Shadow of the Colossus. Do I need to say anything else?

FF7- awesome bosses, awesome story line. And there was always another, even more ridiculously powerful boss to beat. They had it right back in the day. I think the turn based system made it more dramatic too, as you had time to sit there and think about how not to get your face stomped.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. In all the games I've ever played there's always some "boss." even if its not a traditional giant, stomp-your-face in monster, it's still some big hard challenge that comes at the end of the level/game. Maybe bosses are changing into non-traditional bosses where they are a large challenge of smaller foes or puzzles, rather then a 400 foot tall mutated super-freak with a weakness under the armor in his left knee cap that requires exactly two shot gun rounds after he swings his club slightly to the left if it happens to be Tuesday during a rain and the stars are in alignment...

Hard boss fights only inspire me to do one thing - throw my controller across the room. Surely we can aim for a more varied experience than that.

Variety, as other posters have pointed out, is the key. A good boss fight should ask us to take the skills we've learned so far and apply them in a new way, as opposed to a faster more furious application of the same skills we've been using the whole game.

pxZero:

3. The Kitchen Sink Leader: This one just makes me frusterated. They hide behind a wall (or sometimes in the open!) but are untouchable until you've killed every single bloody henchman that's left in the whole entire universe... not to mention THREE of the supposedly 'unique' ultra tough, rare, one-of-a-kind, used to be extinct dinosaur/alien creatures. I shouldn't have to explain why this boss type sucks, but I'm going to make special mention of how annoyed I get to find that some mini-boss you beat before and you think is done comes back in duplicate. Especially more fun when it seems to undermine the storyline.

How is this one different from "First kill all the henchmen in the room before you'd even come to realise you have to fight a boss around there in the first place, and then he shows up?
Games like Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath sometimes gave you the option to start on the boss without killing the henchmen first but I found that to be suicide, since the boss and the henchmen together were so overpowered it was just fucking impossible. By the way I think this game did bosses right.

Also, I liked the bosses in Ninja Gaiden. Sure some of them hurt me more than a stick wrapped in barbed wire up my ass but that feeling of "ohh, shit, I'm screwed" is excactly what you should feel when you're up against a boss in my opinion

Oh yeah, and I found the one on one sword fight with Dooku a huge letdown. It was just spamming one attack on him and avoid his uber combo of doom and you were home free. Considering he took that dark dragon blade from your village and owned every ninja in that place too this just was very disappointing.

tendo82:
Hard boss fights only inspire me to do one thing - throw my controller across the room.

I think you'll be too shocked to throw anything after you face this boss.

Hankage:
As long as it's a boss fight you can lose because you screwed up somehow, not because it pulls super attacks out of it's ass.

To me a boss fight does not mean 'Has a billion hitpoints and cheats like a cheap whore'.

You see that's the problem there have been quite a few games lacking this lately. I'm not saying I need a genetically enhanced superfreak that will just kill me in one massive swing, just something of a real fight, not simply three shots to the foot and they die.
Though I wouldn't mind them throwing a genetically enhanced superfreak somewhere along the line.

I remember when i use to dread fighting bosses always thinking to myself "O S*** IM GONNA DIE!" but now i dont really care about them.

And i play games for their stories, cept 4 halo 3... that was for the multiplayer

Woe Is You:
I think you'll be too shocked to throw anything after you face this boss.

You can't fool me. We all know that the reduction in hit box size makes bullet hell shooters little more than optical illusions posing as insanely difficult games.

Or not.

"Also, the Gears 2 boss, not boring? You stood in a raven and used the hammer on it. Quite boring if you ask me."]

Nice one for the spoiler. I aint completed it yet. :/

psico666:
I agree. The best bit about games was the fight to the end and then spend hours trying to defat a boss that was 100 times more powerful than your character e.g. Ansem in Kingdom Hearts.
I like video games telling stories but bring back the sharp jump in the difficulty curve.

I don't. I mean sure give me a tough final boss but I want to have to spend around 45 minutes to an hour trying to beat it not multiple hours. Super hard final bosses ruin the end of games for me. Sometimes I'm more interested in the end of the story rather then the final boss (i.e. Mass Effect).

