Out of place boss battles

[Ish]

Really started playing the new Zelda with a passion at the weekend and have made quite good progress and I'm enjoying it immensely. Certainly one of the best games I've played so far this year.

However something struck me while knocking off one of the dungeons last night. I was really really enjoying some of the creativity shown in the design of the puzzles and the way the dungeon opened up as I picked up the latest 'tool' was absolutely sublime (very Zelda, but just sublime). Then it dawned on me that I had something that could only be described as dread lurking in my mind - dread of the inevitable boss battle.

Sure enough eventually I made my way to the boss and here we go. Hack. Slash. Hack. Slash. Sure it used my latest gadget but I never felt like I was being 'smart' like I did through much of the rest of the dungeon.

I'm not picking on Zelda here - plenty of other games use cliched boss encounters. But Zelda stands out for me because the rest of its design is so well conceived and implemented.

What I'd really like to see at such points is some kind of 'ultimate conundrum'. Sure have a big enemy to defeat but I'd like to do it by using my brain to solve a more complex problem with more (interlocking) elements than you do in your typical room.

Do people think this is possible? Are these traditional boss encounters still here due to convention? Or a lack of imagination?

[acidforblood]

See Metroid Prime for recent enjoyable Boss battles. What i find annoying is, lets use Zelda again as an example, the way the developer places a big neon sign over the bosses weak point. What is the point in that? You spend time and effort getting to a boss and then there is a bloody great sign post telling you where to hit/shoot it!

[Garibaldi Biscuit]

Well, I've always been against the idea of a boss being someone just stood around in a room awaiting your inevitable arrival. To me, the only game that truly went against this was the original System Shock on the P.C. Shodan was a creature which was connected to every aspect of technology on the space station, you really did feel as though it was constantly watching you when every one of your efforts to escape/defeat it's schemes ran into problems - plus the constant e-mails you recieved, taunting your efforts and mocking your chances of success didn't make you feel like 'oh, I suppose I'll fight her sooner or later', but rather 'oh, don't worry, you'll get yours when we finally meet'.

A boss is something that rules the domain in which you walk, it doesn't just create this place then sit back and wait for someone to destroy it, it is a part of the environment and as such you are an intruder in it's world, it would not smugly wait to see your physical prescence a few feet away but rather destroy you in any way possible as soon as you set foot in this alien domain. Inventive creatures to fight are all very well, but I like to feel as though I'm combatting natural extensions of the boss itself, different facets of its strengths and weaknesses, I have experienced this in so few games that it really does impress me when I do come across it.

[Treble]

Yeah, one of the great things about Prime was the lack of a neon 'signpost' telling you where weakspots were.

Even when you did suss them out, using the full range of scanning techniques at your disposable and checking the environment, many of the bosses were also adaptive....sneaky buggers. Very good fun, and more taxing than normal, too.
^^

[PeteJ]

I hate boss battles. They frustrate me more than any other area of 'gaming'. This is why I love Halo so much; it doesn't do bosses, it does impossible situations.

Much nicer.

[Che Musashi]

It is debatable this whole boss battle thing. The bosses in Prime owned me. I like it if it fits into the story like Wind Waker. These evil powers are messing stuff up. That at least seems practicle.

Could you imagine every games having them. Tony Hawk, Winning Eleven, Madden, Gran Turismo. Beat the Giant 2 Headded Skateboarding Football Playing, Drag Racing Monster! It seems ridiculous. I guess there has to be a boss for all that evil your battling.

In the case of Zelda I think it was clever how you used your latest gadget to kill the boss. At least it gave you a purpose to have it. I think someday somebody should just make a game of bosses. No story no levelling up just an endless stream of the toughest meanist video game sons of bitches they can find.

[TheShend]

I really enjoy boss battlles, not all mind, but most. When they're done right and not out of place.

PDS bosses where quality, needing tatical thinking, the grading system used was balanced and fair. When you didn't get an Excellent but a V.good, you usually could think of where you could of done better. Seeing fallen bosses from the previous games added a touch of nostalga too.

RSG and other shooters, have got some of the best bosses, Giga the final boss, along with the 3 bosses you had to fight before hand, gave me a sense of building upto something BIG, and i still believe GIGA to be the best boss i've seen in a game.

