Boss Fights

[Clunks]

My Cardiacs t-shirt is snazzy as fuck.
You know this.
But I'll take it off for you if you want...

[incoming spoilers for Legend of Zelda's Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, Super Mario Galaxy's one and two and Final Fantasy's VII and IX]

From the two Legend of Zelda games I've beaten (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) I'd say they also do pretty good final bosses, even if it is, by some mind-bending abuse of conventional logic, always Ganondorf (perhaps all this has been explained properly in earlier incarnations, but it really fucking bothers me). In both cases, not only is there a suitable application of skills learned throughout the course of the game, but there's also a proper teaming up of Link with his principle support characters (Princess Zelda in both cases and also Midna in TP). I think it helps seal the idea that the characters actually mean something to each other, unlike, say, Mario and Peach.

I found Super Mario Galaxy 2 a really tough ride (I'm not great at games, though, I freely admit that), so I was bothered by just how much of a pushover Bowser is. Still. I was hoping the game would reveal some other uber-villain halfway through, but nope, that's not how it works. Interestingly, though, so much of the game (and over half of the stars you can get) are only accessible AFTER you beat him. It's as if beating him and saving Princess Peach is no longer the point of the games, which does make me wonder: what exactly does Mario want? He's beat that giant reptile and rescued that hideous Princess more times than he can count, and not even out of any real interest in her or it. I think he's just an arbitrary bastard who likes putting his life on the line for thrills. A more realistic interpretation of him would have him putting his hat on backwards and saying "yo" and "cowabunga" a lot.

Aside from playing JRPG's with their typical end game side-bosses that are tougher than the actual final boss (which I never understood), most boss-fights do seem out of place.

Don't know whether you mean that you don't know the thinking behind said optional bosses, or that you understand it but you disagree - if it's the latter, go ahead and ignore me. The idea behind the optional uber-bosses is to present an extra, tougher challenge for the more challenge- or completist-centred gamer, whilst not going too far out of their way to buttfuck those of us who just want to follow the story through and complete the fucking game. Really, it only annoys me when said bosses exist contrary to the plot - like Final Fantasy VII's Emerald and Ruby Weapon, both of whom really shouldn't, according to the story, exist at all. But I'm okay with Ozma from FFIX because it's alluded to in a vague way that sort of makes sense if you read the chocograph clues and its existence doesn't contradict the plot any. That said, the effect that helping all the friendly monsters IN ORDER has on him makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[sithhappens980]

I can't believe Yahtzee didn't mention the fact that all the "boss battles" in Assassin's Creed had nothing to do with stealth. Especially the last long-winded level and subsequent 10 or so bosses that ended it. You're supposed to be this quiet, mongoose-like Assassin with a sharp dagger in place of your ring finger, and that's what you spend your whole game using. Also there's an emphasis(read:Assassin's Creed) on being sneaky. WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, everybody knows where you are because you're assaulting a castle HEAD ON instead of sneaking around the front lines and later tea-bagging all those no-names that didn't even see you coming. Classic example of things you weren't expected to work on being thrown at you over and over again. Anyway.

 

[Dan Shive]

Yahtzee, you're confused. My shirt says I'm with stupid, not that I'm stupid. I trust this was an honest mistake.

 

[Lord Thodin]

Jokes on you, I dont wear cloths.

Anyway I think God Of War had some pretty good boss fights, especially since if you wanted to go on the hardest difficulty for all the marbles you were just asking for a rectum cleansing. The game gave you all the mechanics that were used to play the game, and it was at your disposal as to how you went about it. I could have killed every boss with a lightning bolt from afar. Would it be affective? No, but the point is I did it.

I agree though, that bosses are now just becoming a large health bar, and a formulated dodge strategy. Even a game as good as Arkham Asylum was extremely disappointing as far as boss fights.

 

[thenamelessloser]

Fable 2

Spoiler

had no final boss fight really and people complained a lot about it seemed. Yet, I thought in a sense it was rather interesting, for the game was all about style, not about substance, the game was meant to be pathetically easy, just a nice stylistic journey. The very fact the end of the game just has a regular human as the final antagonist that if you tried to listen to his speech someone else ended up killing him was probably the most profound part of the game... Come to think about it that maybe is why the not having a kickass stylish boss fight at the end of the game didn't work for it was maybe the only time the game really tried to do something that had substance over style I think...

But I suppose Alpha Protocol has a different, problem the game revolves around the idea of spy stuff and being slick with words yet one HAS to fight certain encounters in order to win the game. The game isn't just about looking kickass while fighting bad dudes, but about being able to have CHOICE of how others treat you which is ruined by no matter how you act you have to fight certain dudes. I think.

