You’re there, enjoying time off from work, sitting and playing a video game. And then one of these bastards shows up. Yep – it’s the annoying video game enemy – that one kind of baddie that ruins a power fantasy. Sometimes they’re tough to take out, sometimes they snipe at you from far off, and sometimes they run away from you too fast to catch up with.
Sometimes, they come at you like a swarm of angry mosquitos out for your blood, and sometimes, you won't even be able to see them.
There are tons of these, so here’s our list of the top 20. As always, let us know in the comments which enemies you’ve found the most annoying in your travels.
You know these guys are about to ruin your day as soon as they spawn into the game – there’s a high-pitched electrical whine that announces their arrival. They’re terrific acrobats, and they’ll use cover and deny you the ability to use it. Worst of all, they have a kick that automatically disables players. Cloakers: They’re not bros.
Punch punch punch parry, punch punch – the Arkham games don’t have particularly complicated combat. It’s lots of fun though, until goons start showing up with assault rifles. Batman may have all kinds of upgrades for his armor, but these guys with knives and other melee weapons can take him down really fast.
They’re manageable, but you have to completely change up the way you play for these dudes. Personally, I recommend using a special takedown combo because you can't dodge or counter their attacks like you normally would.
Ever since Final Fantasy V, where they first appeared, Tonberries have lurked in caves plotting to get players to throw their controllers in rage. They’re pretty cute looking really, but don’t be fooled: their “Chef’s Knife” attack does tons of damage if it doesn’t just outright kill a character, they’ve got tons of HP, and they counter your attacks with “Karma.”
There are boss variants as well – the Master Tonberry and Tonberry King. As you might expect, they’re pretty much just like regular Tonberries but they enjoy ruining your day even more.
Another cave-loving creature, the Zubat is just a massive pain in the neck. It’s already dark in the caves, so you’re dealing with that, but the Zubat uses status-effect abilities that were apparently concocted by the Pokémon archdemons. Confuse Ray and Supersonic means your Pokémon will occasionally attack themselves instead of the dumb Zubat for a series of turns, making these some of the most teeth-grinding enemies in the games.
Created by Reapers from corrupted Asari, banshees show up a good way into Mass Effect 3. And they can go straight back to where they came from as far as we’re concerned: They’ll charge your team, can teleport around, and can fire heat-seeking warp projectiles. Add to that the fact that they can blast your fire team out of cover and can soak up a ton of damage, and you’ve got the most annoying enemy type in Mass Effect.
Plus there’s that horrible, awful scream.
These ladies show up in the lowest dungeon levels in Diablo, and are a massive pain if you’re playing the melee-focused Barbarian class. They’ll fire their Bloodstar spell which can quickly chew up your health, then run away as soon as you try to close the distance with them. Often times this means chasing them all over the level, and in the final areas, these tend to be large, open spaces with few places to corner them.
These were absolutely the reason I quit playing the original Castlevania back in the 1980s. They show up at the worst possible times, as you’re trying to jump across tiny platforms. If they touch you, you’ll get stun-locked and thrown backwards, normally into a bottomless pit. Don’t bother trying to kill them, because they’re invincible.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Birds have nothing on the goddamn eagles in Far Cry 4. They’re huge, they’re mean, and they’re possessed by the mother-loving devil. It doesn’t matter where you are in the game – at any point you can be suddenly set upon by fanatical eagles trying to tear out your eyeballs. It’s enough to give any player a serious case of paranoia while exploring the game’s Himalayan setting. And if horrible monster birds weren’t enough…
… there’s these bastards. Mean, quick, and small, honey badgers are more than happy to take on foes many times their size. This includes you. One of the things that makes them particularly annoying, though, is the fact that you need seven honey badger pelts in order to make the third tier weapon holsters in the game and they can be damnably difficult to find when you need them.
These guys would be fairly standard Covenant enemies, but they have been given the ability to fly. They’re not particularly tough, but they move around so erratically that they’re a major nuisance, particularly since they usually appear in waves. It’s important to focus on them because they’re so quick, but while you and your marine buddies are running around looking up, chances are good that Covenant ground forces are preparing to give you a plasma grenade-shaped wedgie.
