When killing your boss is enjoyable

[PurpleRain]

Most games have bosses, and most of those games you simply have to despense your ammo onto it until it stops breathing. Either that or it's a long hard and annoying game of hide and seek (hide from its weapons) until you manage to exploit its only weaknessess. Sometimes these can seem like a task, but every blue moon you get a game where its bosses are fun to beat. Gameplay that's initiative or challenging that still keeps the fun factor alive.

I remember Conker had some great boss battles. While you had to pull off the same thing three times (and it was always three times) some of the battles were fun, for example, cleaning up a giant singing turd before flushing it down a toilet. A few of the bosses were a pain to kill but usually enjoyable just to fight. Bioshock as well (if you classify Big Daddies as bosses instead of really hard enemies), the Big Daddies were fun to kill. You could stare them down and wait a bit before getting ready. It was fun to booby trap the place up and wait for just the right moment before shocking him and letting the bee's of war loose onto him.

 

[end_boss]

I've always enjoyed boss battles, as you might tell from my username. That's why I was incredibly stoaked when I heard about the concept of Shadow of the Colossus, and when I finally bought my PS2, I made sure that it was the first game I ever played through on the platform. And it's certainly among my favourites on the system.

I was horribly disappointed by God of War, because after the first couple of levels, I found that the gameplay got tedious, and with only about three bosses in the entire game, there wasn't enough to spice it up.

That said, I'm also really enjoying playing Prince of Persia: Sands of Time on my PS2, and it has, so far, NO boss battles at all. So, go figure.

 

[Fire Daemon]

The only games that I've played have "good" boss battles are any legend of zelda game, those big arm monsters from FarCry Instincts, The final level in CoD4 and any boss battles in a turn bassed RPG. All other bosses are just pointless, usually don't fit into the storyline and are very repetitive and boring. And don't get me started on those FPS bosses that although are human they take a billions shots to drop.

the reason I like turnbased RPG bosses is because they take a thinking out and a solid plan to overcome, instead of holding down the trigger and try not to be killed by those barrels that role towards you.

 

[PurpleRain]

Greatest bosses of all time are:
Fallout 1: The Master
Fallout 1: Deathclaw Mother
Fallout 2: ... I forgot the guys name. Damn my stupid brain! Anyway, he was big, half mutanat with huge armour and huge guns and swords. After you kill him he falls in half and crawls over to you to finish him off. Good times.

These battles, while all they are was click and shoot, or aim and shoot for the groin, had me wanting to kill them again and again. Plus their deaths were gorey as all hell.

I'm playing Stranglehold on Hardboiled at the moment (which is probably the reason I made this thread) but all those bosses are nearly impossible to kill. The first boss took me a good couple of tries to take him down. I'm dreading the next few.

 

[startswithK]

One of my favorite recent boss battles was with Omega Ripley in Metroid Prime 3. Cool battle.

 

[end_boss]

PurpleRain: His name was Frank Horrigan, and man, was he a ***** to try and kill!

I don't own a Wii, so I didn't get to play much of Metroid Prime: Corruption, but the boss battles I saw in that game were pretty well designed.

One boss that sticks out in my mind is Legion, from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, as well as at least two of the hand-held CV games. For those of you who don't know Legion (especially since it was called something else in SOTN), it's basically a gigantic ball of corpses that drops zombies on you. You then have to kill it in segments until you finally reach its core, which shoots lasers at you.

 

[PurpleRain]

PurpleRain: His name was Frank Horrigan, and man, was he a ***** to try and kill!

Yes that's it. Thank your soul! You could turn the gun turrents on him or you could get the soliders to help you I think. By the end after the battle my team was dead and the soldiers lay dead scattered across the feild. Red blood had stained the bass and the countdown was nearly up. He pulled his way to my feet, still determined to live and kill me. Well, Mr Vindicator had a different point of view on that subject matter.

 

[hickwarrior]

Meh, i liked some of the boss battles in Sonic rush. I think the fake final boss was the most fun. Unfortunately, they also had a button mashings on bosses. That's not fun, they might want to think that over.

 

[portuga-man]

I rly enjoyed the spirit temple boss battle in ocarine of time, the goron temple boss battle and the majora's mask, both from the majora's mask game. Bowser in super mario 64 was also fun to beat. it was so satisfying to see him fly after a minute or two of swinging him around.

But the boss that was most satisfying to beat was the Doom Dragon, the final boss from golden sun 2. It took me months to beat it (too lazy to go lvl up my characters ), mostly because he was such a lamer! djiin storn, djiin song, protective veil, cruel ruin. That freakin combo killed me ALL the freakin time.

 

[runtheplacered]

Wolfenstein 3d.. Hitler in a mech!

http://www.fpsteam.it/img2004/wolf3d/Hitler_Mech.gif

doesn't that picture bring back some memories?

 

[MGG=REVIEWS]

may favorite boss must have been.....erm the big troll thing on RE4.

