Boss Battles the standard gameplay isn't set up to handle..

[Kirov Reporting]

Many moons ago, after hours of tactical room entry, commanding from cover and doing everything in my power not to take a single bullet err I die (hardest difficulty), I began the final fight in Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Now, considering what I've just said, this being a game about tactics and coordination, skilled elimination and keeping your arse away from danger, it made perfect sense that the final boss would be a.. What, a helicopter? WHAT?

This screwed me up completely, and I walked away from the game for months. The boss battle, which I finally completed (after some-odd 200 attempts) in about 5 minutes end-to-end was such a wild swing away from the regular gameplay that I was completely out of my depth, and which is more, the gameplay was out of its depth - a system intended to allow you to sneak is not the same system which will easily let you take down an Apache.

I have encountered this issue again recently with MGR:Revengeance. Blade Mode is brilliant, sneaking up on enemies and turning them into bitesize chunks and even the occasional in-battle parry, all are fair indicators that one-on-one or one-on-group battles are what this system was built for.

Then I battled a robot panther. Then I battled a transformer. Then I battled a cyborg gorilla thing. Each of these kicked the ever-loving crap out of me, while I wrestled with the camera, and felt like I'd brought a knife to a gorilla fight, because that's effectively where I was at. All of the pacing was shot to hell, it completely stalled my progress and left me feeling really deflated, after being a badass among other sword-wielders etc and feeling as though I had the system down, I was now being decimated time after time.

In your opinion, is this a good thing (to have such variation to mix things up) or a bad thing (as a result it feels wildly erratic and inconsistent, as generally a game engine can't really accommodate two wildly different game types)?

 

[SlaveNumber23]

That Rainbow Six Vegas 2 helicopter boss fight was damn awful, definitely the worst part of the game, because as you said it was just so out of place and different from what the rest of the game had taught you.

Deus Ex Human Revolution had the same issue with its boss fights, where if you had been playing a sneaky play style the entire game your sneaking skills and tactics are pretty much rendered useless as you are forced to fight the boss in open combat, it being impossible to hide from them.

I don't think its inherently a bad thing to change the gameplay up so drastically and I believe it can be done well, although I can't think of any examples, but I think that most of the time its going to be a bad idea to do this when designing your game. You can easily put some variation in your game without having to make sudden wild changes to the gameplay, its just a matter of finding the balance between not enough variation and too much variation.

 

[hazabaza1]

Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

Spoiler

I don't like Bed of Chaos.

 

[Xukog]

Yeah,that generally seems to be a bad thing,through your Metal Gear Rising comment confused me,as the enemies you mentioned didn't seem to change the gameplay much,just increased the difficulty.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

Spoiler

I don't like Bed of Chaos.

Seconded.
I was hoping that after the Dragon God in Demon's Souls they would refrain from putting in more puzzle bosses.
It takes special effort to make the Dragon God look like a good boss fight.
Hell, the director APOLOGISED for BoC. That alone speaks volumes.

 

[Anathrax]

The hoverbike/board/race sections of the Ratchet and Clank series. At first the hoverbike was cool, but it got boring pretty quick and was a pace killer. The hoverboard section was the worst of the series in my opinion(Oddly enough I also think Size Matters is the worst of the series).

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

Spoiler

I don't like Bed of Chaos.

Seconded.
I was hoping that after the Dragon God in Demon's Souls they would refrain from putting in more puzzle bosses.
It takes special effort to make the Dragon God look like a good boss fight.
Hell, the director APOLOGISED for BoC. That alone speaks volumes.

I don't know, BoC didn't really bother me much. Went left, went right, died once, dropped down hole, job done. What bad experiences did other people have with it?

OT: um... Deus Ex: HR in that the bosses were near-impossible for some builds, not to mention totally against the spirit of the game. Also easy as pie if you knew they were coming (just bring some frag mines and stunlock 'em to death).

Not a very well known one, but the elephant noise in TWEWY bothered me, the stompquake style attacks just felt so anti-everything else the game throws at you, and on ultimate difficulty they are really no fun.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

Spoiler

I don't like Bed of Chaos.

Seconded.
I was hoping that after the Dragon God in Demon's Souls they would refrain from putting in more puzzle bosses.
It takes special effort to make the Dragon God look like a good boss fight.
Hell, the director APOLOGISED for BoC. That alone speaks volumes.

I don't know, BoC didn't really bother me much. Went left, went right, died once, dropped down hole, job done. What bad experiences did other people have with it?

OT: um... Deus Ex: HR in that the bosses were near-impossible for some builds, not to mention totally against the spirit of the game. Also easy as pie if you knew they were coming (just bring some frag mines and stunlock 'em to death).

