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Boss fights

Started by biggytitbo, November 10, 2018, 09:46:22 PM

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biggytitbo

Why do boss fights exist in games? For me they are the epitome of bad game design.

Most of the best games these days have some things in common. They give the player a degree of flexibility in how they want to approach the game. They have open or semi open worlds. You can handle any given situation in the game in a variety of ways - directly with combat, peripherally using stealth and traps, or just run away and hide. You can balance your character in a variety of ways that best suits your play style. If there is a tough part in the game, you can simply go around it if you don't want or aren't able to handle it directly - its an example of how well honed and sophisticated game design has become after 30 years of development.

Why then do so many games throw this out of the window by including 'boss fights'? Boss fights are nothing more than a dead end in a game that previously gave the players options about how they wanted to play. Let's stop the fun of playing this game and make you do something shit and tedious before you can start the fun again? And if you can't get by this, then we're going to end the game for you, sorry. WHY? It's terrible game design, and I can't fathom why so many games do it.

I've lost count of the number of games I've enjoyed playing until the designers decided to include a shitty 'boss fight' that was too boring, hard or badly designed to get past and I just called it a day and moved on to something else.

Basically if you put a boss fight in your game that's a dead end, you are shit at making games.


Lemming

You're talking only about games that otherwise let you avoid or minimise combat, right? In more straightforward games, creative boss fights are some of the best levels (ie Crash Bandicoot 1).

I get the feeling you were thinking of Deus Ex: Human Revolution when you wrote the OP, and it's definitely an example of godawful boss fights being jarringly forced upon players, many of whom will have intentionally avoided all combat up until that point.

The original Deus Ex has some really cool boss fights though, mainly because you can avoid or escape from all of them bar one, and the game responds accordingly to whether or not you killed the bosses.

Here's a cool video to remind everyone of one or two great boss fights, but mainly some absolutely shit ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv5Wmb7Ga7U

New Jack

I haven't liked a boss fight in years. As bad as levels in action games that take all your weapons off you halfway so you have a level or two of fighting bare-bones missing all the power ups or guns you've accrued thus far.

Boss fights make sense in Mario and Sonic. Deus Ex? Get tae fuck, son

Often the best parts of shmups but generally I agree, even with Dark Souls and Bloodborne I prefer making my way through the areas than fighting the bosses, though they're better in those games than pretty much anything else.

Cuellar

I like getting really stuck on a boss then going on YouTube and finding a speed run of the game where the guy beats it in 2 seconds by just dodging and making the boss fall off a cliff, killing him instantly.

biggytitbo

Yes human revolution is a notorious offender, but basically any game where there is a boss fight that acts as a dead end in the game. I really enjoyed horizon zero dawn but it did unfortunetly rely on unavoidable boss battles a few too many times, especially the frozen wilds expansion. Another game I was really enjoying recently was the evil within 2, until an unavoidable and badly designed boss battle ended the fun. Assassin's Creed origins is another one that killed the game with a boss fight I couldn't be bothered to slug through because it was too long and boring.


I think its just laziness on the part of game developers.

New Jack

What do you mean by dead end though? It suggests the Deus Ex style where there SHOULD be multiple ways around it but there aren't. I don't think all games should be emergent, or multiple paths available and you go in with that expectation though. You will get disappointed.

So when it's not congruent it sticks out. Dishonored 2 had a boss fight at the end sort of like this. Which to me is a different, worse issue than, say, Doom 2016 having bosses you have to shoot because it's a shooty game

I do think the concept is a bit naff these days though, because it forces a narrative conflict. I mean, most games with then are action games in some sense, so conflict should happen, even fighty conflict makes sense, but it absolutely has to work with the existing gameplay, and I dislike bullet sponges as it's lazy. Do proper AI for difficulty, not hit points.

You sound like you're using dead end as 'unavoidable' which is basically 'no boss battles' which is fair enough but you might have a more nuanced gist I'm missing. Couldn't be arsed with Horizon, any other examples?

What is a boss fight you like?

Zetetic

Playing War of the Chosen right now, I choose fights with the Chosen.

They're integrated with the mechanics and story in a meaningful way but manage to feel threatening .They do change the rules of combat but so do other enemies in the game, and they mostly do so in ways that are also available to the player at least some of the time.

If I'm trying to find a complaint, it's that - so far at least - one of the three feels like far more of a threat than the others.

QuoteSo when it's not congruent it sticks out. Dishonored 2 had a boss fight at the end sort of like this.
Hmm. Different approaches are viable, and there's a particular alternative available to the player other than head-on confrontation. But it's not very obvious and perhaps a bit too fiddly?

New Jack

Quote from: Zetetic on November 11, 2018, 12:04:15 AM

Hmm. Different approaches are viable, and there's a particular alternative available to the player other than head-on confrontation. But it's not very obvious and perhaps a bit too fiddly?

Hmm, maybe it was because I had high chaos, and got that ending, but the final boss fight seemed to be, well, a fight, a proper full on scrap.