Part bird, part fish, part woman, sirens exist in the Witcher 3 to prevent anyone from really enjoying sea travel. They tend to gather around sunken treasure sites and other points of interest, and unless you’ve leveled Geralt up enough, they can really pose a problem. They’ll dive into the water and pursue you as you sail, emerging to tear chunks off your boat. Make sure you’ve brought along some good crossbow bolts if you’re hitting the water.
In a late stage of cordyceps infection, “Clickers” earn their nickname from the creepy clicking sound they use to echolocate. They’re horrific-looking: the fungus has completely exploded out through their heads, and being completely blind, they rely on sound to navigate. This means you have to creep around slowly and quietly whenever clickers are around, and we all hate having to stop running around and tiptoe around in games. If they get their hands on you and you don’t have a melee weapon, it’s curtains for Joel and Ellie.
Players new to Metal Gear Solid V can be blindsided by the Skulls, a group of four nasty super soldiers who you encounter in Mission 6. The game doesn’t give you much warning that the fight’s coming, and if you haven’t brought the right gear, the fight can be really hard. They don’t go down to your tranq darts, so it’s important to bring along weapons that do as much damage as possible. The Skulls will split up, help each other when you’ve injured them, and summon zombie soldiers to harass you while you’re looking for a good line of sight. They are probably most annoying for non-lethal players, though – guides online say that if you’re trying to do a non-lethal playthrough, don’t bother even trying to fight the Skulls. They’re that annoying.
And then there's also the male variety.
Threshers are large, tentacled bugs that travel underground in Borderlands 2. There are several kinds, and they’re all pretty annoying. They attack by sending their tentacles through the ground and attacking their prey from below, making them really tricky to dodge. The worst of them might be the Gluttonous Thresher, which eats a lunar beacon you need in order to return to Sanctuary. This boss fight has proven really tricky for a lot of players, due to the creature’s high hit points and multiple resistances. Nuke it from orbit.
Like most enemies in Borderlands, Rakks come in a wide variety of sizes and colors. But no matter what kind you encounter, the best idea is to leave them alone unless you really, really have a good reason not to. They’re fast, usually hunt in packs, and can do tons of damage if you don’t take them down before they get too close. Best way to make sure this happens is to bring along a good shotgun and lots of ammo. If you’re unlucky enough to stumble across a Badass rakk variant, get in a nearby Outrunner and move rapidly in the opposite direction.
The easiest way to make a video game enemy incredibly annoying is to give it the ability to become invisible. And that’s exactly what Stalkers do: When they smell nearby prey, they cloak themselves and begin sneaking up on the unlucky Vault Hunter. There are several different kinds of Stalkers, too – some have a ranged attack and others leap straight in to engage you in melee.
Point is, they can be invisible. That’s super annoying.
Chances are good that if you’re playing Fallout: New Vegas, you played Fallout 3 first. This probably means that you got a very nasty surprise when you first met a Cazador as you begin wandering around outside of Goodsprings.
“Ah,” you probably thought. “A bloatfly. This will be easy.”
Think again, partner. Cazadores are winged DOOM WASPS and they exist to completely screw up your day. Even at high character levels, these bugs are capable of doing tons of damage and don’t go down without a substantial fight. The best strategy for fighting them? Don’t.
Half-Life’s headcrabs were one of the scariest things I’d ever encountered in a video game when I first saw them, and the poison variant in Half-Life 2 is just worse all around. They don’t kill you outright, but no matter how much health you have, getting bitten by one reduces you to 1 HP, which means you’re a sitting duck for any other bad guys around. That’s annoying enough, but they’re also small and horrible, and the game likes sending them after you in dark, scary, cramped environments.
Cliff Racers are how The Elder Scrolls punishes players for choosing pure melee character builds. Another flying enemy, these bird-like lizard things tend to appear out of nowhere, circling the player just out of arms’ reach. Then the “Ba-CAW” sound they make starts up, which appears to summon more of the jerks. And everyone who’s played Morrowind hates them: type “cliff racer” into Google, and the third suggested auto-fill result is “cliff racer annoying.”
These little fish people are another enemy that fights in packs, and that automatically amps up their annoyance rating. Any time you’re around swamps or coasts in World of Warcraft, you’re at risk of being set upon by these dudes. While they don’t look very imposing, they’re fast and can easily take out inexperienced characters. They'll even throw nets at you to stop you from running away. And they don’t confine their annoyingness to one game, either – anyone who has played against a murloc deck in Hearthstone knows how annoying they are in that game, too.
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