For those of us without a conscience, blazing through a game and laying waste to anything and everything in our way – along with those exceptional annoyances that we’re all perfectly happy to hop a few fences for in order to get some satisfaction- without ever stopping to give a care to the road of corpses we leave lying in our wake is a perfectly normal (albeit worrying) way of our Gaming Lives. So let’s down our gamepads for a moment and take the time to reflect on the hundreds of thousands of lives that we have claimed in the name of the game. And let us ask ourselves: Why are they so Frackin’ Incompetent?

I’ve touched on the perils of the c hallenge in gaming recently and half of it really boiled down to the willingness of the opposition to throw waves and waves of poorly trained, ill equipped soldiers of their respective empire into our paths (and they’re probably only fighting for them because the rest of the work in the community is now being done by Robots). So today, let us celebrate the absolute worst of the worst and drink to their own shortcomings, safe in the knowledge that they died so we didn’t have too.

My Nominees for Video Games Worst Security Forces are…

Guardians of the Holy Land
Game: Assassins Creed
Evil Dictator: Grand Master of the Knights Templar Robert de Sable
Ranks: Soldier, Archers, Sergeants, Captains and Templar Knights
Union Size: Infinity minus Patience

You have to assume that prior to Altair’s arrival in the cities of Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus, the life of a City Guard was fairly un-eventful. Sure, there was probably a fair share of petty theft to deal with and occasionally you’d have to act as security at the local stoning in case it got out of hand, but ultimately the job was pretty straight forward. Unfortunately, the lack of any serious crime in the city left the Guardians of the Holy Land completely unprepared for the impending epidemic of assassinations. Once a few witness statements had been processed and the local artist had been able to draw up a profile based on eye witness accounts, you would naturally assume that they’d have been on the lookout for Altair, or at least one of Lady GaGa’s backup dancers.

As good as Altair may be at his job, he seemed to misunderstand the part of his job that required him to actually blend in anywhere outside of a Scholars Pub Crawl. Yet the only Guards who ever thought it was worth the paperwork generated from a Police Stop and Search were those stood on the Town Gates, who would attack without provocation the second you made your approach. Any other Guard would give you that sideways glance as you passed them in the street, but you were otherwise free to roam without fear of ever being caught. However, if you decided to start trying out for the 100m Sprint or test your skills at a bit of Free Soloing, then you were suddenly in a spot of bother. You see, once the Guards were able to tick off a 2nd box on their ‘Most Wanted: Lady GaGa’ check list, only then was the entire city placed on alert and free to use the lethal force necessary to take Altair down.

Sadly, the total extent of the Guards ability to overpower Altair consisted of summoning as many as seven additional law enforcement officers, all pointing the pointy end of their stabbing sticks at the offender and waiting patiently for their orders to attack (signed in triplicate) to be telegraphed back to them. Any actual attacking manoeuvre was only then made out of peer pressure or under a grand delusion that they might actually be the one to take down Altair and retire early. In the event that you were in fact the last one standing in the game of ‘Wait, Attack, Parry, Die’, the option to run away is apparently well within your Union rights. From here, you just had to hope that Altair still had to pick up some groceries before returning to Masyaf or instead you were maybe fast enough to avoid being jumped on and violently stabbed in the back of the head.

Having read Preacher’s piece on Assassins Creed II, I’m lead to believe the sequel restores some faith to the video game law officer, but sadly it’s 300 years too late and a hop skip and a jump too far from Jersusalem to Italy for Ubisoft’s to avoid this prestigious acknowledgement. The Guards of the Holy Land (even those with the red Dastar of command) receive their dutiful nomination for this award and could have taken the prize were it not for their ability to actively recruit more citizens to the cause, despite the high staff turnover.

The Scarlet Crusade
Game: World of Warcraft
Evil Dictator: Grand Crusader Saidan Dathrohan
Ranks: Levels 3 through 80
Union Size: 12,000

For those of you un-familiar with the demon that is World of Warcraft, The Scarlet Crusade are a splinter-faction of the Alliance with the self appointed task of cleansing Azeroth of the undead threat. As with most evil corporations, they got a bit carried away and the brass went a bit loopy, with some members reportedly putting milk in their tea before adding the hot water. This all lead to a bit of concern amongst the Elders of the Alliance who eventually decided that they would rather the Crusade went back to their more innocent days of cake sales and perhaps dealt with the blight by issuing strongly worded letters. The Crusade took notice of all this and assuming the worst, they declared the Alliance sympathisers of the undead, retreated to their Monastery (across the street from the Undead Capital of the world – Lordaeron) and decided that their best possible plan of action from here was to stand around in Groups of 2-3, wait to be attacked and then die.