I do want to do a play through of it as a non maniac, so perhaps I will soften my stance on that one! It did seem really, well, linear.

Thursday

Could swear I've read the opening post or something very similar to it before.

Kelvin

I like boss fights, generally. In the best instances, they act like punctuation or a crescendo at the end of something more deliberate; testing your skills in a high pressure setting. It's tense and exciting to walk into a room with something much bigger and more visually impressive than your standard enemies. it acts like a reward and incentive, not to mention a way to change up the pacing.

Good bosses have a bit of personality, too. Not necessarily in the sense of being characters, but in the sense that they have presence; Queen Gohma, Giant Dodongo, Phantom Ganon, Twinrova and Ganon, are all much more memorable than bosses like the Jellyfish monster or that Water Tentacle in Ocarina of Time. Not because they're challenging, but because they look cool and are revealed in interesting, atmospheric ways. As with most Zelda bosses, they aren't particularly interesting on a gameplay level, but, as I said before, they act like satisfying crescendos to the dungeon you've just completed. Your battle, and success, are more like a victory lap or reward for solving all those slow, methodical puzzles.       

New Jack

Massive counterpoint to this thread: Shadow of the Colossus is almost all boss fights and it. Is. So. Superb. I'm. Punctuating. It. Oddly.

nedthemumbler

I both hate and love the boss fights in MGS2.  Incredibly stressful but occasionally, when all goes well, hella gratifying.

Blue Jam

Yes, boss fights can get to fuck. DX:HR is a notorious offender here- boss fights do NOT belong in a stealth game, they're like driving bits in non-driving gamed. I'd throw Dead Space 2 in there too- I had been looking forward to playing what was supposedly a big influence on Prey (2017) but it was too annoying to finish. I never got past that big pterodactyl thing and those stone babies.

Not only are they frustrating, they made games very predictable- oh look, I've made it to a vast room with a load of open space and a few supplies scattered around the periphery, I wonder what's going to happen here...

PlanktonSideburns

Mega man x had some great boss fights - had me stamping my feet with rage then jumping for joy. Proper cathartic entertainment



Mister Six

The worst boss fights are the ones that make you do the same thing three or fivr times for progressively longer periods. There should be a pop-up after the first round that says "Okay you clearly know what's going on here - do you want to skip ahead?" so you don't have to struggle on with the same shit for another ten minutes.

Utter Shit

Quote from: Mister Six on November 12, 2018, 03:16:05 PM
The worst boss fights are the ones that make you do the same thing three or fivr times for progressively longer periods.

I don't agree, the worst boss fight is Ruby Weapon, bye.

Utter Shit

I'm a bit confused by the dislike of boss fights, at least in combat games. I mean...aren't they necessary for giving games a feeling of crescendo?

I definitely agree with the thought that bosses' powers should be more impressive than "takes loads more bullets to kill them" - just off the top of my head, the teleporting baddie in the first Metal Gear Solid was a great example of a boss that felt like a scarier and more difficult prospect than everything that had come before him - but I don't see what the alternative to bosses is...it wouldn't be much of a climax to a game/portion of a game if you just defeated your millionth 'normal' opponent and then it ends.

Chollis

Just because you're shit at them! Love boss fights me. Remember that one in Lylat Wars on the N64 where you think you've killed him and he's like "you're too strong...I admit defeat" there's a brief lull then he spins around and he's back worse than ever! Then you defeat him again and he's definitely dead. Not sure why that one always sticks in my mind when I think of boss fights (which is often)

madhair60


BlodwynPig

I don't play games, but the last game I played was Apocalypse from 1998 with Bruce Willis. Never got past the final boss (The Beast or President of the U.S.A).
Lock and Load
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujq93O0MvBE

Welcome to Paradise

I know Amygdala from Bloodborne better than I know some of my best mates.

AsparagusTrevor

Some of my most frustrating gaming experiences have come from boss fights, especially ones in fighting games. Recently playing Injustice 2 rekindled my hatred for the lazily overpowered boss, Brainiac can kill you in 2-3 unblockable moves so you have to throw aside any skill you've built up over the story-mode and just spam projectiles. This is one major thing that ruins bosses - laziness. They should be the culmination of everything you've learned so far, not a scummy, overpowered chore.

Another recent one that frustrated me was Sonic Mania, brilliant levels which captured the fun of the originals, awful bosses that missed the point of the originals.

Also, fuck Jack and his chainsaw in RE7.

greenman

Quote from: The Boston Crab on November 10, 2018, 10:14:05 PM
Often the best parts of shmups but generally I agree, even with Dark Souls and Bloodborne I prefer making my way through the areas than fighting the bosses, though they're better in those games than pretty much anything else.

Although I tend to think bosses become less interesting as shoot em ups become bullet hell "shumps".

Not for me. I'm thinking predominantly about bullet hell bosses in fact. I'm not interested in the ones where you need to just learn the safe places of the screen and the like. I want to wriggle my way through infinite cascading curtains of bright pink dots holding fire constantly.