Also I think the game doesn't seem to be that coherent in when there is an endless supply of the enemies, and when not. You just have to know that somehow, so that you use precious ammo only on the monsters that will not come back to haunt you again.

Yeah I know the game was about survival so you were supposed to run away from enemies instead of fighting them... yet the game constantly put you into situations where running away from them was not an option.

Yeah, that was one of the more annoying aspects of Phantasy Star. Needing the battles to up your XP, but finding that they'd come at inopportune times and later on, finding that the XP from winning some of the lower level battles wasn't worth the time.

I don't care whether people like the same things I do per se but it depends on the general opinion whether features I adore will reappear in future games. That's imho a friggin' good reason to want others to agree with oneself. And it's even more annoying when the reasons others provide are generic casual non-sense. I mean, comparably smart people complain about the cases where respawning enemies are indeed fucked up but developers take it as a signal to not even try doing it right - that's bad. What's worse: often the people who hate stuff of this kind are the loud minority while the people who like certain features just enjoy them in silence, further pushing developers in the wrong direction.

Call of Duty - I'm not a fan of the series and I'm tired of the formula but I did consider the infinite stream of soldiers coming from both directions with the player in the middle quite a clever feature at one point. And judging by the popularity of the series so did the majority. It *did* keep the game(s) exciting and epic before we all got tired of the concept.

Aliens versus Predator (Classic/2000) - The respawn rate of the aliens was a bit too intense *but* playing as the marine made you at least feel somewhat the way you should feel. You just *had* to act fast, death was inevitable unless you'd get the job done as fast as you can and there was a constant feeling of fear (although also frustration, but that's a matter of execution, not concept). AvP2 removed this feature and while it was in many ways the better game, the fact that enemies would practically exclusively appear as you move through the level and trigger static events totally killed the whole idea of an Aliens game.

Nosferatu: Wrath of Malakhi - Very underrated gem of the horror genre. Anyway, you'd explore a randomly generated castle and the gameplay involved a lot of backtracking. Respawning enemies kept the tension and challenge up, else you'd just end up walking through the same corridors over and over, bored instead of scared.

Stalker - Obviously a somewhat different case as it's a big open world RPG but the respawning enemies made the world feel alive and kept it from becoming boring. Unlike the team behind Far Cry 2 the Stalker guys did a great job, they made sure that it doesn't feel like the exact same fight each time you pass the same area. Same overall concept, totally different result. Just further confirms that it's a matter of execution.

Jedi Knight - At *one* point in the game there is an infinite number of stormtroopers coming from an enemy fortress. It perfectly creates the feeling that it's an actual fortress, it gives you an idea of how powerful the enemy actually is and it adds a lot to the level design. An area you can't enter and where enemies keep coming from is just *so* much more impressive and believable than indestructible turrets, an impassable minefield or a simple gate which won't budge.

Kiss: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child - Another example of clever *limited* use of infinitely respawning enemies. You'd frequently come upon areas where there would be "spawners" which generate cannon fodder as long as you won't destroy them. These situations would often demand wits and dexterity and cause your adrenaline to go up. Getting past them would often make you feel just awesome for a few moments.

Cannon Fodder - Well, not an FPS but ironically a similar concept as in Kiss (ironically because I just used the term "cannon fodder" there :P). Buildings spawn infinite numbers of enemies and destroying them is tough, additionally the rising numbers of enemies demand or at least support fast thinking and acting. Assaulting a complex of multiple buildings is often a deeply tactical and incredibly exciting challenge. Fighting an infinite stream of enemies and the goal being to make it stop just is an underrated game design concept.

Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2 (and all other "Metroidvania" games for that matter - people may deny it but the first two MGS games were part of that genre) - The game rewards exploring previously visited areas (and sometimes forces you to do so plot-wise). Reappearing enemies is what keeps the game from becoming one long boring walk. With more interesting mechanics like the stealth stuff in MGS it doesn't get too repetitive or boring and you enjoy revisiting areas that you had trouble beating earlier with new equipment and skills (skills that you've learned, not the characters acquired) as a) they play somewhat differently at that point and b) you've gotta enjoy dealing with those once tough situations with ease. That's also a much stronger impression of progress than you get from many CRPGs where you get higher attributes and badass equipment but the gameplay and difficulty are supposed to remain almost the same at all times.

Fair enough.

Call of Duty and Alien vs Predator are action games, I accept how it works in them especially in AvP with reasons as you described.

Nosferatu I've played but only a little, it seems like a fun game. If it's there to keep you on edge like in System Shock 2 I wouldn't mind it, what I don't like is overwhelming waves of respawning enemies so you can never go anywhere without finding yourself in a bothersome situation where survival isn't the isssue, making progress in a healthy time frame is.

Stalker, same principle as SS2 and Nosferatu. It's also open world so it becomes less of an issue and more of a mandatory feature, really.

Jedi Knight, I have played some of the earlier but I don't remember which of them. As for your example it sounds justified as long as the numbers were too many at every respawn that you would be overwhelmed all the time. Successive challenge is good, I don't like it when it's suddenly become too hard for a long period of time then suddenly it just disappear. I doubt that would happen in that mission though.

Kiss, Cannon Fodder and MGS I haven't played but with Metroid games it becomes similar like Nosferatu and System Shock 2, it's almost mandatory.

I should mention though that it somewhat bothered me in System Shock 2 as spooky as the game is (and is added to the feeling that you're never save altough I found places I was easily invulnable, at least in the beginning) that disappeared after a while and supplies became an issue. Now I suspect I probably screwed up my character or picked one that was too hard for a beginner, I may have been wasting some ammo to (altough I saved as much as possible).

My point is that I was forced into a corner with little to no supplies and any saves I had left was too new to help (and I don't like mass saving only to return to 1 hour old save to be able to make progress). I may have been able to run passed enemies trying to find some supplies somewhere but that looked hard and I just lost the sense of where I was and then I just gave up.

Well yeah. I'm getting confused concerning your reaction on my original post here since I replied to the question whether respawning enemies are *ever* justified and I included that it depends on the genre (and by that I rather meant subgenre, which determines how much exploring and backtracking there's gonna be) which pretty much corresponds with your statements.

Yeah, I get that, it's something I generally don't like about the design of most older action games where you often have a perfectly pre-defined amount of supplies for the whole game and end up in deep trouble if you haven't done enough exploring, wasted ammo a few times or have ended up heavily wounded for reasons the level designer had not predicted - plus sometimes there's even a strong degree of randomness (like whether enemies will drop ammo or medkits) which makes if even more unenjoyable and sometimes even frustrating (Blood and Shadow Warrior, for example, are pretty nasty examples as you can die easily from a few hits and supplies are comparably sparse and highly determined by random factors, even more than in Duke 3D). And it's particularly nasty when this is combined with infinitely spawning enemies who do not provide more supplies when they die. So again, I agree with you and I don't get why you didn't like my original statement in this thread. ^^
I also played GOG's version of Far Cry 2 earlier this year (about 80% beaten or so) and sadly I must agree with Dzsono - enemies respawn ridiculously often (and in the exact same spots) and the respawn is already triggered when you distance yourself from an outpost, not by making progress. While I normally don't mind respawning enemies, especially in big open world games, Far Cry 2 is pretty darn extreme in this respect. It may sometimes just take a minute or two before you fight the exact same outpost with the exact same enemies again.

Since I still have it installed, maybe I'll try that a bit. Because seriously, I did that all the time in it (driving a bit away from a checkpoint which I had cleared before, and then coming back), and I never recall the enemies being respawn then.

But as said, sometimes some other enemies came to the same checkpoint, just because they were a bit farther away.