You can’t help but feel sorry for the members of the Crusade. A lot of the original members were probably quite looking forward to suiting up and heading off into the lands to do some good old fashioned Zombie killing. The decision by then leader of the faction, Highlord Taelan Fordring, to retreat to their training grounds and stand around having a sulk, probably came as a bit of a disappointment to them. Their eagerness to fight is still apparent when provoked, but as you attack one group of soldiers, you can’t help but notice how the rest of the Crusade are looking down at their shoes and generally trying to avoid making eye-contact in case they’re called in to help.

They reluctantly receive nomination for this coveted award as I really do think that they’re hearts in the right place, I just wish that they would try harder.

The Village Guards
Game: Animal Crossing
Evil Dictator: Tom Nook (Probably)
Ranks: DCI and Idiot
Union Size: 2

There isn’t a hope in hell that I could successfully convey to any outsiders of the series, the horrors of an Animal Crossing township. Villagers creep out into the dead of night to place pitfall traps for unsuspecting villagers, fight with each other on a daily basis and worst of all: run around town, swinging axes, supposedly because the water fountain told them too. The Animal Crossing Town is a strange and scary place indeed.

Based on this information, you would think that only an elite, focused arm of the civic system could bring order to all this chaos and that two dogs -one seemingly quite sharp and the other, contrastingly dim- could put an end to all this madness. Of course if that is exactly what you were thinking, you would be wrong. Copper certainly tries, I would never deny that. Sadly his partner Booker, on the other hand, does not. Inquiring any local occurrences with the fellow is a rather slow and painful experience, with Booker often resorting to vague chance and hap-hazard guessing. You have to worry that in the event of any serious, Jack Bauer style crisis, Booker really would be the first to cop it. Still, everyone needs a partner and despite his heroic posture, intense physique and razor sharp mind, I fear that Copper would be lost without Booker. Maybe he’d hit the bottle or move straight on to the real hard drugs in order to make it through another day. Sure, the department would send a replacement, but it wouldn’t be the same, it never is.

May their nomination warn you of the dangers that exist in a world where Racoons run viscous loan shark schemes and hippy Dogs give impromptu concerts and how imperative it is for local law enforcement to keep two steps ahead of everything. In the case of the Village Guards, for those two steps ahead that Copper provides, Booker takes it all three long jumps back. Please, stay safe in your town, you’re on your own.

Stormtrooper Corps
Game: 150+ Titles since 1982
Evil Dictator: Galactic Emperor Palpatine
Ranks: Job Progression is available
Union Size: Tens of Millions

What article on bad Security Forces would be complete without a mention of Stormtroopers? It would be far too cliché to just go ahead and award them the prize for the galactic scale of their incompetency’s, but it would also be an insult not to reward the Empire with at least a nod for close to three decades worth of appalling law enforcement in Video Games.

The Stormtooper, in its many variations, has long been the staple grunt of the video game army, with the faceless antagonist, copied and pasted over every level with the albino armoured grunts only capable of taking 1-2 shots at the most, despite the cumbersome nature of the uniform. It’s difficult to select from the vast Lucasarts collection that best demonstrates the failings of these elite shock troopers. To use one of the titles from the X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter series would really require me to also level blame against the engineers behind the spacecraft (my guess is that they were all watching Sesame Street ‘brought to you by the letter H’ when they were hammering away at the design brief for the TIE) or to use one of the movie based games would be incredibly unfair as the Stormtroopers here were simply used as actors to re-tell the tale. Arguably, titles that arose from the rich extended lore of the Star Wars universe really gave the Stormtroopers a chance to shine with Raven Software’s Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast providing an excellent stage for Imperial flavoured fail. But really, the best example I can give of Stormtrooper ineptitude is from one of my own Gaming fables.

My name is Adam Williams and I used to be a Stormtrooper.

Back in the summer of 2003, Sony Online Entertainment, in partnership with Lucasarts Entertainment launched Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, the first Massively Multiplayer Online Title to focus exclusively on the events of the original trilogy. A year later, I would first set foot on Corellia and begin my quest to become the hero of the Galaxy. About a month after that, I gave up and joined the Galactic Empire. It wasn’t a glamorous job, the pay wasn’t great and the work wasn’t any better, but it came with a fancy icon above my head and the alternative seemed far too much effort. A few months after that and I’d finally scraped together enough credits to build my own place ,out on a the remote grasslands of Dantooine, near a rather nice fishing pond. I wasn’t quite ready for retirement just yet and I didn’t really get to spend a lot of time there (what with the Rebels blowing things up and all) but when I was ready to settle down, here was going to be just perfect.

For a while, I was the only one to have built a house in the area, until a local trader asked if it would be ok to relocate his store to my neighbourhood of one (in return for a heavy discount on his wares of course). Being a perfectly reasonable and civil guy, I agreed and he set up shop adjacent to my home. As with life here in the real world, I never really saw much of my neighbour save for a few awkward conversations on our doorsteps as we passed on our way to and from work, with conversation always light in topic and done so only out of politeness.

