Topic: Best/worst boss fights? Games you wish did/didn't have them?

[W7RE]

I was searching for a list of bosses from Half-Life 1, since I didn't remember them all, and I came across a thread like this. Instead of implanting myself into whatever commutinty that was to join a year old discussion, I thought I'd start it up here.

Half-Life 1 - spoilers from about halfway through:

(click to show/hide)

This may be because I recently played through HL2 and got me thinking about HL1, but the tentacle boss from HL1 really stands out for me. The ability to move in and out of the room gave it a varied pacing, and the way you killed it. I think you shot it with a laser? It made it feel like it was something just so big and nasty that just shooting at it wouldn't be enough.

Half-Life 2 - the whole HL2 series, with emphasis on the end of Ep.2:

(click to show/hide)

Where the hell are all the bosses? I really miss them. There's tough encounters with tough (and sometimes big) enemies, but it's not the same for me. Sure fighting off over a dozen striders in Episode 2 was a challenge and different from the rest of the game, but withou the spectacle of some unique/giant creature I'll remember. It was another helicopter, another gunship, or another strider. Instead of "holy shit, look at that thing!" it was more like "motherfucker, I have to fight 12 of them?!". I can't say the end of Ep. 2 wasn't fun, but I'll remember the frustration more than the spectacle of if it had been a boss with just as much challenge.

What about you guys? What bosses did you hate/love?

[Quemaqua]

I really should give this more thought, but two instantly come to mind:

Bioshock - maybe not hate, but...

(click to show/hide)

Last boss just really shouldn't have been there.  I didn't think it was as bad as some people did, but they just could have done something much cooler and more off-kilter.  It could have been really cool, but ended up just being somewhat average.  It was fun enough, but nothing special, I guess.

God of War II - love, love, love...

(click to show/hide)

The Fates.  Not only was that giant fat chick a pretty neat fight, the one with the other 2 was fucking fantastic.  How you had to fly around keeping off the floor and stuff.  It's been long enough now that I don't remember all the specifics, but I just remember that it was truly one of my favorite boss fights ever.  I probably talked about it in a thread here at some point.

I'll post more if I think of more.

[iPPi]

Metal Gear Solid 4 had some memorable and challenging boss fights. 

[MysterD]

I really should give this more thought, but two instantly come to mind:

Bioshock - maybe not hate, but...

(click to show/hide)

Last boss just really shouldn't have been there.  I didn't think it was as bad as some people did, but they just could have done something much cooler and more off-kilter.  It could have been really cool, but ended up just being somewhat average.  It was fun enough, but nothing special, I guess.

Bioshock - Final Battle

(click to show/hide)

I thought this boss battle was awesome, myself -- especially since no saves were allowed to made during this battle, which I thought made it quite tough. Hardest battle in the game for me, by far -- especially since when I played Bioshock my 1st time through, there was no option to turn off Vita Chambers.

About the look of Atlas/Fontaine and everything -- I thought it fit the game very well, which to me is showing also how destroyed Rapture became b/c of the over-usage and over-consumption of those steroid-like Plasmids. Look at the ruins of Rapture, with how over-run it is and was with Splicers from overusing these Plasmids. It destroyed the place. Drug addiction. Of course, that wasn't the only thing -- as Fontaine was pretty much a mob boss down there, anyways -- and there was nothing nice about him and the way he treated others, anyways. Fontaine was by far the most corrupt figure there -- and well, it shows....as he looks like an overly beefed-up version of The Incredible Hulk. Fontaine was a product of his own undoing -- not only that, he basically destroyed Rapture.

Also, since the game has its references to Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, and other stuff -- maybe if Fontaine had a last name instead like say Rodriquez (as in A-Rod), Manny (as in Ramirez), Canseco, or Clemens, gamers would've been a little more forgiving! :oP

[iPPi]

Holy shit way to go on a tangent.

[Cobra951]

(click to show/hide)

Electric gel makes the final boss in Bioshock a cakewalk.  Just come in loaded with the stuff.  Use it on him, and recharge it as you run up to him after he does his recharge thing.  Rinse, repeat, and ignore minions.

I'm not a big fan of bosses in general.  I prefer intense sequences with more or better enemies as the climax to an action-game chapter.  But the giant impossible creatures that can only be damaged in puzzling ways don't do it for me.  If I hit something square in the face with a rocket, I expect it to take damage.  The boss who's invulnerable unless you fit a green dart in a red hole that opens and closes based on a ream of rules has got to go.  And don't get me started on GoW / Shadow of the Colossus button-sequence silliness.

