Out of place boss battles

[Saurian]

I love boss battles!

The best boss battles are advanced tests on how well you know the game system. Levels should teach the skill and the boss is the exam.

[Lebowski]

i really liked the boss battles in metroid fusion on the gba, a lot of them appeared in obvious places but some just jumped out on you

the robot one was good because it appered in a room which you had just traveled through i enjoyed fighting it again later on as it appered again in the same way, it had the same weekness but you had to adapt tactics.

to me this is how boss battles should be if you dont Know there coming it just makes them all the more exciting

[TheShend]

I disagree with Gill and lack of skill sentiment, if i can not drop a round when getting to him, how on earth is it fair for him to be able slap me about so much, especially when he's supposed to be on the easy settings.

I worked my way thru SFA2's skill levels and was competent at difficulty 6, but the boss's would always reflect the skill lvl set.

Gill, however, seems to be permently stuck in lvl 8 or somewhere, mocking my attempts to progress.

That aint a lack of skill. It's unfair **** computer boss's.

[Nisa]

Gill can be a bit of a **** but he's nowhere near as bad as the bosses in KoF, I-No from Guilty Gear XX is a pain at times as well but characters like these are all part of a gaming tradition, one that I hope doesn't die, I remember back when I first got SFII for the SNES how good it felt to defeat Vega/Bison at level 8, I'd feel cheated if I got to the end of a beat em up only to find that it was just another ordinary battle ala Tekken 4.

Personally I love boss battles if they're done right, so far the ones I've defeated in Zelda TWW have all been great (especially the giant sand worm) and I've loved the ones I've faced in Metroid Prime so far as well, the problem with bosses is making them memorable, the bosses in the original R Type for example are a big part of why everyone has fond memories of it (in fact shooters with no bosses would make no sense whatsoever) but with something like Starfox Adventures where the bosses are totally generic and forgetable (I can only remember about 3 and all of them were sub-par) they detract greatly from the game.

Bottom line is getting rid of boss battles completely = bad.

[Firsty]

LOL Gill isn't even that hard!
I had more problems with Vega on SF2 when I was younger.
You just gotta wait for him to make mistakes and hit him with all you've got BRIEFLY. Don't continually attack, you will be 0wned. And save your super meter. This way you can KO him if he hasn't got his full for ressurection. Or, if his is full, let him ressurrect then 0wn him while he's floating using your own super. Chun Li and Makoto were made to annoy him.

My fav bosses include
Rez: Level 4
Zelda WW: Giant Sand Worm thing
Space Channel 5: Evila
Bangai-oh: all of the bosses that actually fight back.
Yoshi's Island: All of them

Worst:
Zelda WW: Ganon 1st forms.
NiGHTS: That bloody cat
JSRF: All of them
Sonic Adventure 2: Bleh, esp final bosses.

[charlesr]

I've only done the first boss battle in WW so far, but found it to be totally boring. I was expecting something a little bit new, but it was too similar to OOT. Hope they get better.
The final boss in Headhunter on the DC I found very challenging and was happy to play it a few times till I got it right. It had various stages to go through and wasn't just a "hit me on the head 3 times using a clever device built into the room" type boss. And I also really enjoyed the earlier boss where you have to shoot the steam pipes to kill him.

[Sidez]

"NiGHTS: That bloody cat"

Argh, so true

[dataDave]

Gill is sooo damn easy - even on Lvl.8. As are all capcom bosses.

I've only ever had problems with one boss and that's that big guy at the end of MvC. I could never be arsed working out how to beat him - never liked the Vs. games much anyway.

Neo fighters are where the challenge is. Try AoF2 if you think 3rdS is hard - I can't even reach any of the bosses let alone beat them.

[Arctic Feather]

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.

Rockman Battle and fighters on the NGPC was just a stream of the best bosses from the rockman series that you had to fight (but i haven't played it)

I quite like boss battles, thats one reason why i enjoy the megaman/rockman series

I loved the sonic bosses to (the mega drive ones), for some reason there are no 3D bosses that stand out

[Sidez]

Alien Soldier - best game ever for boss battles. Rockman Fighters is really poor :/

[Saurian]

I dont understand how Gill is hard???

He's a complete pushover - the only reason he can take tings off your bar is because he's skank. His resurection is useless as you can kick him out of it as soon as he starts. His knee and elbow attacks are signposted with huge pink neons for parry. The only reason SF2's bosses were tricky is because their hard kick acted like a light kick (it stayed out)

SNK's bosses are far harder and nowhere near as skank.


Current fave boss.

[Sidez]

omg I love Gluon

edit: well ok photon as well

[Ish]

The best boss battles are advanced tests on how well you know the game system. Levels should teach the skill and the boss is the exam.

I think this is fair enough in a game such as a shooter - but in a more experience/cerebral flavoured game such as Zelda I don't see how this applies. I'm trying soooo hard not to use spoilers but....

Take the flower thing at the end of the Forbidden Wood in WW. You've used your brain to solve puzzles in the rest of the level (the cut down the flower with boomerang and then propel along as a boat with your deku leaf is such a great moment when it clicks) and then bang. Hack hack hack. This isn't testing the skills I've built up in the level. Sure I use the boomerang to cut him down but there's no 'smartness' in figuring this out. It hits you in the eye the minute you walk in for the boss encounter.

I love some of Garibalidi Biscuit's ideas too regarding boss integration and would have to agree with him re. System Shock. In fact I never even considered Shodan to be a boss. It never crossed my mind. Genius

Again apologies for picking on Zelda - it really is the elegance of the rest of the game that, for me at least, makes the boss battles stand out so much.

[Tig]

I like boss battles done with a bit of flair and originality. I was dissappointed in Metroid Prime when I looked at my map and saw one HUUUGE room with a question mark in it - it was so obvious where the next boss would be.

Fusion was excellent in this respect; you never knew what was going to happen upon entering a room. Sometimes you'd just be walking through a corridor and the ceiling would smash open, a massive *thing* would drop through and you'd be taken completely unawares. Excellent stuff.
Oh, and they were damn hard as well, making it even more satifying.

For me, the most boring type of boss are the ones who aren't really *tying* to kill you.

You know the type.
We've all seen 80ft robots sit quite still and lazily swat you with their hands. I remember the boss fights in Jet Force Gemini.... you played as a tiny bloke with a gun, against a mutant insect the size of the cistine chapel, and all the boss did was fire small blobs at you while you rained hell on their weak spots. Not realistic. Not convincing.

Nintendo (all the Mario games ever) do by far and away the worst bosses ever

Erm, what about Yoshi's Island? Do you remember Raphiel the Raven? Fantasticly unexpected, original boss, that. The 'moon' platform was truly vertigo-inducing, even today on a smudgy GBA screen.

[probeater]

I think that lylat wars had the best bosses as that was really all the game had, it would be the most boring game ever if the bosses were crap