I remember the final boss in Army of Two (the disc final boss, not DLC final boss). My freind and I died once, and that was only because I was being stupid. Basically, I covered our flank while my freind ducked behind cover, just a knocked over supercomputer between boss and freind. The boss would stand up for a couple seconds, my freind blindfired his FAMAS right in his stomach. I got bored, and thought I'd hurry this up a bit. I pulled out my Stinger and fired at the boss. The boss took some damage, and my freind died. I went over to rez him but boss shot me about 20 times in the face before it would kill me. Next try, I wasn't stupid, boss went down in a couple minutes. Easy final boss.

Boss fights are kind of stupid in FPS in most shooters really regardles of whether they are first person or not, they just degenerate into circle strafing fests. Now if you did something like MGS 1 or MGS 3 sniper duels those would be cool boss fights for a shooter.

A for NG those bosses are EASY compared to DMC bosses the friggin levels in Ninja Gaiden are harder than the bosses in NG. NG 2's final boss was an asshole though. One weird thing about NG is that most bosses actually get easier on the higher difficulties if you know how to play it correctly the fact that the boss is accompanied by regular enemies actually works to your distinct advantage.

Trust me go watch gameplay vids for NG or NG 2 they are a great help for learning how to play these games correctly. It's how I learned how to play it.

conqueror Kenny:
Alright then, this has really begun to get on my nerves. I remember the days that you could be trudging through a game, and be on your smallest little trickle of heath, as you reach the end of the game it throws its biggest best and most badass enemy at you to slaughter you time and time again.
I miss those days, not these new pitiful game endings that simply wrap up a story. Even games in which developers should know that nobody cares about story (Gears of war 2, I'm looking at you) they still wrap it up with something that couldn't even be called a boss.
Am I the only one that misses end game bosses? Or am I the only one even noticing their absence from a lot of games?

I don't know man, I just don't know.

the fish boss was a glorified cinematic with no challenge involved
(as well as a rip off of RE4, now THOSE were some bosses)
General Ramm was an awesome boss at the end of GoW and they really just threw the last half hour of gameplay together in GoW2.

"Control, this is Fenix, me and Dom are have Hi-Jacked a Brumak skiing on two Reavers and were just gonna skip over the end of this game so we can get to the cliffhanger ok?"

I miss the formulaic end boss scenarios of older games. It actually gave you more of a sense of accomplishment when you beat the game, I've played through a number of games in the current generation in which I beat the game without realizing I was at the very end, credits roll, and I "wtf". A lot of the older games, even if you didn't know going into the final fight that is was the end of the game, you knew it by the time you were halfway through the fight.

Lost Planet was actually one game this generation that I enjoyed because of the more old school feeling to the way it was set up with the boss fights.

And to throw my two cents in on the Ninja Gaiden II conversation, it really doesn't seem right to complain that the game's bosses are too hard...I mean...it's NG! :)

Boss fights these days are stupid. In my opinion a boss fight should make the player leave with fears of his accomplishments. "I just killed Fred the Evil and he was hard as moldy bread BUT WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT, it's probably more awesome. Well doesn't matter I still won this fight." Also I think every boss fight should feel epic. With every move you dodge and every hit you blow the anticipation should grow. I do miss those bosses. I really only have one I can think of right off hand; the final boss to Rayman 2: The Great Escape.

fable 2 ending was a real bummer for me. i miss the tough boss fights.

Halo 3 was in desperate need of a goddamn final boss. As cool as lasering Guilty Spark to death was, everything after that was pure let-down.

Riicek:
I miss the formulaic end boss scenarios of older games. It actually gave you more of a sense of accomplishment when you beat the game, I've played through a number of games in the current generation in which I beat the game without realizing I was at the very end, credits roll, and I "wtf". A lot of the older games, even if you didn't know going into the final fight that is was the end of the game, you knew it by the time you were halfway through the fight.

Lost Planet was actually one game this generation that I enjoyed because of the more old school feeling to the way it was set up with the boss fights.

And to throw my two cents in on the Ninja Gaiden II conversation, it really doesn't seem right to complain that the game's bosses are too hard...I mean...it's NG! :)

LOL I'm telling you they so gave us a break on the bosses in NG they make it so impossible to even get to the boss in those games.

todd10k:
"Also, the Gears 2 boss, not boring? You stood in a raven and used the hammer on it. Quite boring if you ask me."]

Nice one for the spoiler. I aint completed it yet. :/

What? What could I have possibly have spoiled there? So now you know that you use the hammer on the final boss. Now I know how the story ends, it's all so obvious.

i miss health bars.....i miss HUDs.......i miss retro gaming i guess

I know i like it when multiplayer makes it up though

My favorite boss fight was the last enemy from Farcry 1. He was excellent because he fit everything that a boss should be.