[W7RE]

Hmmm, I don't remember button sequences in Shadow of the Collosus. You just had to climb up and hit the weak spot, that "weak spots" in general seem like something we'd move past with better graphics and especially in games that attempt realism, even if in their own imaginary world's rules. (was gonna say GoW too, then I realised you didn't mean Gears of War)


I see what you mean with only being able to kill a boss by solving a puzzle. Though I do think it can be done in a way that's much more tolerable. If you can't kill it with your normal arsenal, at least show that it hurts when you try, and make sure the player knows that they're doing a puzzle. Liek have an NPC yell at them "that's not gonna work, you have to hit it with something bigger", or something like that.


Gears of War 2 - midway-ish

(click to show/hide)

The fish boss. First it grabs your raft with a tentacle/flipper/whatever and you have to chainsaw it to get him to stop. That pisses him off and he rushes at the boat with his mouth open and you run in. Then he shooted shit at you from spots in the back of his mouth. You shoot those down so they don't kill you, and I think shoot down his throat at the right time to actually damage him. It's all unbelievable over-scripted. It's fun, but would be more fun (and more believable) if you could just shoot him to death from the outside, but make him take more damage when shot in the mouth or something. That way he'd have the same weakness, but it would feel less scripted. Gears is one of those games that tries for a certain level of realism, and finding the weak spot on a giant fish breaks the immersion.

Now I hate myself for starting this. Everyone's talking about Bioshock and I just started playing it, so I can't read all these spoiler tags, haha.

[sirean_syan]

I'm the opposite of Cobra; a good boss sequence can make a game for me, especially one's that are like a puzzle. That said, some of the best boss fights are the ones that are just like flat out brawls. When you use the same tactics as with regular enemies, but the boss is several times tougher turning the fight into a slug fest it's a great thing.

Given Metroid's history of great boss fights, it shouldn't be surprising that one of my favorites comes from the series. I guess this a spoiler, but I imagine everyone who's going to see this one has and it's obvious that this will be a fight that will happen as soon as you see the title of the game.

(click to show/hide)

Probably my favorite fight in the series is with the first phase of Metroid Prime, where it sorta looks like a spider. It really made use of the skills you picked up throughout the game in terms of switching weapons on the fly while choosing the proper target. By the last moments of the fight, you're switching weapons as fast as your firing all while dodging a ton of attacks coming your way. To top it off, the fight last a good chunk of time so when you finally beat it, you're spent. It's a satisfying fight that makes the beating it feel like an accomplishment.

[W7RE]

Speaking of brawls, how about them Big Daddies in Bioshock.

(click to show/hide)

Doubt I really need this spoiler tag, but just in case.
Every Big daddy I run into seems to run me dry on ammo/first aid/EVE hypos, then kill me. Then I rush from the nearest chamber thingy (hitting a health station on my way), and hope I still have the ammo to finish him off. I just reached Neptune's Bounty and fought a Big Daddy right near the beginning. I'm not sure if the previous ones had all this guyu's abilities, but he was charging and periodically shooting greanades at me. The charge is tough to dodge, with no sprint (I need to re-check the keybinds to make sure on that one). The grenades can be caught and flung back, but ONLY before they land. So since I've been shoking him and shooting him. I have to right click to change to plasmids, select the telekenesis plasmid, and fire, all within the flight time of the grenade. (I guess I need to master using F-keys to switch to specific plasmids, or maybe use the numbers for them and stick with scrolling for weapons) I can appreciate the Big Daddies being an exhausting fight, but having to run back from the vita-chamber (sometimes 2-3 times) just makes me feel like I'm at more of a disadvantage than I should be, or I'm doing something wrong. (this is on normal difficulty btw, I didn't want to be a wuss and play it on easy).

[Quemaqua]

Either it's still early, or you aren't getting as creative as Bioshock lets you.  The variety of stuff you can do to kill Big D's is pretty extensive, and many of the more creative paths to success shouldn't be draining you dry every time.  They're meant to be tough, and if you aren't too far into the game you're probably going to still have a hard time for a bit, but as you go and your abilities open up, you should start figuring out more creative ways of killing them.  If you've been playing the game for a while and are still having trouble, just try to think a bit more outside the box.

[W7RE]

Well this would have been like my 3rd big daddy encounter so far, so pretty close to the beginning still.

Actually I had a weird experience with my 2nd big daddy. I assumed a little sister was with him, and killed him. Then when I started looking around for the girl, I found he, but she was with another big daddy. This one was dark grey though, and not attacking me, even if I tried to shoot him. The little sister would run around him to avoid me, but he did nothing until she yelled "kill him!"

[Quemaqua]

That's weird as hell.  I've never seen anything like that happen.

[Cobra951]

I remember thinking big daddies were impossible after my first encounter.  Later in the game, though, it was a completely different story.  You need to find better methods and the tools to enable them, that's all.