Not a very well known one, but the elephant noise in TWEWY bothered me, the stompquake style attacks just felt so anti-everything else the game throws at you, and on ultimate difficulty they are really no fun.

I assume you've fought it once, then?
Let me transcribe a typical encounter with BoC for players of all skill levels.
Went right, got hit when leaving right, sent down hole.
Run back, through lava, try to get souls, succeed, get hit, sent down hole, lose souls again.
Repeat half a dozen times for the right side, then double for the left side.
Then, run to centre, make hurried, panicked leap at small platform while being targeted by BoC, die dozens of times, losing souls countless times, finally get in, then get hit by pillars of fire and killed.
Repeat a few more times before FINALLY the fucking chaos larva thing in the centre becomes a fine paste.
Get 60000 souls, don't touch DkS for at least a week after the trauma.

That boss is the bane of all Dark Souls players everywhere because it depends on luck rather than skill.
You COULD cheese it by killing one side, quitting out of the game, reloading and doing the same for the other side, so that you don't have to run from side to side, but most new players don't know that, and the designers didn't intend for that to be a viable strategy. Hell, I've only done it once and only because I just didn't feel like wasting time on BoC.
That's not to say it CAN'T be done without dying once, as I've done it, without a shield no less, but I feel it's the only part of the game that comes close to artificial difficulty, because no one beats it on their first try.
In a game where boss fights are emphasised greatly BoC stands out as being the worst by a landslide.

 

[WaysideMaze]

I'm going to second DX:HR. After playing as a silent assassin type, being thrown into a room with a walking tank type dude with a machine gun arm was just infuriating.

 

[DataSnake]

Icon of Sin from Doom II. Every other level was set up to minimize the engine's limitations, and now we have one that only works as a fight because the player can't look up and down. It's pretty much the only level in either classic Doom game I didn't like.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Snippity snipsnip.

That sounds immensely depressing. I didn't think much of the death, I was using the daughter of chaos shortcut if that's any quicker than the normal bonfire run. I guess I got exceptionally lucky getting down the hole without getting hit.

Honestly, the worst part for me was the seemingly invincible invaders who KEPT attacking me in lost izalith. I was human because I was trying to take every boss as human at least once to see if there were any NPC summons (my run was mostly blind). When I finally got into the boss room I just ran at the big glowing things, blocking when I had to. Was a bit confused when the boss was still there after the obvious targets were gone, then saw the platform that had been hidden by the floor and made it in one super lucky jump (the arm was so close to my head).

I can see how horrible that fight could have been if I was in a different mood, and the floor falling out from under me with no warning was one of the few times I died and didn't feel like it was my fault.

Honestly, the boss that feels worst to me in DkS is the four kings on ng+, if you aren't running one of the few builds with high enough DPS you can't kill them without getting multiple aggro'd at once. Add to that the fact that they have a super strong stab which does more damage the closer you are to the tip and their tendency to get behind you and explode.

 

[DEV1ANTGAMER]

Flying enemies in any 3d hack n' slash/beat em up. Whether it's Lords of Shadow, Metal Gear Rising, Devil May Cry, ect., flying enemies ALWAYS suck... it seems like the camera and targeting are always conspiring against you.

 

[gigastar]

There was that midget geomancer in God Hand. However the game lampshades this.

 

[elvor0]

Metal Gear 4. That final boss fight had fucking awful controls, excellent spectacle and it's one of my favourite boss battles of all time, but the controls were hideous.

I have encountered this issue again recently with MGR:Revengeance. Blade Mode is brilliant, sneaking up on enemies and turning them into bitesize chunks and even the occasional in-battle parry, all are fair indicators that one-on-one or one-on-group battles are what this system was built for.

Then I battled a robot panther. Then I battled a transformer. Then I battled a cyborg gorilla thing. Each of these kicked the ever-loving crap out of me, while I wrestled with the camera, and felt like I'd brought a knife to a gorilla fight, because that's effectively where I was at. All of the pacing was shot to hell, it completely stalled my progress and left me feeling really deflated, after being a badass among other sword-wielders etc and feeling as though I had the system down, I was now being decimated time after time.

In your opinion, is this a good thing (to have such variation to mix things up) or a bad thing (as a result it feels wildly erratic and inconsistent, as generally a game engine can't really accommodate two wildly different game types)?

Er...hate to tell you this, but the bosses REVOLVE around the standard gameplay, which is the parry system. Parry is the core and soul of Revengance, master it and you feel like a god, neglect it and you will die. a lot. I winged the game right up until the boss rush, and the game just went "l2p or GTFO". The game has a completely consistent gameplay style throughout, it's not supposed to be a stealth game, it's a hack n slash, a spectacle fighter. The camera is fine, use the lock on, and while I'm loath to say it, to put it bluntly, learn to play. Act exactly the same while you're fighting them as you would anything else, avoid golden attacks, parry for anything else, and you'll be fine. In fact once you master the parry system, aside from the first level on revengance difficulty the game becomes a whooooole lot easier.

