Friendly Fire!
It's the one phrase which is almost certainly followed by an expletive of some kind. For instance, throwing a Molotov in L4D will cause a large area of flames to erupt, as you'd expect from such a weapon. Fire is hot, it burns, and it's there to kill the oncoming enemies such as the infected, and slowly consume the infamous ‘Tank'. L4D is played with a team of four, three of which are bots in single player mode. These bots are suicidal, at your expense.
While that flame is conveniently cooking oncoming enemies to a satisfying crisp, you'll look away for a second, and return to see a bot trying to get past the flame. This would be ok in most other games, sure. But now consider that L4D includes friendly fire damage, and one of the achievements is to last a campaign without friendly fire inflictions. Now look to the bot, and how it enters the fire, realises that it hurts, cries "Friendly Fire" then goes in for another bout of pain.
Of course, this isn't limited to Molotovs. You could be firing away at a horde of infected, and end up taking off a chunk of health from a bot. It's as if they run around trying to get the best shot, not realising that a multitude of high speed lead is flying perpendicular to their direction. It'd also be nice if they learnt to crouch when you want to help take out enemies while they're in the way.
Issue: 111 | April, 2010