aim for the huge red spot! boss fights: the best and worst.

[Vindekarr]

Bosses, a classic mainstay of combat gaming, but who was the boss of bosses? and who was such a fail that they are more worthy of the term "receptionist" ?

 

for me the best were: Ulkair The Unclean at the end of dawn of war 2, a relatively simple boss to fight, but well designed, animated, scripted and actualy requiring of some thought, but best of all, he wasnt a frustrating boss, he felt beatable, though to finaly finish him you had to get creative. Final target from r-type final, an obscure little japanese sidescroller's obscure final boss, final target was punishingly hard even on the lowest dificulty, given that the game gives you absolutely no information on how to hurt it, and its "attacks"are one shot kills and very hard to evade/block and if that wasnt enough, the whole level occurs in a bizaar nightmare realm that looks not so much scifi final boss as "I had too much drugz n now Im HIGH!" The most spectacular is the alien mothership at the end of crysis, beautifuly rendered, and if you bring it down, rewards you with a truly magnificent explosion and whirlpool, but for me, the absolute #1 that I've ever fought was the final battle of dawn of war 2's last stand mode, in it, you face Araghast the chaos lord, a lethal clone of yourself and everyone else your team, and every boss from every previous wave... at once, somehow survive and gratz, you'll be one of very few immortal legends on the highscore table, "fail", and you'll get the reward of a massive amount of xp and some fond memories.

 

As for the worst, well Ive seen a few who qualify, the most disgustingly bad was the oroboros near the end of resident evil 5, this pathetic attempt is an extremely easy creature to beat, or would be if it wasnt for capcom, no. To kill this thing, you need to lock onto it with a satelite laser, but for some reason the centre of the mound of octo-pus doesnt count as a target, so you spend the next hour struggling with the unresponive controls trying to hold a tiny red dot on the end of a flailing tentacle, its easily the most boring and frustrating boss Ive ever seen, utter fail. the most ridiculous had to be the Mighty Poo from konker's bad fur day, a funny yet disgustingly horrible little game, with funny but disgusting final boss, the Poo climbs out of the lavatory with the timeless quote "I am the the mighty Poo, and Ima throw my s--t at you!" the fight itself however is very lackluster and easy, but somehow funny, despite the revoltingness and poor humor. but for me the absolute worst is al mualim at the end of assassin's creed, this appaulingly badly made fight pits you against 10 decrepit old men who simply hack mindlessly at you while you beat them all to death, its standard issue AC1 press x to win, made even worse by the fact they use the same animations as city guards, are resused textures/meshes, and the only reward for victory is a trailer for the next game, how friggin shallow yer think I am ubisoft?

[ub3rman123]

GLaDOS. 'nuff said.

[Povuholo]

Worst: The Vizier in Prince of Persia Sands of Time. Too damn easy.

 

Best: Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Just an epic enemy throughout the entire game. The Magus boss fight was pretty awesome too.

 

Best: Asha in Iji on ultimortal difficulty. (Ignore the silly dialogue at the start, he's basically using an easter egg that does a lot of weird things to an otherwise serious and awesome game) Very fast paced, and as with the rest of the game, accompanied by awesome music.

 

Get Iji now, it's free! :yes:

[ub3rman123]

Well, best for me is.. umm.. I'm going to have to say the BioHazard/FinalHazard from Sonic Adventure Battle 2. Just an epic fight, perfect music. And it was a huge lizard with a moon-destroying space station stuck up its rear. How much more awesome can it get?

 

Worst: I got Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex for the Wii recently. Terrible idea. I thought it'd be fun, because I love FPS co-ops. The co-op is Mario Galaxy style, just adds another cursor to the screen. The final boss? There wasn't one. Shoot the terrorists, and after only six short hours, you've won. No final boss at all. Just cutscenes.

 

Then after the campaign I thought: At least there's online play, the Wii has that and they wouldn't sell a game with only six hours of game for full price. :sad: They did.

