Boss Fights
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Slightly off topic, but i find it seriously depressing that so many of you morons commented that you either like your clothes or that you aren't wearing any...
1- You're a moron.
2- If you're not wearing clothes then you're a creepy moron.
3- Maybe you don't need to buy new clothes, but i sure as hell hope you go out and buy some originality. Seriously... it gets old after the firs group of morons have commented about their state of wearing clothes or believing themselves to have more fashion sense than they do. You're not funny! You're a moron.
In conclusion, the majority of you people suck.
Also, on the note of boss fights, i also find it amusing that after yahtzee has quoted an example of a good boss (ie Half Life 2) you then go "i totally agree with you yahtzee, and HF2 sucked."
But hey what do i know, the bosses i have most enjoyed and felt a sense of accomplishment from are in World of Warcraft.
1- You're a moron.
2- If you're not wearing clothes then you're a creepy moron.
3- Maybe you don't need to buy new clothes, but i sure as hell hope you go out and buy some originality. Seriously... it gets old after the firs group of morons have commented about their state of wearing clothes or believing themselves to have more fashion sense than they do. You're not funny! You're a moron.
In conclusion, the majority of you people suck.
Also, on the note of boss fights, i also find it amusing that after yahtzee has quoted an example of a good boss (ie Half Life 2) you then go "i totally agree with you yahtzee, and HF2 sucked."
But hey what do i know, the bosses i have most enjoyed and felt a sense of accomplishment from are in World of Warcraft.
It depends on the game, some games they make sense, like a Sword and Sorcery game where the last boss is a huge bloody dragon that you've been building up to stabbing in the eyeball, but in games where it's just another bloke in normal clothes that can some how take 5 million bullets to the face and still keep jabbering on is where things just get silly.
Until they work out a way to program an self contained self reinventing game (they'll never do that, any game that can "go off the rails" like that would mean they have less to sell later) you'll never get the kind of rule playing you want outside of sitting down with some other people and playing a pen and paper game.JimJamJahar said:
I enjoy both types of games, sometimes I want a story RPG like Mass Effect / Dragon Age where I've got choices but it's still "save the world at the end of the day", other times I really enjoy a good old fashioned pen and paper game where you can go totally off the rails and do things that no programmer could imagine you doing (like inciting a civil war in a country we were suppose to be saving... ending up with half the main NPCs dead... the DM looked like he was going to pop a blood vessel during that session... poor guy... so much work wasted)
Sometimes boss fights are awesome, sometimes they feel like the devs just crowbarred them in for the hell of it - Dawn of War 2 anybody? I didn't mind the boses in Alpha Protocol though, never had too much trouble with any of them. Except Darcy towards the end. Fucker was spamming grenades like they grow on trees. I even died almost immediately after I'd killed him! Thank fuck for auto checkpoint saving, there may have been some controller throwing going on otherwise!
The Boss fight with the Prophet of Truth in Halo 2 was by far the most rewarding and thrilling boss fight to date. I mean he just floated around shooting that big ass laser at you and you had to literally 'board' him and punch his face in multiple times till he uttered a final scream of pain and his head went limp rather pathetically. If that's not epic, I don't know what is.
wow, that ending hit hard, because I'm sitting here by myself wearing an "I'm with stupid" shirt. I'm doing laundry. don't judge me >_>
With fans complaining and expecting crap that they arent really entitled to;
It happened the same way with the Devil May Cry franchise. The very first one was super bad-ass and cool.
But some gammer, "Waaa, Waaa. Its to haaaaard!" (insert whiny, snivley voice over here).
Then DMC2 came about and guess what? "Waaa, Waaaaaaa-blargh--aaaaaaAA! Now it's way to eeeeasy! I hate the world and I'm going to slit my wrists in a bathtub full of ice!" (insert whiny voice again).
And when DMC3 came you you had lots and lots of various option on difficulty levels.
It happened the same way with the Devil May Cry franchise. The very first one was super bad-ass and cool.