This needs to be investigated, maybe I'll even make a Youtube video of it. :)

EDIT: Well I'll be damned, I guess I was wrong after all. Merely driving away from the checkpoints seem to reset them after all. For some reason this didn't seem to bug me that much though, maybe I didn't backtrack that much during missions then.

Then again, I still disagree that this is a worst example of respawning, because the enemies don't respawn while you are there on the spot fighting them (so to me it never really felt you were fighting an endless stream of enemies), and also the good things like ammo and health packs in those same checkpoints respawn at the same time as well. And as said, you could usually just ignore the fighting by just driving through the checkpoints at full speed, or drive off-road in order to avoid the enemies.

Same can't be said about e.g. GTA games, where in some missions there really was an endless supply of enemies running towards you, even if you stayed there at one place.

Then again, maybe I don't consider FC2 as the best example of respawning anymore either, because if it worked e.g. like how I first thought it would, it would be better. :)

And if I don't like the results I'll make my own video to prove you wrong. >:(
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(that's supposed to be a badass grumpy face)

Enemies regularly drop healing items in Metroid. This is awesome when you balls up a jump, fall into lava and need a quick boost before trying again.

The worst I've seen was in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, where enemies respawn very fast from map transition spots. Unbelievably annoying if all you want to do is use said transition, since you're forced to blow a fat load of healing items on a desperate run across no-man's-land. Killing the enemies is pointless because some supernatural force churns them out of the production line like Model T Fords. Of course, chances are that a similar posse is waiting for you on the other side, so it's not like you'll be 100% safe even if you make it.

Really? It just seemed like I was almost always being attacked. Maybe, though, I just used that as an excuse to stop playing because, having just spent some twenty to thirty hours on the base game, I was done for the time, and I couldn't bring myself to keep playing.

I was wrong, the checkpoints do get reset after you drive away from them and come back, even during the same mission. That means you can also get the goodies from the same checkpoints unlimited times that way.

I envy you for not having noticed that before. It's one of the main reasons why FC2 was so tiresome that I gave up on it eventually. Guess you had found the "right way" to play it. ^^

That makes sense, as that was exactly what I just did to test it: I killed everyone in a checkpoint, drove to another map (as that checkpoint was actually close to the border of the map in zoomed-in mode), drove back, and poof, there the enemies were again (as well as the ammo that was waiting for me in the checkpoint).

This starts to be clearer now, and also why I didn't necessarily see it (that often).

Well, if what Fenixp says is true (which sounds entirely plausible to me), then the respawning depends on whether you exit the current (zoomed in) map to another one. So if I merely drive away from the checkpoint, but don't exit the current map, then the enemies stay dead. That would also explain why I thought it was the ending of a mission that triggered the respawn, as I didn't pass the same checkpoints until I was driving back from the mission, across several maps.

Maybe I'll test it yet again, just to confirm it. :) This feature could have something to do with being a console game too, I guess (memory limitations on to how big areas the game can remember, etc.).

"Respawning" enemies in a less-abstracted game represent
- local population (which is necessarily themeparked in size the first time you're on a map; if the spider-populated forest is represented by a 8x8 area and contains three giant spiders initially, there better be more spider attacks each time I'm in the area)
- reinforcements
- overwhelming forces (army, cops, etc).

As such, they should reward appropriate in-universe tactics and evoke appropriate in-universe feelings:
- come prepared
- be ever watchful
- don't stay too long, go only where you need to go, recall the route and plan the best approach

but not, not, ohmygawdnot, never traipsing around an area avoiding respawn areas with heaps of metagaming knowledge, or otherwise factoring known respawns in your tactics ("there's that guy again"). Seriously, when you go "there's that guy again" and the guys are nominally different, the designers should be hit with something soft but amusingly embarrassing.

The attacks are much more rare when you get indoors in ryder white, and in the prison the zombies are mostly standing in one place until you "discover" them. The part where you have to get to tha choppa is quite frustrating though with the constant zombie attacks. As for the base game it wouldn't be much of a zombie apocalypse without the hordes, so this game actually has to have respawning zombies.