Metroid Prime - MetaRidley was a great fight, which was a shame as the last boss Prime was a little bit of a let down, i sort of got a sense it was going to be like, switching between cannons etc. dodge left dodge right fire, it was bit boring compared to the imaginative others.

Zelda OoT had some of my most memorable fights, my personal fav being Twinrova, and Final Ganon was fantastic. WW's haven't been as strong as OoT's i think. Metal/Mirror Link was a B.I.T.C.H.

Red Dogs last boss was a drag, you couldn't defeat him unless you'd done the extra mission modes to upgrade enough. Even then he moved around faster than you could keep track. Annoying.

Duke Nukems bosses where abit ****, just unload all clips available until it drops dead, only redeeming feature is watching the humorous CG clip of Duke take a dump down it's 'gregory peck'

Testament, Dizzy (GGX) and Gill (SF3) where bollocks, no way in the face of god can you be owned so badly on difficulty 1 ffs!! What's this? Resurrection special when your KO'd?....sod that... ft:

[C']

I think it's a delicate balance that is tricky to get right.

Boss battles, when done well, can prove to be some of the most exhilerating moments of gaming. Constantly keeping you on your toes and requiring you to play to your highest skill level to overcome an enemy much more powerful than yourself. Titles like Devil May Cry and Metroid Prime are recent examples.

However, when done badly, they can be boring and laborious. Simply a case of memorising the boss' limited attack pattern, waiting for the requisite opening, hitting him once then repeat ad-nauseum where the only challenge is staying awake long enough not to make the one mistake that leads to you dying instantly.

I particularly liked Halo's no boss approach. I can't of been the only person who played through expecting to come across some super covenant soldier at the end which made what I did get all the more satisfying and a more fitting ending to such a great game I can't imagine.

[Sidez]

Metroid Prime had some of the worst bosses in recent gaming memory.

A boss battle for me should be the climatic end to the level and if done well can make an average stage excellent and of course vice versa if done poorly.

Personally SNK (KOF) and Nintendo (all the Mario games ever) do by far and away the worst bosses ever whilst Capcom (fighters and DMC) and Sega (Rez) do the best. For those complaining about Gill, if you let him ressurect fully then says a lot about your skill level. I'd rather be killed by intelligent AI than a series of unfair moves.

[rjpageuk]

I'd rather be killed by intelligent AI than a series of unfair moves.

How were the bosses in Rez in any way intelligent?

All you had to do was hammer the button and they all died.

Sure they were fancy to look at, but really there was not a lot to them.

[Sidez]

I'd rather be killed by intelligent AI than a series of unfair moves.

How were the bosses in Rez in any way intelligent?

All you had to do was hammer the button and they all died.

Sure they were fancy to look at, but really there was not a lot to them.

Rez is a mong out game to be played when stoned. It doesn't need good AI just a consistent set of boss patterns that are neither frustrating but look cool. It's a satisfying game not a skill game. UGA have clearly suceeded here.

[Treble]

I'd rather be killed by intelligent AI than a series of unfair moves.

How were the bosses in Rez in any way intelligent?

I think Sidez was referring directly to Gill there.

Gill is a good boss, as he's rock hard and varies his attacks. The Resurrection move is easy to combat as long as you keep an eye on his special bar, like you have to with Shin Vega in SFZ3.

[Sidez]

I think Sidez was referring directly to Gill there.

Gill is a good boss, as he's rock hard and varies his attacks. The Resurrection move is easy to combat as long as you keep an eye on his special bar, like you have to with Shin Vega in SFZ3.

Yeah, just don't jump, do any fireballs from the other side of the screen or do any moves that will whiff. Simple and not unfair (Shin Vega).

[Treble]

What would be great at the end of 2D fighters would be fighting one of the regular cast of characters, but with the NPC using player AI, similar to the approach taken in VF4Evo. Even if it was flawed, it would have to be a better than fighting a cheesy Krizalid or Rugal for the millionth time.
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[dgnr7982]

The worst thing with boss battles is if you die you have to re-start them fair enough but what annoys me is when you have to travel from the save point to re-do the boss again and again - this is the case of the 'unoffical' Shegoth boss in Metroid Prime - when I get killed I have to go back to the save point and go through a ton of pointless puzzles, battles and so on that take about 10 minutes just to get back to the boss. That sort of thing really puts me off games, I lose the inclination to want to play them as soon as they become anything resembling a chore.