Great character, awful boss

[abigsmurf]

One of the big problems with good writing in games is that you then have to try and make the gameplay match it. You can have a cool, bad ass villain who is spoilt by an easy, uncreative boss battle. It's not always about difficulty, just the nature of the boss battle.

One of the biggest examples I can think of is in RE5

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Wesker is a bad ass and admittedly the first two encounters with him are fairly cool (if much too long). Once he gets mutated though, he seems to lose everything that made him a good villain and becomes little more than another Tyrant. After featuring in so many games it was such a let down.

There are exceptions though. In Suikoden II Luca Blight, already a great evil character if anything, is made more bad ass by his boss battle

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Taking on 3 groups of your strongest characters, then requiring a battalion of archers to finally bring him down

Other examples of great characters undermined by awful boss encounters?

[Neon Ignition]

Pretty much all fighting games are guilty of this

[abigsmurf]

Usually I find it's impossible to like the bosses of beatemups because so often they're incredibly frustrating and pull off endless cheap/impossible moves.

[NekoFever]

Resident Evil's pretty bad about it in general.

Two that come to mind are Mr X (RE2) and Alexia (Code Veronica). Both have similar elements where they're

->Open Spoiler<-

stalking you for a stretch of the game and then basically turn into Tyrants

, but Alexia was the worst when she

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turns into a barely mobile insect thing that you dodge until the super weapon charges and you can kill her in one hit

. The crap ending of that game didn't help my disappointment with the boss, I suppose.

Thinking about it, it must be a running joke in Resi games by now that you always (?) beat the final boss by someone throwing a rocket launcher to you.

[importaku]

Thinking about it, it must be a running joke in Resi games by now that you always (?) beat the final boss by someone throwing a rocket launcher to you.

How about in the next game they do the same. They throw a box down, you frantically run over to it to grab the weapon so you can finally take down the last boss in one shot.

However when you open it theres a combat knife inside & a note saying "sorry we ran out of rocket launchers, use this instead"

[saturn-gamer]

CV had a crap ending, but CVX has the best RE ending ever methinks.

[Atticus]

Resident Evil 4's only letdown.

Some bosses were fitting; El Gigante, Dr Salvador, Del Lago ... but then there's a huge throwback in the shape of that little get Salazar, sat in a big wall of sinew, claws and eyes. Utter rubbish.

[Largo]

global saturation

[Spatial]

Groeder in the newest Bionic Commando game on PS3 / 360.

An epic bionicly enhanced, Germanic villain built on more than a slight hint of fascist Nazi overtones, who taunts you through the majority of the game.

And who ends up easily beaten by dodging his obvious attacks and kicking him up the arse a few times.

I mean seriously, the guys even got his own bad ass theme tune



Wasted.

[teddymeow]

Bad GIrl in No More Heroes - slutty anime, white-trash with a short pleated skirt and a naughty vocabulary

She was an absolute bitch to fight and the reason I stopped playing the game for 7 months!!

[rmoxon]

Despite the fact that many people find them full of "clever" moments, i'd have to say pretty much all the bosses in the Metal Gear Solid games...

This is mainly becuase they spent so much time writing the characthers that they seemed to have forgoten to make any decent gameplay to go with them...

All of the gameplay in the MGS series is well, lightweight, to say the least, but no more so than during he boss fights.

[Paddy]

The end boss of Gears of War 2? (without going into detail as to what exactly it is for the uninitiated.) All I'll say is automated! (and compared to the exciting, unnerving face-off at the end of Gears of War 1 it was somewhat of a letdown.)

[cutmymilk]

I just completed GOW2 a minute ago. You are right about the last boss! Thought I had a fight on my hands. I had the weak spots ready to shoot and everything!

[Brats]

Despite the fact that many people find them full of "clever" moments, i'd have to say pretty much all the bosses in the Metal Gear Solid games...

This is mainly becuase they spent so much time writing the characthers that they seemed to have forgoten to make any decent gameplay to go with them...

All of the gameplay in the MGS series is well, lightweight, to say the least, but no more so than during he boss fights.

I completely agree. I remember first playing MGS after hearing it was the best thing ever. I got to Revolver Ocelot, thought he was quite cool spinning his gun around, but when the action restarted it was just 'is this it?'.



Ninja was an amazing character. Boring as hell to fight though.

[Spatial]

I'd like to see anyone try to justify that claim against the bosses in numbers 3 and 4.

Especially 4.