 

[DTWolfwood]

We need more games like Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[thepj]

Half Life 2 isn't exactly a good example for game designers to follow.

porqoui? it was a pretty good game. A lot of work went into it and I thought it was an exelent game.

 

[ewhac]

The final boss of Deus Ex was great because you never actually fight him directly. [ ... ]

SHHHH!!! Don't spoil it! I'm still playing it!

 

[PerceptiveMan]

We need more games like Shadow of the Colossus.

So the entire game can be nothing BUT tedious boss fights?

 

[CopperBoom]

I read this with Wii pajamas and a Wii sleep shirt, so when I got to that last paragraph... yeah.

 

[Arisato-kun]

Boy, he's gonna keep beating the "RPGs should be about universal choice for the player, about giving him unlimited options and letting him affect the world however he like" drum until people start marching, won't he?

In this case, though, it's bullshit.

Some skills are legitimately less useful than others. Some fights are unavoidable, and sometimes you have to use gunplay rather than stealth skills. If part of the "awesome-life simulation" aspect of an RPG is that you can make your character however you like, there's some realism in that if you chose to devote your energy to learning useless skills, you get bum-raped.

That's what I'm gonna call realism. If I decide to spend my time learning to be an expert in WoW playing, rather than an expert in Shotokan, those times when the latter would be useful, I'm getting my ass kicked. The irony of the Yahtzee-style RPG player (who wants to be able to do whatever he wants, and let his inner id run wild) is that they don't want any responsibility for what happens. Sure, they want the "this is so badassed" responsibility, but not the real "I pissed off all of my allies, and now I'm fucked" responsibility, or the "I faffed around for too long, and now the evil empire has won" responsibility, or even the "I decided to specialize in stealth, so I can't fight encounters where I have to fight straight-up". If RPGs are meant to be anything other than a simple succession of times when the player gets to feel awesome beating a boss only slightly more wimpy than he is, that's fine. But if RPGs are meant to actually be about role-playing, then there are going to be times when the suave, effete, faceman isn't going to be able to win in a shootout.

It's like how in most games the big bruiser with the massive guns, and even bigger firearms, isn't going to be able to pull off good social interaction.

Would it be nice if there were similar social "bosses" in such games, where you have to really work ten-times as hard at winning if you put your skills exclusively into gunplay? Absolutely, but no game should exist wherein you can "win" using any given "build", because that's not how life (even awesome, sci-fi, life) works.

I've got to completely agree with this. There are some skills that are going to be useless in any given situation. I think it's be more immersion breaking to be prepared for every single boss than if you had some that you had to defeat with different tactics than you're used to.

Let me use Demon's Souls as a prime example. Sure you can build your character any way you want but all those points you put into melee that took out the Phalanx boss aren't going to work on the physically resistant Flamelurker boss 3 stages from now.

A truly immersive game and a series of immersive boss fights will mirror life IMO. Some challenges are easier to tackle with your unique set of skills than others. I think gamers should just accept that these kinds of fights will happen and try to find a way to deal with them instead of just bitching about a short spike in difficulty.

 

[rezaDN1992]

Why as there need to be a reason for boss fights. I think they are much more fun then fighting 25 normal enemies.

 

[CopperBoom]

Awww, no Fun Space Game update? Too bad.

I don't know why people actually expected anything from it. Yahtzee has made some 2D games sure, but 3D is a completely different ball game. I highly doubt Yahtzee has the time and the motivation to ACTUALLY go anywhere with FSG. But then again I don't blame him, but if you have any hopes of ever seeing it completed get rid of them now.

I am keeping a torch lit for more from FSG:TG.

 

[Dexiro]

I like HL2's approach to boss fights. It doesn't conclude sections with "ok here's a boss", it sneaks one in. They might not even be at the end of a particular section, and whether they're a boss might be debatable, but you can still be sure that it's more challenging and testing what you've learnt so far.

Regular bosses are good for arcade'y games like Mario Galaxy but for more serious games i wish they'd be more discreet about it.

 

[SW9]

I'm wondering whether or not Yahtzee has played Geneforge at any point (yay fanboy post). I never played the full versions of any of those games for various reasons, but they make a point of letting the player invest in whatever skills they like.

For example in Geneforge 2, there's a section whereby you've got to go into a some infested mines and rescue a bunch of Serviles (depressed slave things); you can choose to charge in there, sword drawn, and slaughter everything that comes at you; you can create a bunch of monsters that'll fight your battles for you; you can bully the "overmind" or whatever it was called into turning the mine's automated defences back on; you can use your skills in mechanics to turn the automated defences back on yourself, and this all just from one section. These sorts of scenarios exist in most every part of the game I had access to.