But some gammer, "Waaa, Waaa. Its to haaaaard!" (insert whiny, snivley voice over here).
Then DMC2 came about and guess what? "Waaa, Waaaaaaa-blargh--aaaaaaAA! Now it's way to eeeeasy! I hate the world and I'm going to slit my wrists in a bathtub full of ice!" (insert whiny voice again).
And when DMC3 came you you had lots and lots of various option on difficulty levels.
As the resident "System Shock" fanboy, I nonetheless have to agree with Yahtzee on "SS2". The "repair" skill was absolutely useless, for example, whereas the "Maintainance" and "Hack" ones were essential. (I'd love to know if anybody has ever beaten SS2 on "Hard" or "Impossible" difficulty without putting at least three points into "Hack" early on.)
The "Exotic Weapons" skill was useless until the Operations level (almost halfway through the game) because you didn't get the crystal shard until that point. Heavy and Energy weapons were extremely specialised, whereas the "Standard" weapons included the two best weapons in the game, easily - the versatile pistol and the assault rifle - and also used the most plentiful ammunition. Standard weapons could be used on robots and annelids equally effectively (unlike any other weapon class). Yeah, it's fun one-shotting the Heart of the Many with a viral proliferator, but there's really no practical use for it before that point.
And I've only just recently got used to the psi-amp, after several playthroughs. It's a bit fiddly to use and you need to know what powers are useful and what are useless. The healing ones sound useful, for example, but there are so many health pick-ups throughout the game that they turn out to be something of a waste of cybernetic modules.
And stats? There's zero point in having anything more than three agility or endurance points, even on the very hard difficulty levels. Strength is essential for the heavy weapons, armour, melee, and just basically carrying stuff about. Psi is either essential or useless depending on your build. And Cyb is essential for a decent hacker build (which as has already been established is just about any useful build in the game.)
Incidentally, I bought a bunch of older games and am now playing through Deus Ex. Unfortunately the graphics really are seriously ugly, to the point that it's actually somewhat off-putting.
Half Life? Didn't have any problems with the boss fights myself, although the giant spider thing annoyed me. It seemed like a gigantic ammo drain.
The "Exotic Weapons" skill was useless until the Operations level (almost halfway through the game) because you didn't get the crystal shard until that point. Heavy and Energy weapons were extremely specialised, whereas the "Standard" weapons included the two best weapons in the game, easily - the versatile pistol and the assault rifle - and also used the most plentiful ammunition. Standard weapons could be used on robots and annelids equally effectively (unlike any other weapon class). Yeah, it's fun one-shotting the Heart of the Many with a viral proliferator, but there's really no practical use for it before that point.
And I've only just recently got used to the psi-amp, after several playthroughs. It's a bit fiddly to use and you need to know what powers are useful and what are useless. The healing ones sound useful, for example, but there are so many health pick-ups throughout the game that they turn out to be something of a waste of cybernetic modules.
And stats? There's zero point in having anything more than three agility or endurance points, even on the very hard difficulty levels. Strength is essential for the heavy weapons, armour, melee, and just basically carrying stuff about. Psi is either essential or useless depending on your build. And Cyb is essential for a decent hacker build (which as has already been established is just about any useful build in the game.)
Incidentally, I bought a bunch of older games and am now playing through Deus Ex. Unfortunately the graphics really are seriously ugly, to the point that it's actually somewhat off-putting.
Half Life? Didn't have any problems with the boss fights myself, although the giant spider thing annoyed me. It seemed like a gigantic ammo drain.
I've not played DMC myself, but I like games where you can set different settings to different aspects of the game as regards to difficulty. This was a feature of the original "System Shock" that I missed in SS2. I'd like to play on "Impossible" level but with "Easy" or "Medium" level's cybernetic module costs, for example. Why not have the option to use the extra upgrades you can buy on the easier difficulty settings against the stronger, more plentiful monsters of the harder ones?awatkins said:
I think boss fights in most games don't make sense. Okay in Doom, Duke Nukem and even Gears of War, the massive bullet absorbing death sponges make sense, but in games that pertain to realism it doesn't work. In both the Assassin's Creed games the bosses near the end take an obscene amount of damage (but I guess there is a large supernatural element to those game). What's worse, is when a game that could have an awesome boss fight, have you either kill them in two shots or pulling levers to kill them. The Darkness could have had something special but the last two boss fights consist of killing minions and pull switches, and then a canned animation of shooting some fat guy.
