Terrible article about boss battles

[FuckLiefeldGiveMeChew]

A poorly-written series that comes to the unanimous conclusion, "boss battles all suck with maybe a few minor exceptions." Its title implies a debate on the topic, but since everyone comes to the same conclusion for the same stupid reasons, that is misleading. Comments tore this shit apart, pointing out plenty of classic games with great boss battles like Zelda, Metal Gear, Little King's Story, No More Heroes, Metroid, Contra, Shin Megami Tensei and Ninja Gaiden. https://www.pcgamer.com/boss-fights-good-or-bad/

 

[Big Wrangle]

Good in MMOS

 

[mbv123]

You could post some excerpts because I sure as hell ain't giving those cucks any clicks on their site.

 

[Big Wrangle]

I can do that, generally speaking each paragraph is like someone's cents on it.

Samuel Roberts: Good (but only in the right games)

Boss fights end up in all sorts of games where they don't really have a place. I didn't enjoy any of Resident Evil 7's boss battles, for example, since each fight was basically just a bullet sponge, and this detracted from the game's otherwise imposing atmosphere.
I asked this week's question about boss battles, though, because I just beat a tricky one in the Devil May Cry HD Collection, and that's one game where they definitely have a place. The challenge adds a lot of drama, and they're built to be taken apart by skilled players. There's an art to how they're executed.
The same applies to Platinum's Bayonetta, too. Developers just need to offer the player a satisfying solution to beating them, based on what kind of game they're making. That's why talking a boss down in Deus Ex: Human Revolution's director's cut makes so much more sense than just shooting them to death.

Tom Senior: Good (in the right games)

I thought I was a boss fight hater. Even in great games boss fights can be awful. The Batman Arkham games are a prime example. The combat system is brilliant at letting you take on hordes of thugs, but it's terrible when you have to punch one big thing many times. I groan inwardly when I see a massive health bar appear, knowing that I'll probably have to spend the next 30 minutes or so whittling it down.
But then I played Dark Souls. The bosses are works of art. They are tragic, monstrous, brilliantly soundtracked, and challenging. I remember the euphoria of taking down the gaping dragon—a creature driven by hunger, whose entire stomach is split open in a gigantic mouth. I remember the tell for his charge move, and how to long-roll left to get into a good counter-attack position. This is what the best boss fights do. They imprint themselves on your memory and give you memorable moments of victory to savour long after the game is done.

The first two offer alright points albeit with lack of articulation, the rest are where the article goes to die.

Phil Savage: Mostly bad

Dark Souls is good and all, but it's definitely the exception to the rule. The rule being: basically all boss fights are rubbish and bad. Resident Evil 4, for instance, is an all-time classic that revolutionised an ageing series and redefined what an action game could be. It's inventive and elegant in many things, but not in its boss fights. Its boss fights are the same as pretty much every boss fight. A big thing attacks you while you shoot the pulsating maracas of flesh that denote its weak spot until its limbs fly off and the process repeats with a different conveniently glowing patch of flesh.
A good boss fight should challenge you to perfect the systems you've been practicing throughout the game. Few games actually do this. Weirdly, one that does is Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Missing Link DLC. Its final boss is essentially a puzzle room that challenges you to reach the end by using that games regular systems. But it was specifically designed in response to DX:HR's non-DLC boss fights, which are all hot garbage.
(Actually, I also like DmC's Fox News-esque boss sequence, because it's basically edgy sixth-form level satire made manifest. The fight itself isn't great, but god damn it's stylish in a petulant teen kinda way.)

Andy Kelly: Bad (with a few exceptions)

If I'm judging boss battles by the majority, then they suck. I get no pleasure from learning repetitive patterns and exploiting them, and that's what most boss fights boil down to. But the annoying thing is, when boss battles are good, I love them. Pretty much every boss in the Metal Gear Solid series is memorable in some way, forcing you to use your imagination to beat them—and there are often multiple interesting ways to do it.
But mostly it's just some big, dumb ogre with ten times as much HP as a regular enemy, who calls in minions when you deal enough damage, or attacks faster as their health bar dwindles. Even great games are guilty of having shit boss fights, and it seems to be one aspect of games that hasn't gotten better over the years. Bosses work best when they break up the flow of regular play and force you to play differently, but they rarely offer that.

This one drops all pretenses and becomes a full-on whiny bitch

Andy Chalk: Real bad

Bad. BAD. God, they're so bad. "Hey, are you enjoying the game? Engaging with the characters, having fun with the mechanics? Well too bad, EAT THIS." And then it's a hard switch to an infuriating garbage-storm that serves absolutely no purpose except to test your commitment: How much shit are you willing to swallow so that you can get on with what you were actually doing? I cheated through Painkiller, raged about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and straight-up quit High Hell (which I was really digging) because of that bullshit. The only good boss fight I've ever had was in Planescape: Torment and that was a conversation.
Man, I'm mad just thinking about it. Boss fights are the worst.

And finally...

