Your favorite video game boss.

HangTime said:
A classic choice would have to be the Cyberdemon from Doom, for all the right reasons. Big, strong and carries a massive rocket launcher (and a proper rocket launcher from the Doom days at that - even if you somehow survived would leave your screen red and fling you up against a wall, not these pansy peashooters you get nowadays). Stays true to my preferred boss design i.e. no gimmicks required to kill it, just a ton of firepower.
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I was already to respond with my standard rant of how I hate bosses, and the arbitrary gimmicky play you need to beat them, till you reminded me that all bosses aren't like that. The cyberdemon and spider from original doom, and the cyberdemon at the end of doom 3 were lots of fun. And another mentioned the Serious Sam boss battles - again, just good action, where you use the same techniques you've spent the rest of the game learning, and just have to use them better.



Slightly off the wall choice but Shivan Juggernaut from Freespace 2, when you distill it down to the base properties, has plenty of characteristics of a good boss i.e it is completing ****ing badass while retaining an air of mystery, and instilling fear in the player - one wrong move and that beam cannon could seriously ruin your day.

You know, I actually think bosses are one area where some mediocre games can compete, by which I mean that we always tend to think about bosses from the best, most enjoyable games, but there have been some pretty good bosses in otherwise unremarkable games. I was playing Infernal earlier this year, nothing special as a game, but the final boss section was pretty good I thought. Tribes Vengeance had some good bosses too as I recall.[/QUOTE]
 
MeMeMeMe said:
I was already to respond with my standard rant of how I hate bosses, and the arbitrary gimmicky play you need to beat them, till you reminded me that all bosses aren't like that.
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+1

I had to think quite hard before I hit upon any, but I couldn't pass up on the Cyberdemon. :)
 
MeMeMeMe said:
Slightly off the wall choice but Shivan Juggernaut from Freespace 2, when you distill it down to the base properties, has plenty of characteristics of a good boss i.e it is completing ****ing badass while retaining an air of mystery, and instilling fear in the player - one wrong move and that beam cannon could seriously ruin your day.
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I'd forgotten about that. That was such an awesome set of missions in FS2. What an amazing game.
 
Nightbane in WoW. Such a brilliant boss fight and so rewarding after spending weeks practising to get him down.
 
The first boss in Deus Ex: Human Revolution when playing as a stealth character...

Just kidding. Don't do drugs.

In reality it's quite hard, but a lot of the best ones have already been quoted.

DOOM cyberdemon - didn't expect it and just **** myself as soon as it appeared.

God of War 3 - Gaia. Never played a GoW game before and when I realised the sheer scale of the boss I was just amazed. Totally revolutionary gameplay moment in my personal experience.

WoW - Yogg-Saron (main boss in the Ulduar instance) - my guild did it without using guides or anything, just learning what worked and didn't and talking through ideas. It took us weeks and weeks. The day we finally beat it gave a colossal sense of achievement, and every minute of it was fun.
 
I always really like Ganon from OOT. I used to really like waiting until just the right moment and then roll through his legs to hit him from behind with my sword.

Also Shodan definitely deserves a shout.
 
Only one mention to Psycho Mantis? :eek:

The dude would screw you up royally until you put the controller in the second port and would constant fill your screen with the games you have on your memory card. :p
 
Does anyone else remember the boss at the end of Sonic 3? :D

You'd been playing the game all night, it was late, you were sweating, you had never got this far before... :eek:

You beat the first one, great... But you know that there must be more. You get in Robotnik's flying thing, ride it across, another boss appears, firing lasers. You don't know what the pattern is, but you work it out, and... Explosion. Not epic enough, surely there must be more?

The screen does dark.

And then... The music. :eek:


SO epic. I will never forget the first time. :cool:
 
Mr Freeze from Batman Arkham City was a great little battle, because you were forced to change you're tactics so often as he adapted after a successful attack, he really stood out from a truly outstanding game full of great villains the Joker included IMO.
 
For whatever reason the first bosses that popped into my mind were all WoW bosses. Specifically C'Thun, Ouro and Nefarian (original Blackwing Lair version.) Learning and beating C'Thun was one of the most frustrating and rewarding gaming experiences ever. We were so undergeared that when two people out of a 40-man raid were dead, it was pretty much game over. Another good one was Archimonde. I actually liked most pre-Lich King WoW bosses and even some WotLK ones but it's been downhill for a long time. The drop from 40 players to 25 was pretty devastating when it comes to enjoying raids and achievements finally ruined raiding as people concentrated more on those than actually beating the bosses.

Creating good bosses for singleplayer games isn't as easy as it sounds. Can anyone name for example who the boss of Max Payne 3 was? Or MP2, or MP1? All three games relied quite a bit on story too. Sephiroth is one of the few bosses I can name right away.

Recently Dark Souls has had pretty memorable bosses.
 
While I have found most boss fights disappointing I do recall the various bosses from Psychonauts as being pretty interesting, in that you had to think about it, try different things and figure out what worked, instead of the usual boss tanks.

I also had great fun with some of my playthroughs of the final Strider battle in HL2:Ep2. Oh, and Dog vs Strider was probably the best boss battle that I watched.
 
Bells and Whistles (Pop'n TwinBee) Stage 1! Weird crab thing - My first "End of level baddie" as my Dad and I used to call it! Yeah, soooo easy to defeat NOW, but back then the game was incredible to play and a real treat for someone who only had a XZ Spectrum waiting for him back home :)
 
I can't say it's my favourite boss battle in terms of the fight itself (I can't actually think of one for that), but my most memorable is the fight between Solid and Liquid at the very top of arsenal gear in MGS4. The actual content of the fight isn't particularly great but the music, the rivalry, and the change of style as it goes through each game just culminates the saga in perfection.
 
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