Even once you'd found the Serviles, you could either take them out and tell their owner that they're an idiot for not looking after them, you could take them out and tell the owner that their Serviles are idiots and should be punished, or you could just kill the lot of them and blame it on the monsters.

Yeah, so that's what I thought after reading the first few paragraphs about why Alpha Protocol was lame; try Geneforge instead

i read your post in my mind with a simpsons esq nerd voice and it was so funny,GENEFORGE F*** YEAH!!

 

[RJ Dalton]

SHHHH!!! Don't spoil it! I'm still playing it!

Oops. Sorry.

 

[Seldon2639]

I've got to completely agree with this. There are some skills that are going to be useless in any given situation. I think it's be more immersion breaking to be prepared for every single boss than if you had some that you had to defeat with different tactics than you're used to.

Let me use Demon's Souls as a prime example. Sure you can build your character any way you want but all those points you put into melee that took out the Phalanx boss aren't going to work on the physically resistant Flamelurker boss 3 stages from now.

A truly immersive game and a series of immersive boss fights will mirror life IMO. Some challenges are easier to tackle with your unique set of skills than others. I think gamers should just accept that these kinds of fights will happen and try to find a way to deal with them instead of just bitching about a short spike in difficulty.

I'm even fine with saying there are some fights you simply cannot win. It'd take a massively more complicated game, but there are simply some battles you cannot be victorious in with your given set of skills. From my own life, I've spent more time learning the study of law than karate, so I lose to anyone who has trained for a solid decade. If I'm forced to fight someone like that, I'll lose plain and simple.

Same thing with any kind of complex computer repair. It wouldn't just be difficult, it'd be damned near impossible, and I might fail. I think failure should be possible in games which purport to be RPGs, both in the sense of failure which changes the game, and failure in the sense of "you screwed up, you can't win, you have to start over".

A really good RPG would be one in which I can do anything, but in which the consequences can fuck me over royal. If I'm a douche to my companions, and they leave, I'm now stuck unable to finish the game. If I put all my points into stealth and it turns out that there's a pitched gun-battle, I get hosed. That's how life works. I think we've been coddled too long, and so we mistake "choice" for "realism", and "just do whatever" for "roleplaying"

 

[thepj]

Boy, he's gonna keep beating the "RPGs should be about universal choice for the player, about giving him unlimited options and letting him affect the world however he like" drum until people start marching, won't he?

In this case, though, it's bullshit.

Some skills are legitimately less useful than others. Some fights are unavoidable, and sometimes you have to use gunplay rather than stealth skills. If part of the "awesome-life simulation" aspect of an RPG is that you can make your character however you like, there's some realism in that if you chose to devote your energy to learning useless skills, you get bum-raped.

That's what I'm gonna call realism. If I decide to spend my time learning to be an expert in WoW playing, rather than an expert in Shotokan, those times when the latter would be useful, I'm getting my ass kicked. The irony of the Yahtzee-style RPG player (who wants to be able to do whatever he wants, and let his inner id run wild) is that they don't want any responsibility for what happens. Sure, they want the "this is so badassed" responsibility, but not the real "I pissed off all of my allies, and now I'm fucked" responsibility, or the "I faffed around for too long, and now the evil empire has won" responsibility, or even the "I decided to specialize in stealth, so I can't fight encounters where I have to fight straight-up". If RPGs are meant to be anything other than a simple succession of times when the player gets to feel awesome beating a boss only slightly more wimpy than he is, that's fine. But if RPGs are meant to actually be about role-playing, then there are going to be times when the suave, effete, faceman isn't going to be able to win in a shootout.

It's like how in most games the big bruiser with the massive guns, and even bigger firearms, isn't going to be able to pull off good social interaction.

Would it be nice if there were similar social "bosses" in such games, where you have to really work ten-times as hard at winning if you put your skills exclusively into gunplay? Absolutely, but no game should exist wherein you can "win" using any given "build", because that's not how life (even awesome, sci-fi, life) works.

I've got to completely agree with this. There are some skills that are going to be useless in any given situation. I think it's be more immersion breaking to be prepared for every single boss than if you had some that you had to defeat with different tactics than you're used to.

Let me use Demon's Souls as a prime example. Sure you can build your character any way you want but all those points you put into melee that took out the Phalanx boss aren't going to work on the physically resistant Flamelurker boss 3 stages from now.

A truly immersive game and a series of immersive boss fights will mirror life IMO. Some challenges are easier to tackle with your unique set of skills than others. I think gamers should just accept that these kinds of fights will happen and try to find a way to deal with them instead of just bitching about a short spike in difficulty.

But would it be fun?

 

[JPH330]

So Yahtzee, how's the bar doing?