Trust me, we all had the same issues mastering the parry system, god knows myself included, but saying that the game is bad because you don't know how the game works is just misrepresenting the facts.

 

[thejackyl]

I'm going to second DX:HR. After playing as a silent assassin type, being thrown into a room with a walking tank type dude with a machine gun arm was just infuriating.

That's how I played the first time too. I ended up restarting and taking the Rocket Launcher and a few mines just for him. The second boss I restarted the game as well, and just picked up the Typhoon. For the third I had picked up the augment upgrade thing, and all my upgrades were rendered useless in the third boss fight. I didn't restart the game though, I actually just grit my teeth and tried about 30 times. The final boss was okay, since there were multiple ways to defeat it.

Icon of Sin from Doom II. Every other level was set up to minimize the engine's limitations, and now we have one that only works as a fight because the player can't look up and down. It's pretty much the only level in either classic Doom game I didn't like.

Have you tried Ultimate Doom's 4th episode? CyberDemon on level 2 ftw.

EDIT: The final 2 bosses in Geist for Gamecube. I liked the game, but the final two bosses were a pain. The first one you have to jump out of your body and possess the rockets he shoots, and aim them back to him. It's kind of obvious once you figure it out, yeah, but the thing is, you've NEVER had to fight a boss like that before. Every other boss was standard FPS fighting. And once you beat him you have to possess him and fight this giant demon thing. And you have to avoid these rings he shoots at you. It was hard as hell to judge where they were and if you were safe or not.

Spoiler: Here it is

 

[King Aragorn]

As aforementioned, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. A brilliant game on all levels, but the boss fights were a bit of a nuisance. The second one, specifically, requires REALLY specific augmentations. If you don't have EMP shield, well...
Tough luck. It's overly punishing on Give me Deus Ex, where one electrical surge will just destroy, mutilate, and kill you.

They should have done the main game bosses like the DLC ones, where you could do a non-lethal or lethal takedown, use stealth, go all out combat *like the normal game forces you to*, I think you can even completely ignore them.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

Metal Gear 4. That final boss fight had fucking awful controls, excellent spectacle and it's one of my favourite boss battles of all time, but the controls were hideous.


Er...hate to tell you this, but the bosses REVOLVE around the standard gameplay, which is the parry system. Parry is the core and soul of Revengance, master it and you feel like a god, neglect it and you will die. a lot. I winged the game right up until the boss rush, and the game just went "l2p or GTFO". The game has a completely consistent gameplay style throughout, it's not supposed to be a stealth game, it's a hack n slash, a spectacle fighter. The camera is fine, use the lock on, and while I'm loath to say it, to put it bluntly, learn to play. Act exactly the same while you're fighting them as you would anything else, avoid golden attacks, parry for anything else, and you'll be fine. In fact once you master the parry system, aside from the first level on revengance difficulty the game becomes a whooooole lot easier.

Trust me, we all had the same issues mastering the parry system, god knows myself included, but saying that the game is bad because you don't know how the game works is just misrepresenting the facts.

Whoa whoa whoa back up there sunshine.. When did I even come close to calling it bad? I said it left me feeling deflated and I felt like it shot the pacing to hell because it stopped me dead, but I still enjoyed the parts that weren't boss fights.

In terms of the camera, how do I do the lock on? I don't remember seeing anything about that, but it sounds like that would make parrying infinitely more of an option and easier to pull off. I appreciate you telling me to learn to play, but it's not like the parrying VR mission is exhaustive.. One enemy, a basic troop, telling you about the principle of parrying but not covering anything beyond that makes it a little hard to relate it to trying to beat up a walking tank

Any other tips or tricks you found which made the parrying easier, or areas / attacks that it won't work for?

 

[Smertnik]

I don't understand what your problem with Revengeance is. The way I see it the game executed boss battles pretty much perfectly. Each one tests your skill with the core abilities (especially parrying), all of which you use during "normal" gameplay. If you fail at a boss battle it means you haven't mastered the needed abilities yet, the game is not at fault here (the only thing there is to criticise is the somewhat lacking explanations here and then).

Any other tips or tricks you found which made the parrying easier, or areas / attacks that it won't work for?

Parrying is just a matter of timing and knowing the enemy's attack pattern, there aren't really any tricks to it.
And you can block/parry pretty much anything apart from grappling attacks as far as I know.

 

[Something Amyss]

Drakengard. From hack and slash to DDR gameplay.

I think I win the thread.