The year 2018 was a very popular one for AI-based applications and programmes in games, especially with the OpenAI team competing in the strategy game Dota 2 — The International. Whether you prefer racing games like Need For Speed and F1 or shooting games like Counter Strike or strategy games like Dota2 and Civilization, you will always find elements of artificial intelligence used in them.

Here is a list of five games that are going to release in 2019 which have AI features embedded in them.

Metro Exodus: The game has made significant changes to its ‘enemy’ elements, which are now AI-based and occupy larger locations in the game map. These enemies now wander about and are more or less common within the game’s various biomes. This makes sure that all the players do not have the same experience and also make sure that the enemies encountered are different for each player as they wander in the game, all this making the combat and enemy encounters even more dynamic.

Devil May Cry 5: Popularly called as DMC5, the game features a new mechanic called the Cameo System using which players can team up online. The game allows players to choose from multiple characters to play. If you wish to play the game offline, the game has its AI that will control the other characters.

The Last Of Us 2: The action-adventure game has two sets of behavioural traits for the player and the opponent and depending on the player behaviour the AI switches and acts accordingly. The AI that the game uses is one of the most powerful ones experienced by the fans. The new version of this game to be released next year will also know players that know each other by names. “There’s some new tech here that we’re exploring where AI know each other’s names. They’re used in certain moments. You see in [the trailer], one of them is called Ethan. When they meet up, they recognise each other,” the lead game designer, Richard Cambier had said.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4: Rounding out the experience is a revamped Zombies mode, which sends wave after wave of AI-controlled undead at you and a team of strangers or friends. There are now two distinct storylines to Zombies, Aether and Chaos, which have different maps and characters. It’s clear that the mode is designed to stand in for a traditional campaign as the story is fleshed out through dialogue and secret cutscenes locked behind Easter eggs. It’s a far cry from the Hollywood-style stories COD has delivered in the past, but Zombies should, for most people, get the job done and scratch the single-player itch.

Resident Evil 4: The game uses Ambient AI, a concept in gaming where portions of a game’s software are devoted to AI with a little interactivity, being intended as background fillers to give a more realistic feel. This ranges from birds flying in the distance, to animals that run away from the player. The main character of the game named Leon is also equipped with AI.

The Division: The action role-playing game requires AI to be executed in such a way that players who are online together have the same experience: fighting the same enemies in a shared world on individual devices. It uses AI players to test and deploy new parts during the game’s development. In an effort to minimise the amount of data being passed between player and server such that the AI can execute smoothly, the animation of all characters is handled purely on the client-side, with the AI systems on the server having a very limited understanding of how a given characters animations work such that it knows which ones to execute.