 

[Choukou]

Quoted by end_game
One boss that sticks out in my mind is Legion, from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, as well as at least two of the hand-held CV games. For those of you who don't know Legion (especially since it was called something else in SOTN), it's basically a gigantic ball of corpses that drops zombies on you. You then have to kill it in segments until you finally reach its core, which shoots lasers at you.

I remember that mo fo. He was quite fun to fight, just because the idea behind him is so odd and it works out brilliantly.

Some of my favourite boss battles are from The Legend of Zelda games. They're always well designed and never involve you just swinging your sword at him to kill him, you always have to do something to subdue him and THEN slash the crap out of him xD

 

[Dubiousduke]

I looked at the title and expected something different...

Ridley from Metroid Prime was annoying.

 

[jaisimar_chelsea]

GLAdos not becoz of gameplay but becoz of the quirky one liners she kept throwing

 

[Haliwali]

I usually HATE boss fights, as they never add anything but a roadblock. However, the Hunters from the Halo series were actually pretty fun to fight (until you found out about that orange spot on their back, then they just got easy.) Live action RPGs do a good job, like KotOR 1&2, and The Elder Scrolls. Not so much the Turn based RPGs.

 

[SeniorDingDong]

I love boss fights, specialy in old shool games.

It was very dissapoiting that you didnt have any bossfinght in Oblivion, you just guide Martin through the hazard and he does the job for you. Its like jumping with Mario through Bowsers castle, only to see that the Princess gets saved by Toad.

A good boss fight have to :

a) look impressive
b) be tough
c) but have a fair attack pattarn
d) have a suprising after-death-return
e) reward the player for winning it

Check this Video, Contra 4, watch it until the end. This bossfight fullfills all that points, its awesome :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw4MymnEFPs

 

[Mister_moi]

But the boss that was most satisfying to beat was the Doom Dragon, the final boss from golden sun 2. It took me months to beat it (too lazy to go lvl up my characters ), mostly because he was such a lamer! djiin storn, djiin song, protective veil, cruel ruin. That freakin combo killed me ALL the freakin time.

Yeah, the bosses from goldensun 2 where fun and most of the times hard to beat. the one i like most was this weird creautre that could summon YOUR djinnis against you, he was a real pain in the bottom to beat but really fun to fight. the beast thing about goldensun is u can fight endlessly (until you die) against any monster u have seen in the link batle option. this alows you to fight alot of the bosses one after the other with sometimes normal monster, it even happens that you would have to fight the same boss 3 times in a row causing u to fight while almost dead and completly worn out.

other game bosses i like are those from any Zelda game (especially ganondorf in twilight princess), altough there mostly shooting or smashing up anything that looks like a giant eye. Bosses from NFS most wanted an carbon whre fun to beat to. Assasins creed's bosses or "targets" were fun to assasinate, assasinating random city gaurds and getting in a huge fight is fun to though.

 

[Watershed]

One boss that sticks out in my mind is Legion, from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, as well as at least two of the hand-held CV games. For those of you who don't know Legion (especially since it was called something else in SOTN), it's basically a gigantic ball of corpses that drops zombies on you. You then have to kill it in segments until you finally reach its core, which shoots lasers at you.

Yup, i've just finished portrait of ruin and legion made a reappearance. Always a good boss battle. Fighting death is another highlight for me. I'm a fan of boss fights when they're well designed and fun. I like the challenge, except when the boss is ridiculously cheap (e.g Jinpachi from Tekken 5. Why do all his moves stun you even if you block them? Why can he shoot 5 unblockable fireballs from his chest in rapid succession?)

Lets see, some other good ones...
-The fat guys from streets of rage who breathe fire and land on you if you try to throw them
-Last boss gannon from ocarina of time. Giant... thing. Two huge swords. No master sword. Ring of fire. Epic
-Bringing down 5 battleships in Z.O.E. 2 (Vector cannon, charging.... ready to fire)
-Ninja MGS
-Devil Tekken 2
-Shapeshifting boss (Yellow) from gunstar heroes

 

[end_boss]

Oh, your mention of Tekken actually brings up some of the WORST bosses I've encountered, both from King of Fighters games. I'm a fan of the series, but it's been a while since I've played it, so I forget their names. But one of the bosses is a guy who seems to be able to perform his full special attack at any time that he likes, without having to recharge it. It also comes out of nowhere, and is able to counter any move of yours, including your special attack. It's also unblockable, unless you happen to be standing in a specific section of the screen and are already blocking, and I get the feeling that that might have been an oversight by the programmers. In the following game in the series, he was back, and again, it took a lot of tries for me to defeat him, using whatever handicaps I possibly could. But this time around, he wasn't even the FINAL boss. The final boss was so cheap that he basically could kill you at will. Any time that you were fighting him and you weren't dead, it just meant that he was bored and was toying with you.

As much as I love the King of Fighters games, I HATE their bosses, because the game has NO CURVE WHATSOEVER. Instead, it's got a slight incline before hitting a brick wall with barbed wire. And it's on fire.

 

[Anarchemitis]

the Black Baron in Sly 3.