Didn't SotC use button sequences to trigger each step of the successful routine against each colossus?  I could have sworn it did.  Even if it doesn't, I just wanted to point out that mechanic.  There was a console Star Wars game released last year that also uses it.  I played the demo, and as soon as I saw that, it was easy to reject the game entirely.

Edit:  In general, my biggest objection is to nonsensical invulnerabilities unless you click your heels 3 times and say "there's no place like home".  And pressing buttons in arbitrary sequences just to please a designer totally pulls me out of the game world and into a page of programming code.

[gpw11]

Didn't SotC use button sequences to trigger each step of the successful routine against each colossus?  I could have sworn it did.  Even if it doesn't, I just wanted to point out that mechanic.  There was a console Star Wars game released last year that also uses it.  I played the demo, and as soon as I saw that, it was easy to reject the game entirely.

I could be wrong but I don't think it did.  It was all about finding the magic tattoo stabbing it and knowing where to go next.  I don't really remember any, but that could have been before I completely hated them.

[W7RE]

In SotC every boss had a specific way you had to climb up them. (some on their left foot, others on their sword, etc. Sometimes you had to bait the colossus to swing his sword at you, then jump on it before he raises it off the ground.) Then you just climb around, limited to the spots that have fur, unless it's level and you can walk. Then you stab the tattoo when you find it.

I guess the best way to explain both quick time events and button sequences on bosses is the good old "press X to not die". If you mess that up, you're either dead, or you have to start over on setting up the combo. Without that, you could just shoot again if you missed.

[Quemaqua]

I have no problem with it if handled well.  The God of War games didn't abuse it where it mattered, for the most part.  The places I found it irritating were the smaller fights or when you had to mash a button to get a heavy door open, that kind of thing.  Otherwise I have no complaint, and not all the boss fights used them.  In fact, I'm not sure the one I was talking about from II used them at all.

Also, anyone who badmouths Shadow of the Colossus for any reason is dead to me.  Just so you know.

[Cobra951]

I'm apparently dead to more people every day, so join the crowd.

[Quemaqua]

Sorry, man.  Telling me that game is stupid is like telling me you think Milton was an idiot, Melville was nothing but a customs inspector, or Dvořák was just some stupid chesky who died of heart failure.  I have deep emotional ties to it and I think it's a masterpiece.

[Cobra951]

Mmm, I never said it was stupid.  I said I don't like arbitrary button sequences as a mechanic to fight otherwise invulnerable bosses.  It was only an example, and apparently might be a misguided one at that.  I'm going to have to revisit SotC now, and see if what I remember really came from somewhere else.

[Quemaqua]

I honestly don't remember any button pressing deals with it.  I could be wrong, and there might have been a few, but I don't find them nearly so offensive as you seem to.  I mean, I don't love them, and if I was designing a game I doubt they'd be in there, but my tolerance for such things seems to be a lot higher than some of you guys.  See: Dead Rising double-tap roll, button-press minigames, and RE4/5 control schemes, and probably a ton of others (I used to and still do play the original Descent in keyboard-only format).

[W7RE]

Dead Rising, ugh. I love the premise of the game, but I have trouble getting into it because the combat mechanics are so bad and the button combos to preforms different attacks are annoying. (oh and the plot revolves around living people, and the zombies are interactive set pieces mroe or less). I managed to finish the game once: I ran to the service tunnels, kill my 43,000 whatever zombies for the achievement and buster arm gun (and got to level 50 or so), and then sat afk at the helipad until the chopper came. Now I'm all set to play through with my easy mode mega man arm, but haven't found the motivation to do so.

[gpw11]

Mmm, I never said it was stupid.  I said I don't like arbitrary button sequences as a mechanic to fight otherwise invulnerable bosses.  It was only an example, and apparently might be a misguided one at that.  I'm going to have to revisit SotC now, and see if what I remember really came from somewhere else.

I hate that as well.  The first time I came across anything like a QTE was in Shenmue and it didn't really bother me because it was one of the few times that it actually felt like I was playing a game.   It slowly wore on me more and more until the final boss of God of War II.  Fuck QTEs.

[MysterD]

The final battle in The Witcher was pretty damn memorable.

[gpw11]

I don't want to be a dick here, but I totally don't remember it.  Refresher?

[MysterD]

I don't want to be a dick here, but I totally don't remember it.  Refresher?

Final Battle

(click to show/hide)

You fight The Grand Master. It's epic b/c (like Bioshock) no saves are allowed period during any boss battles.
He also does a few summons and you have to fight those in this battle too, as well.

Who You Fight In The Final Battle

(click to show/hide)

Given by what is said by The GM, it's kind of implied that Grand Master is a version of Alvin that is from the future.

Epilogue Chapter

(click to show/hide)

Actually, that whole entire Epilogue chapter in the game is quite memorable -- b/c just about every important action in the game decides how this entire chapter turns out.