One day whilst fishing, we got chatting and in the spirit of friendship, I invited the trader out for a few Rebel base destructions with some close friends of mine (and maybe a few drinks afterwards). Sadly he was very busy with his business and told me that he really would love too, but it was very important that he focused on his crafting. So off I went, Stormtrooper helmet in the head slot, for another tour of duty, that had up until now, been entirely successful. On this occasion we strangely found ourselves met with much heavier resistance than normal and despite managing to destroy several key installations, we were eventually chased from the planet with our intergalactic tails between our intergalactic legs. Returning back to my home on Dantooine the next day, I discovered a communication from my neighbour in which he apologised for not being able to come with me and my chums last night (as he really did have a lot of work on) and asking when we were next going on a tour as they sounded like a lot of fun. I replied, informing him that we’d selected a specific target to really strike back after the previous night’s debacle and once again invited him to join us. Sadly, he really was quite busy with his work and this process would continue to repeat itself over the next few weeks.

It turned out that my next door neighbour was a member of the Rebel Alliance and over those pretty unsuccessful number of weeks for me and the Imperial Forces, he had been feeding all of my messages to his Rebel superiors. So you can imagine my surprise, when after weeks of un-announced visits to the local cloning station and high armour repair bills, I abandoned my position in the Imperial army and joined the Rebel Alliance, returning home to discover that my house had become the new Mecca of the Rebellion and now the most guarded fishing hole on the planet. My loose lips had gifted the Alliance with the opportunity to drive out the Imperial forces on the planet and thanks to my incredible stupidity, I’d become a beacon of hope within the Rebellion.

And so the nomination for a pretty dire Security Force can be made with my own shortcomings acting as the perfect example for why the Empire crumpled. Always remember, the Stormtrooper is pretty stupid, especially on Casual Friday.

But despite all of that! The Winner of Video Games Worst Security Force is…

The Genome Army
Game: Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Evil Dictator: Liquid Snake
Ranks: NBC, Light, Arctic Warfare, Heavy Troops and Johnny
Union Size: 130

Poorly trained? No. Ill equipped? Nope. Badly organised? Certainly not. Likely to push Crayola’s up their nose and sing the Hungarian national anthem to the tune of Tina Turner’s; Simply the Best? I believe so.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Genome Army wins the award for the single worst security force in video game history, hands, feet and tongues down. These guys really are the absolute worst of the worst. It’s almost unthinkable that a security force comprised of former Counter Terrorist agents (that went on to be infused with the Genes of the greatest one man army on the planet) could ever allow one man and his mullet to waltz into a top-secret facility and destroy their precious hi-jacked Robot-tank. I will give no credit, whatsoever, to Solid Snake for accomplishing the task. If the Genome Army were half of what they were supposed to be, he’d never have made it up the first lift. Why a highly trained soldier cannot quite fathom why he’s being followed around by a cardboard box or how there could possibly be a second set of footprints in the snow, or even why there doesn’t appear to be anyone present in an area where they recently heard a distinctice *knock* *knock* *knock*, quite frankly they deserve every bloody Left-Right-Roundhouse kick they get.

Whilst the redux GameCube version, Twin Snakes, provided the Genome Soliders with the AI boost afforded in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty over the incredibly simple AI of the PlayStation outing, the Genome Soldiers are still guilty of being wholly inadequate for the work. Guards are easily distracted by pretty pictures of pretty ladies and pay no respect whatsoever to anything outside of a 90 degree field of vision. Now I’m entirely guilty of being distracted by pretty pictures of pretty ladies and it has to be said that I’m also equally unaware to the majority of my surroundings, however, I’m not the one with the sodding ‘Guard the Secret Base’ job. It just blows my mind why Liquid Snake and his comrade Revolver Ocelot would ever want to use such a bunch of useless clowns. It pains me to say it, but I’m fairly confident that any combination of those nominated for the award could have done a much better job – except maybe for Booker.

Whilst purists to the Metal Gear cause will argue that the Genome Soldiers were either drones under Psycho Mantis’ mind control or suffering from complications from the Gene sequencing progress, no one can contest that a military unit would be perfectly content that the Spy they just spotted and fired at, no longer posed a threat because he disappeared under a desk. Worse still, the brightest of the bunch that were smart enough to steal 4 Optic Camouflage devices and ambush Snake in a lift, thought it best to let Snake take an urgent phone call which warned him of his impending capture before deciding that now would be a good time to maybe open fire.

It goes against my nature to reward stupidity, but the GamingLives Worst Video Game Security Forces Award, is dutifully awarded to the Genome Army. May this recognition for their (lack of) work set a new standard in gaming everywhere and ask of us Gamers to look more kindly on the targets in our crosshairs. Too often we assume that these are evil people with an evil nature. Turns out, most of them are just pretty darn stupid.

Last five articles by Adam

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