Steven Messner: Good in MMOs

At the risk of accidentally drawing Tim's ire, I will bring the MMO perspective here and say that boss fights are a universal good. I mean, MMO dungeons and raids are basically boss fight gauntlets, and it's what makes those activities so damn fun. There's obviously a lot of salt and tears that comes with running a raid boss for the first time, but MMO boss fights bring something to the table that you don't see in any other genre: coordination.
I love the idea that every member of your party has a crucial role to play in a fight, and the way a well-designed boss fight layers mechanics upon mechanics. You're not just tanking the boss, you're tanking him while managing a stacking debuff that requires a timely tank swap, soaking fatal hits with active mitigation abilities, positioning the boss so that he doesn't accidentally cleave the party, and taunting any monsters that spawn so they don't curb stomp the healer—it's a lot to remember and it gives boss fights this frantic, terrifying pacing. But when you master that same encounter, it suddenly becomes a beautiful group choreography as each player moves perfectly to the rhythm of the boss' abilities.
I probably shouldn't have written this days after downing Aggramar, the final boss of WoW's current raid. I'm riding a potent high right now.

 

[Roguey]

Get good, chumps.

That being said, there are some games that either are or would be better off without boss fights.

 

[Machocruz]

Their sample size sucks.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

There's a certain method to doing boss battles right.

This strip, for example, hits a little too close to home on the topic:

The first boss should be evil and stupid. He's the one that prepares you for what's to come. Also, wasting time on the boss's backstory or motivations is pointless, he's there to present a Big Threat early on, that must be destroyed.

As for examples, I'm naming an interesting case from 30 years ago:

This is the first boss in The New Zealand Story. He floats up and down on the left-hand side, while shooting spiky balls from his blowhole that fall everywhere. He's also immune to all damage, there's no weak spot to hit anywhere.

So what to do?

In a slightly contradictory move, the player must just survive the boss's attacks until he grows weary, swims forward and tries to bite the player. The whale, being the greedy bastard that he is, ends up swallowing the poor kiwi whole.

You know what happens everytime a heavily-armed hero is swallowed whole by a big dumb monster, don't you?

Something like this

That's a moment you're not gonna forget anytime soon, are you?

Boss fights should also be memorable, you took on something bigger and uglier than yourself, and emerged victorious. It's one of the fundamental urges of gaming: To beat the unbeatable foe. Anyone trying to reason that boss fights are boring or needless because... well, whatever reason... has either hit upon a badly-designed boss, or just plain sucks as a gamer and needs to wash all that soy out of their system.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

lol @ pcgamer mostly referencing console ports when trying to make a point. Still, it just adds to the evidence that the average game "journalist" is shit at games. The quote "Hey, are you enjoying the game? Engaging with the characters, having fun with the mechanics? Well too bad, EAT THIS." pretty much sums it up for me. This bastard can't really be enjoying the mechanics if he thinks boss fights ruin them. Although there are cases where a boss fight doesn't have anything to do with everything up to that point, but they generally just add a twist or are a bit more involved than what you've been doing to that point. This guy sounds like he just wants the dullest mushiest gameplay possible.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You know what happens everytime a heavily-armed hero is swallowed whole by a big dumb monster, don't you?

They are left contemplating the lack of digestive fluids in the monster's body and wondering who does the eating for him?

 

[Jokzore]

Good in MMOS

In other words ''a boss fight is fun when I'm being carried through it by other people''. As with all other things gaem-jurnalism related -- all problems stem from the simple fact that game journalists aren't gamers.

 

[Ash]

The retards that hate bossfights are the same retards that hate challenge and gameplay. Game journos at it again.

 

[taxalot]

Get rid of battles altogether.

Life is Strange is the future of gaming.

You'll see.

 

[agentorange]

Thing are good when they are done well. Things are bad when they are done poorly. Damn...never thought of this thanks journos

 

[Durandal]

Come on guys, you should try it to understand from their perspective. They've barely played any games released past 2007, of course their boss fight experiences are going to be filled with shit. It's not like gaming actually existed past 2007, hence why they're free to generalize bosses as a whole.

 

[FreshCorpse]

I think the worst thing about boss fights is that some developers seem to think they are mandatory. Deus Ex: HR comes up a lot in the article and even putting the bosses aside it is not a great game. However, the bosses in DE:HR were completely atrocious and even in the remaster they remain downright bad. They add nothing and I don't really know why anyone developing that thought they had to be there (IIRC they were developed by a different studio? Am I remembering that right?)

When I think of the memorable bosses in Zelda, Ori and the Blind Forest, Metal Gear Solid (were they were better than most of the game), Metroid etc all the bosses had a unique, fun mechanic and merited inclusion on that basis, not because there had to be a boss at the end of the level. If they're not there to do something cool just don't put any in. The other side of this is that cuphead is both really popular and a big commercial success and it's exclusively boss fights. So there.

 

[Roguey]

Deus Ex: HR comes up a lot in the article and even putting the bosses aside it is not a great game. However, the bosses in DE:HR were completely atrocious and even in the remaster they remain downright bad. They add nothing and I don't really know why anyone developing that thought they had to be there (IIRC they were developed by a different studio? Am I remembering that right?)

They were contracted yes. They're presumably there because Deus Ex had non-boss fight boss fights, and they sought to "improve" on that.

 

[FreshCorpse]

It always amazes me at the bizarre things people try to contract out. I wonder if Nintendo ever thought about outsourcing boss fights to another division/company. Doubt it