Meh I really don't think that health bars or huds do much of anything save get in the way and/or lead to retarded health pack placements. I would rather FPS' focus on adding things like traps and shit that kill instantly or near instantly. If mmore FPS' did what R2 and Fallout 3 does with the cloaked assholes in R2 and the traps in F3 people wouldn't be able to say these games were too easy.

haveyouseen_mywallet:
fable 2 ending was a real bummer for me. i miss the tough boss fights.

Lucien in Fable 2 is THE hardest boss fight ever. I died so many times trying it.

joystickjunki3:
I miss boss fights a lot. The Metroid games (the 2D ones) come to mind when I think of really enjoyable boss fights, especially near the end.

2D games had the most awesome boss fights. No games did bosses better than Metal Slug, Castlevania, and Metroid.

Programmed_For_Damage:
Halo 3 was in desperate need of a goddamn final boss. As cool as lasering Guilty Spark to death was, everything after that was pure let-down.

Guilty Spark was the easiest boss fight in the history of anything. It doesn't count.

Programmed_For_Damage:
Halo 3 was in desperate need of a goddamn final boss. As cool as lasering Guilty Spark to death was, everything after that was pure let-down.

Yeah... he was such a disappointment. I was surprised as all hell when he started shooting lasers, but I was so surprised by the fact that just three return blasts dropped him when I spent so long shooting him in Halo 1 with every rocket I could find. (Stupid Library...)

psico666:
I agree. The best bit about games was the fight to the end and then spend hours trying to defat a boss that was 100 times more powerful than your character e.g. Ansem in Kingdom Hearts.
I like video games telling stories but bring back the sharp jump in the difficulty curve.

Wait, I thought that was what Sepheropth was for. Ansem went down like a ceramic bowl I just knocked off the table...
Drat.

Golden Sun bosses were amazing even when they wiped the floor with you.

It was awesome to use all your best powers and watch all the explosions and such and see the boss still standing like a brick wall. Fortunately these bosses weren't incredible tough, but they took strategy to defeat. MOAR strategy bosses PLAES!

conqueror Kenny:

Anton P. Nym:
I hated getting ridiculous boss fights at the end of games. Good ones, ones that made sense in relation to the games, I didn't mind but the formulaic Big Final Boss with Special Gimmic Action™ I found more tedious than challenging. (Gears 1's fight with General RAAM being a perfect example of it done poorly... I'd much rather have the end fight of Gears 2, becuase at least it's not boring.)

-- Steve

But it always made the games so much more satisfying when you did beat them. I find that in games without them I just see the credits roll and think "Well, is that it?" With a boss fight stuck on the end I am much happier when I do see them roll.
Also, the Gears 2 boss, not boring? You stood in a raven and used the hammer on it. Quite boring if you ask me.

i don't think that was supposed to be regarded as the final boss the reaver riding part was the final boss

KH1 sephiroth destroys all!!! he was amazing so different and hard to boot,while he wasn't the final boss he shoulda been because he took me forever to beat. I love it when games throw the hardest challenge possible at you, you feel awesome when you over come it. and p.s.general Raam was a pussy, he takes like five minutes to kill with a friend, and about 15 alone, so yeah...

The Metriod games are good examples of boss fights done right.

The bosses don't have a too many hit points, but you have to find the weakness first. Even then, you can't trade hits because you WILL die if you attempt to. additionally, while the key to beating the boss is usually whatever power up you just got, it is frequently only one of the things you will need. Dodging the attacks is also challenging because the bosses actually have several of them. They are tough, but winnable if you play smart. If you mess up dodging it's not the end of the world, but you can't mess up too many times. Strafing usually dodges an attack, but sometimes it doesn't, so recognizing the attack that is coming is vital to success. Lastly, the bosses usually FEEL like bosses and are usually not out of place. You fight the giant plant monster in the fountain with lots of light and water, you fight the mother ice lizard thing in its home, and you fight the supermutant by the labs where it was created. They give you a sense of achievement while not being too difficult or cheap.

While not all games need a giant monster at the end (L4D has you hold back the horde of regular enemies), it works when thought is put into it and when the game play is until balanced when you know the gimmick/pattern.

shadow skill:
I would rather FPS' focus on adding things like traps and shit that kill instantly or near instantly.

We got rid of that sort of game design in the 90s. Good riddance.