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Boss Battles in Gaming.


Voyant

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Boss Battles

....

Some people love some....

Some people hate some....

Some people wish games never had them.

This is a thread discussing a always controversial conversation that revolves on "Bosses" in video games whether there are mini bosses, endgame boss, secret bosses, or final bosses. Put your opinion down on what you thought was and should be an ideal boss fight or how you think games of today can improve on the concept.

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I'ma start out the tread by putting down my all the favorite boss fight and my all time worst boss fight.

The Best of the Best.

Worst of the worst.

Edited by V0YANT
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Correction

Now...final bosses has never been a very strong point in Mario....but I got to say that that was preety impressive...to be honest though now that I think about it...as a episodic Boss fight I got you beat.

Puppet Ganon

To

Ganondorf

Dat final hit.

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One of my favorite boss fights is Reflux the Knaaren from Rayman 3.

Reflux is a pit fighter who takes on the Knaaren's prisoners in ritual combat and guess who is the newest Knaaren's prisioner? Rayman!

You fight him at the top of a column surrounded by lava while the other Knaaren sing some ritual music (very epic between!).

He as long ranged moves that cover most of the column so you have to hang on to some ropes in the sides of it, in the sides of the column you can get a power up that can hurt him (normal attacks don't do shit!) once he stops to rest during a few secondes before rampaging again.

Also you have to calculate how much time you have until the power up fades away/he starts attacking again (near 10 secondes) and hit him how many times you can before running away to the ropes again.

Oh, and while on the ropes some minor enemies appear so not even there you are safe!

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BEST:

- Mother Brain from Super Metroid - Ohp, looks like its the same boss from the first game. That really su- HOLY CRAP WHAT THE EFF IS THAT. This boss was so epic, and surpisingly emotional for an SNES game. I won't spoil the details, go play this amazing game for yourself right now.

-Ganon from Ocarina of Time - The only Zelda game I've beaten so far, and I think it's a bit overrated (at points I was more frustrated than I was enjoying myself), but this battle is great. Not really the battle itself, just the atmosphere it sets with the fire, dark lighting, and brilliant music.

-GLaDOS from Portal - Not only is the portal puzzle gameplay used cleverly in a boss fight environment, you get to listen to GLaDOS and her many components blurt out hilarious lines. One of the funniest games ever, until the writing in Portal 2 completely blew it out of the water in the humor department. That game had a good boss fight too, but it was basically a rehash of the first one - albeit with one of the coolest ways to finish off a villain ever.

-Any boss from Metal Gear Solid 4 - All of the bosses in this game are great, ranging from extreme hide-and-seek to a sniper duel in a vast snow field. And let's not forget the epic battle between Metal Gears Rex and Ray!

-Jubileus from Bayonetta - See video from first post.

WORST:

-MB from Metroid:Other M - I hate this game. So much. So, SO much. This battle was basically a challenge of shooting a floating girl once while some bugs obscure your vision. Interesting? As with the rest of the game and its characters, not in the slightest.

MB is, from what I can remember (I sold the game after beating it), Mother Brain's personality put into some AI in the form of a woman. What sounds more fun, blasting a giant brain with an eye that shoots lasers, or fighting some annoying lady that just floats there? If you picked the second one, congratulations, you're boring! (MY OPINION. IT'S OK IF YOU LIKE THIS GAME KK BYE)

-Final boss of Uncharted 2 - Great game, but this boss felt so tacked-on. Shooting explodey blue goo if the baddie happens to run by it. Anti-climactic, annoying, and a questionable way to end an amazing game. The helicopter fight was awesome though!

On a separate note, the Mario 3D Land Bowser fight was cool I guess, but I am really getting sick of Nintendo rehashing the "hit the switch to make him fall in lava" fight over and over again. It isn't interesting to me anymore (to be honest, it really never was). I liked the Galaxy and Galaxy 2 fights much better.

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On a separate note, the Mario 3D Land Bowser fight was cool I guess, but I am really getting sick of Nintendo rehashing the "hit the switch to make him fall in lava" fight over and over again. It isn't interesting to me anymore (to be honest, it really never was). I liked the Galaxy and Galaxy 2 fights much better.

To be fair, the 3D Land final boss really did go above and beyond in upgrading the traditional Bowser battle to epic proportions. They won't be able to do it again but I think they did it good enough justice to get away with using it. Plus it's also the first time it's been done in 3D. The final chase still gives me goosebumps by how close it is if you pull off every jump perfectly (too bad the above video messed up a little at the last second there causing Bowser to stall).

I'm kinda too tired right now to give a non-reply post in this thread, can't be arsed to really think about my favourite bosses at the moment, so I'll return here later.

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I think if you can't design a good boss, then don't even bother. Nothing beats a GOOD boss, though.

