Is beating a game absolutely necessary to derive enjoyment from it…??
Bosses are fine as long as they aren’t stupid hard. I have stopped playing otherwise enjoyable games because of that.
I wouldn’t cry to see boss monsters go away. Tired of the same old find the one weakness thats only open for a second and repeat over and over for 10 minutes untill monster finnally howls, shakes, rumbles, and blows up. YAWN.
It’s cool Greg posted this today, because I just fought one of the coolest and most fun boss fights I’ve seen in a long time last night in Wario World.
He’s right. Boss fights have been pretty lackluster lately for the most part. Mega Man Network Transmission’s more than 15 bosses were a treat. I miss those bosses that were so big the screen could barely hold them. The reimagining of the “Turtle Boss” in Konami’s Contra: Shattered Soldier recently is one especially good example of that.
Boss fights should always present the awestruck feeling of “Man, I beat THAT?!” A lot of recent games take all the fun out of the boss fights by just making them too easy. Wind Waker’s biggest flaw is the absolutely simplistic difficulty, especially in some of the boss fights. If those bosses were ramped up to OoT levels, I think people would’ve found the game even more memorable. I mean, the stuff you often remember from most games is killing foozle. Sure, there are other memorable moments in games, but a well-realized boss fight will stick with you for years. I can recount every single encounter in Gunstar Heroes because every last one of the bosses was memorable and often hard as heck. But when I beat them…man was that a sensation of accomplishment.
–Dave
I like bosses just fine… what I hate is the boss-as-puzzle thing that some games have adapted. Impossible to kill bosses where the only way to beat them is trial and error to find the script you need to follow. “Ok, so I need to run to this corner, fire three times, then run to this corner, fire three times, dodge down the hall for the AoE, then come back to the original corner. Repeat until it’s dead”. If you don’t follow that exact pattern, either the boss smacks you down if you try to fire more than 3 times, or the AoE kills you when you don’t dodge down the hall.
That isn’t skill, that’s Dragon’s Lair-esq pattern memorization.
So as long as it’s a boss that’s beatable by you know, being good at the game, I like 'em. Oh, and for a console, you need to have a save point or autosave right before the danged fight. I don’t want 20 minutes to get to a boss, die to it, and have to go throught that 20 minutes over and over again.
I replayed Half-Life recently, and the boss is IMPOSSIBLE without cheating. I think the first time I just turned on God and Noclip, and blew him away. This time I tried to do it straight, and the amount of timing to get on a platform, get the open head, jump just right, and fire a rocket is insane. I’m sure many were able to do it, but considering I could do double and triple rocket jumps in Quake, it shouldn’t have been that big a chore.
H.
I didn’t even know you could cheat in halflife when I finished it.
They should just ship all games with GOD MODE ON by default.
I needed godmode and noclip for one reason – my poor PC was lagging out so badly during that end sequence.
Funny article. But how can Greg claim Vice City doesn’t have boss fights?
You said that with a straight face?
I killed him with no cheating. I don’t recall it being that hard.
– Xaroc
I killed him with the Magnum.
I killed him with the Crow Bar.
Beat that Cathcart.
I think so, there’s always a huge amount of frustration that arises from really enjoying a game and then reaching that one boss or maze where you just can’t find the key or kill the enemy and then not being able to progress further. This has ruined countless games for me.
I wrote a Half-Life mod that let me fight only by spitting on the guy and then beat the game.
With the monitor turned off.
Controlling the mouse with my nose.
I wrote a Half-Life mod that let me fight only by spitting on the guy and then beat the game.
With the monitor turned off.
Controlling the mouse with my nose.[/quote]
You used a mouse? I beat him using only the keyboard. With one hand tied behind my back. Blindfolded. Hanging upside down from a hook in the ceiling.
Beat that Cathcart :P
That would be the boss at the end of MDK2. You had to wait until he sucked you into his stomach, and then you procceded blowing up his internal organs. Not overly difficult and fun as hell. :)
So we’ve concluded that Shub-Niggurath is pretty much the lamest end boss ever?
You said that with a straight face?[/quote]
I would definitely count the final story mission as a boss battle. And not just because you’re fighting a crime boss who also happens to be your boss.