It's disturbing how many people just admitted reading in The Escapist in the nude. I feel slightly disgusted now.
On topic, boss battles never bothered me in platformers and RPGs very much, but in FPSs or any game that claims to be realistic, the "human or humanoid boss that absorbs a billion grenades to the face" feels like an insult to my intelligence. At least make him wear a forcefield, or give us a ridiculously big beast to shoot down with rockets. It's more a scripted set-piece than an actual battle, but as long as it carries the same emotional punch and sense of resolution, it counts.
On topic, boss battles never bothered me in platformers and RPGs very much, but in FPSs or any game that claims to be realistic, the "human or humanoid boss that absorbs a billion grenades to the face" feels like an insult to my intelligence. At least make him wear a forcefield, or give us a ridiculously big beast to shoot down with rockets. It's more a scripted set-piece than an actual battle, but as long as it carries the same emotional punch and sense of resolution, it counts.
I think the weirdest part is when you think you're building up to a boss fight, and you're really not. Let me toss this in spoiler tags (relates to Army of Two and the sequel)
I hate games that advertise playing your own way and don't do it. Or games that advertise stealth and then make you do these utterly ridiculous confrontations with boss fights. Don't get me wrong: I like ass kicking fight scenes and brutal shootouts, but if I am offered stealth, I want the option of stealth. If I'm told I can do things the way I want, I want to do them the way I want. It doesn't seem too outlandish of me to want what is advertised.
I play SHMUPS and Arcade-style games and I enjoy them. Like Yahtzee, I think that it needs to fit the game. I don't oppose boss fights, but if you give me the choice of stealth and drop a big combat roadblock in the game, you are doing it wrong.
Army of Two, I expected you were going to kill Dalton in a shootout. Clyde is definitely a "boss fight," though he's still droppable in a couple of hits. Then there's a cutscene where you drop Dalton. MEH. I know the DLC has an alternate last stage, but still. Army of Two: TFD doesn't even have a boss fight, per se. Though you do fight two heavy shotguns and a heavy grenadier. Still, I expected a shootout with Jonah, boss fight or not. It might have been cheesey if he was decked out with a chaingun and armour, but it would have made sense in perspective.
I hate games that advertise playing your own way and don't do it. Or games that advertise stealth and then make you do these utterly ridiculous confrontations with boss fights. Don't get me wrong: I like ass kicking fight scenes and brutal shootouts, but if I am offered stealth, I want the option of stealth. If I'm told I can do things the way I want, I want to do them the way I want. It doesn't seem too outlandish of me to want what is advertised.
I play SHMUPS and Arcade-style games and I enjoy them. Like Yahtzee, I think that it needs to fit the game. I don't oppose boss fights, but if you give me the choice of stealth and drop a big combat roadblock in the game, you are doing it wrong.
I beat system shock 2 on hard at first run without cheats.
Skill ups went into "normal" guns, agility, strength, and hacking. There was plenty of ammo for the assault rifle and you could switch between anti-personnel and armor-penetration for different types of enemies. I think I also put enough points into exotics to use the crystal shard, not sure.
Bosses whose only characteristic is a massive amount of hp=bad, bosses where you have to do something interesting to win (zelda, resident evil 4)=good.
Skill ups went into "normal" guns, agility, strength, and hacking. There was plenty of ammo for the assault rifle and you could switch between anti-personnel and armor-penetration for different types of enemies. I think I also put enough points into exotics to use the crystal shard, not sure.
Bosses whose only characteristic is a massive amount of hp=bad, bosses where you have to do something interesting to win (zelda, resident evil 4)=good.