Edited by Kringle Of Fate
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I have my own Boss Theory; I believe the best bosses out there have three traits:

A: Testing the Player. What separates bona fide bosses from just larger enemies with a bigger health bar is that true bosses are exams where weak bosses are simply barriers. Compare the final boss of Super Mario Land 3D to the final boss of inFamous. This is all personal preference here and I don't intend to project, but I imagine most people, myself included, vastly prefer SML3D's final two minute confrontation with Bowser to the ten minute showdown with Kessler. I believe there are many reasons for that, but the most immediate is simply that you only need the first attack you learned in the game to beat Kessler where you'll require the various platforming skills you picked up in the course of the game to beat Bowser. The best way to make beating a boss feel like closure to a level or the game as a whole is to make the battle a test of most or all the skills and strategies you've picked up, either since the last boss or cumulatively.

B: Resilience and Weakness. Or more specifically, a balance between them. I guess this goes for enemies in general, but most specifically bosses simply because they last longer. The most gratifying bosses are the ones that demonstrate that your attacks are having an effect simply beyond chipping away at their health bar, feeling like they're slowly being destroyed by your efforts but smart and strong enough to change their approach to compensate. When the boss doesn't change his general tactic between full health and one HP, it doesn't feel like a natural battle. And just because they do it doesn't necessarily make it feel natural either; simply speeding up the rhythm of attack or shooting more lasers at once is kind of a lazy and artificial way to make the battle more tense. Have the boss change their weakness at certain intervals and make it look like the boss is smart enough to know that when one attack isn't working to at least try another.

C: Power in Design. Simple as this: the bosses that feel best to conquer are the ones that, upon first encounter, the player asks "how the hell am I going to defeat THIS?" Make the boss look like its going to be a challenge to defeat and, if possible, make it seem like its defeat had an impact. Mother Brain was probably among the first bosses to do this with such great impact, ominously waiting at the end of the room for you to fight her and adding an exclaimation point to her presence by being followed with a self destruct sequence upon death.

With that in mind, here's one of my favorite bosses of all time.

Quadraxis.jpg

Quadraxis - Metroid Prime 2

This guy had an impact right off the bat by being a titanic version of a previously encountered common enemy that was already fairly challenging. From this, you can deduce his general properties including strengths and weaknesses, but also understand that his strengths will be stronger and his weaknesses will be more elusive. Defeating Quadraxis is also satisfying because rather than simply shooting it to death, you get to disassemble it while it fights back through both advantage and despiration. You start off by disabling his legs, but that won't stop him, as he detaches his remotely flying head that you will then have to destroy. The best part is that you have to use his dead legs to reach his head, creating an opportunity to use your own resourcefulness to combat his. The fight also emphasizes the use of items you've picked up in his domain, including the Echo Visor and Spider Ball, so it definitely acts as a test of sorts. From start to finish, Quadraxis is a perfect boss. Taking him down is a visceral pleasure as he tests your skill, not your patience.

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^^The Metroid series really does have some good bosses, especially in the Prime series. Each one has a different and unique weakness that isn't always obvious and on the higher difficulties, can be a bitch to beat.

Anywho, Video game bosses..Yeah if there's one way to show a player's skill beyond levels, this would be it.

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Best: Yami from Okami (lolrhymes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQxUZsPekNQ

I can't stress enough how much I love this game, and the final boss was just the icing on the cake. The art style, the way you use the brush techniques, I think 4-6 forms, it's the epic confrontation to end a great game.

Worst: Ganon (Wand of Gamelon)

Does it even need to be said?

Edited by Solkia :U
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If anything, Bioware needs to make better boss fights. All the bosses felt like slightly better cannon fodder, and the final battle collectors and the pseudo reaper felt so... cheap.

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I think different kinds of game require different kinds of boss, so I'm not going to try and delineate any particular features of a good one. But I think the worst kind of boss is one that lasts a long time but doesn't give you any indication of how near it is to being defeated; in other words, a static, boring boss that just does the same thing over and over for far longer than you can be bothered to care about. On a not unrelated note, I don't like bosses in RPGs that require too much strategy; that's hard to define, but I think it's kind of boring to make a game that everyone has to play the same way every time. I guess that also means that I don't like bosses that are too hard, because there's little I find more tedious in a game than having to do the same lengthy thing repeatedly.

The SM3DL final boss was excellent; the terms of the battle were always changing, you were always moving, you were always having to think on your feet, but you could still do it in one shot, which meant the boss lost none of its dramatic potential through repetition.

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If anything, Bioware needs to make better boss fights. All the bosses felt like slightly better cannon fodder, and the final battle collectors and the pseudo reaper felt so... cheap.

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The SM3DL final boss was excellent; the terms of the battle were always changing, you were always moving, you were always having to think on your feet, but you could still do it in one shot, which meant the boss lost none of its dramatic potential through repetition.

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