Profound Sadness: IGN on Boss Fights

Profound Sadness is a quote from Guy in Super Street Fighter 4 when he's depressed that he gets his ass kicked.

I've just now decided that it's also going to be the recurring theme of my opinions on articles that I strongly disagree with and think are stupid. Case in point, this following article from IGN.

Boss Fights: A Relic of a Bygone Era?

Basically, this guy explains why he seems to think that boss fights are a thing of the past and should be excluded from a good amount of games from here on out. I personally think that this is an idiotic thing to suggest. Boss fights are my personal favourite parts of many, many games as they essentially are climactic battles that test your abilities to their fullest and your ability to analyze your enemy. You need to be good to deal with a boss, or in some cases you just need to be relatively smart...but either way, they're good challenges that have been around for a long time and for a good reason.

Let's look at some excerpts, shall we?

The current console generation allows developers to create beautifully realised worlds, seemingly without limitations. From the gritty (and sometimes zombie-infested) wild west of Red Dead: Redemption to the space-zombie-infested spacecraft of Dead Space, games have never felt more alive and rich. Yet in spite of the advancements made by the gaming industry over the past 20-plus years, one vestigial element of old-school gaming remains: the big, the bold, the dumb… the boss fight.

Barf. To generalize boss fights and suggest that they're all big, bold and dumb is big, bold and dumb in itself. This part of the article is suggesting that boss fights are pretty much holding back current-generation games from reaching their full potential or something, and that boss fights are some form of limitation created by the game designers who must be idiots. This is simply not the case. Boss fights, when done correctly, amplify and exemplify the abilities of a game studio to create something unique and challenging that isn't quite the same as everything else so far, up to that point in the game. For an old example, I'll take Super Metroid (because of course I'm going to use Metroid in every article I can): I can't imagine the game without the enormous, 2-screen tall monstrosity known as Kraid. Rather than simply blast away, you need to analyze him and figure out his weak point, figure out how to expose that weak point, be able to accurately blast said weak point...and all the while dodging projectiles. It's tense, and it requires all of your attention...you need to know what you're doing.

The B&B Corps from Metal Gear Solid 4 sure didn't offer anything unique and interesting! Oh...wait...

For a new example, well there's the recently-played Shadows of the Damned: my housemate and I both agree that this game had amazing boss battles where you need to watch your enemy carefully and figure out when and how to strike, all the while dodging some intense attacks. You need to be aware of not only what you're doing, but also everything else that happens to be going on and how you can successfully proceed in the fight. When done well, bosses are kinda like...midterms or exams, I find, if you want to use a school comparison. Use what you've learned and gathered thus far in the game, and take down something that encompasses much (if not all) of it. To say that massive, beautiful worlds can be created, but to take out the really interesting boss encounters that throw something unique and new at the player is pretty much hypocritical and saying that developers should actually limit themselves anyway. "Man, your imaginations are limitless!...but if you could limit it a bit and not code any really cool bosses, that would be great!" Get bent.

While it is easy for a game to fall into the boss fight cliché, some games take it one step further and absolutely wallow in it. Three words: phased boss fights. Popularised and subsequently run into the ground by series' such as Final Fantasy, these boss fights take everything fundamentally lazy and boring about the boss fight and turn it up to 11.

The protagonist has confronted their nemesis, a battle ensues, the nemesis falls and appears to be defeated. If only it were that easy. Out of nowhere a bigger, more angry and deformed version of the nemesis is back for more punishment. Rinse and repeat until the developer runs out of ideas or you lose your will to play. You only need to look at the final boss fights of Final Fantasy XIII to see how played out this cliché has become. If a game hasn't been able to establish a credible and compelling threat during its first 20+ hours, rehashing the final boss five times with outlandish visual additions and ridiculous names isn't going to help.

Man, I don't know about this guy. Phased boss fights are pretty much a mainstay, and if you ever go into a boss anymore without expecting there to be 2 or 3 phases then you're pretty much a nooblet. These phases are quite often radically different from one another and they force you to adapt quickly to a new situation, sometimes requiring you to employ an entirely new set of skills to topple your opponent. Being able to think quickly in the face of a new and different danger is a pretty cool thing in a video game, and it proves that you really know what you're doing. I always liked a shift in challenge, but maybe that's slowly getting phased out. Also, as much as I didn't really enjoy FFXIII, I didn't feel like the phases of the final boss were just rehashed and similar...they definitely differed from one another enough to make me need to change my methods up. He uses Twilight Princess as an example of having a shitty last boss...which I don't necessarily agree with. It was easy, but the whole game was, so it's not the battle that's at fault for that...you just don't ever take enough damage in TP to make anything much of a threat. The final confrontation with Ganondorf in Twilight Princess was quite varied if not a little rushed, and you had to use tons of different attack methods that you had learned through the entire game to finally topple him. Swordplay, wolf form, and horseback riding were all used and I think that although Zelda: TP isn't my favourite Zelda game, and Ganon in TP isn't my favourite Ganon, they managed a pretty good job with him.

The developers of games like Heavy Rain and, to a lesser extent, God of War III realise that crafting a climactic and satisfying ending to a game doesn't require the use of stale boss fight mechanics. Shadow of the Colossus was a game based entirely on boss fights, but in the context of the game it worked, and worked well.

First of all, of course Heavy Rain doesn't have a boss fight at the end, because it's pretty much just an interactive fuckin' story run by Quick Time Events. Secondly, although God of War III apparently has no end boss (I have yet to play the game myself), I know for a fact that it still has boss fights peppered throughout the game that, from the few I've seen others play, are pretty sweet. GoW 3 is more an example FOR boss fights rather than against. And Shadow of the Colossus is a bit of a strange brew...but having just played it again for myself, I can throw my two cents in quite easily. The Colossi are the only enemies in the game and, as far as I'm concerned, this doesn't make them boss-type monsters. This editor says that the game is based entirely on boss fights...but if a game is all boss-fights, then what constitutes a true boss? Aren't all of these "boss" monsters now just the standard enemies? I'm not trying to knock Shadow of the Colossus down a peg at all, and I think it's an excellent, excellent game with a very unique feel and layout. I just think it kind of fits into its own weird niche and shouldn't really be used in this type of discussion.

Quadraxis from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - One of the best multi-phased bosses you can find.

For the record, I agree with the editor about one thing: Joker at the end of Arkham Asylum was a major fuckin' letdown.

Anyway, I personally think boss battles need to stay...they just need to be properly created. Yes, some bosses turn out very, very lame and aren't all that effective, but in other cases they're the highlights of a video game. You remember them because they're climactic and the push you to do your very best using the skills and tools you've grown accustomed to, and I feel that to shunt those types of experiences out of the games that use them would be a major step backward. Bosses are epic, challenging milestones, and it's when you learn to conquer them that you really feel like you've accomplished something and understand the game's mechanics. Getting rid of them would leave a game experience feeling quite empty and hollow, I believe, particularly after playing so many games and fighting so many great and memorable bosses over the years.