[jojo man]

RAAM from Gears of War 1 was terrible. He was so bad because on the Easy and Hardcore settings (Easy and Medium difficulties) he was a proverbial cakewalk. And on Insane(Hard difficulty) he was literally almost impossible to finish off. He wasn't the fun kind of challenging either. He felt completely invincible and it was just frustrating.

 

Also terrible was Heinrich from Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Horrible boss for an other-wise fantastic game. I could literally run circles around him and take him down without getting touched on the most difficult settings.

 

And I know that a lot of people hated the introduction of boss fights into Halo 2, but I had at least a moderately good time killing pretty much all of them.

 

As for really sensational boss-fights, none leap out at me for the moment. I'll have to go back and reread the thread to see if anything grabs my attention.

[Unavi]

I remember DMoMM has a big dragon boss at the end. The over-all atmosphere is great and epic but as I recall all i had to do was shooting arrows at it which was tedious!

[Vindekarr]

Diomedes is another good one, Dawn Of War II, you discover that there is a traitor in your ranks and are sent in to kill him; its not that easy though, A: he is a space marine, and by nature, an awesomely good fighter, and B, your intel is off, all along the game suggests Diomedes is the traitor as he opposes you and brands your commander a Heretic, aswell as Galan his second in command, but when you arrive, Diomedes is the only one who puts up a fight and is the only one marked on the map, however if you do all the side missions you can deduce that Galan is the traitor, kill him and he spills the beans on the other Black Legion spies and clears the name of Diomedes and the other blood ravens.

 

However, you still have to get the com codes from the LZ Diomedes is guarding, WITHOUT killing diomedes, in the end you get dozens of options and can choose to aproach this from the side of the traitors or the loaylists, its a well done fight, with a spectacularly well done story line leading up to it and a very high degree of moral freedom, by no means an RPG bossfight, or storyline, but for an RTS this is truly epicaly well made and for a major 40K fan, a helluva lot of fun.

 

 

Another bad boss would be, well Ive forgotten his name, the final boss in mass Effect. I was a Soldier, so all I had to do was aim at him and hold down the trigger until he morphed, then ore trigger holding and a cutscene, followed by a fatal software error, why was it lame? it had nothing out of the ordinary and thats the problem. Bossfights are by nature super-enemies who challenge you like no other, he was just a diferently skinned Skeet.

 

But that doesnt mean you cant go to far the other way. general Sheperd in MW2 is the opposite, when I finaly knifed him I wondered alloud, "now, how in blaxes did ONE mouldy unfit old man kick the asses of two superbadass SAS in hand to hand combat?!"

Certainly with some martial arts you can do things that seem superhuman, when I was 11 I did a bit of Judo and via using the right muscles at the right time someone the size and strength of a (heavily built) 11 year old can send a 170lb adult to the floor without any effort, but that was just ridiculous, I felt like Soap and Price had suddenly turned into absolute ninnies because despite having killed just about every russian soldier ever to have lived, that creep imran whatsisname, and a bunch of elite marines, let alone taking an army base all but singlehandedly they were entirely stumped by one unfit old geezer who'd just crawled out of a crashed helicopter, I mean, come on, seriously, what the hell?

 

Lastly, what can also make a bad bossfight is an anticlimax, sometime its forgiveable, like in DOW 2 vanilla, the Tyranid Broodlord Alpha is weak and easy to kill with the help of Gabriel Angelos, but the rest of the game, and that battle, is so uber I honestly didnt care. A true anticlimax is the Emperor at the end of force unleashed, that game was an absolute shambles and the final boss was the easiest boss, being significantly easier than some run-of-the-mill enemies such as hazmat troopers even on the maximum possible dificulty.

[Dark0ne]

I enjoyed the boss fights in Painkiller. Huge huge monsters that were hundreds of times bigger than you. It's always fun taking down those sorts of bosses ;)