"Great Video Game Bosses" or "No Mecha-Hitlers Allowed"

[Seil]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Shadow Of The Colossus yet.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

EAT IT BEAR, EAT IT

[Aldurin]

Not exactly challenging, but a really cool boss that fits the textbook guideline bosses, while getting a hype theme and cinematics.

[Sithdarth]

Originally Posted by Seil

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Shadow Of The Colossus yet.

Uhh...

Originally Posted by Mauve Mage

The majority of enemies from Shadow of the Colossus. This game is nothing but boss fights, but most of those fights were amazingly atmospheric and epic-feeling. It did an amazing job of making you feel like you're the epitome of the underdog: You're a scrawny little dude with a bow and a sword, you can't do any major feats of strength aside from cling to a living mountain as it tries to squash you like a bug, and as the game goes on you realize you're totally screwed no matter what you do. MOST of the colossi are beautifully designed and have a degree of emotional weight and.. oddly enough... personality to them. For me, the only exceptions to this were the horse colossus and the one you fought in the geyser field; I rarely ever managed to get them to step in the right place to trigger the next part of the fight and that really took away from my enjoyment of the game. ....damn you, horse colossus.

You have actually been reading the thread, right?

[Seil]

I was concentrated more on Nightmare there. Because fuck Nightmare.

[Ramary]

Originally Posted by Ryong

does this mean Dark Souls' Bed of Chaos is a good boss? Because it essentially goes "fuck your shit, I hope you like getting thrown off pits because you weren't lucky" and "it'd be a shame if you landed directly on top of an insta-kill fire pillar which you have no time to dodge".

Bed of Choas was a terrible boss because of bad game design, Fafnir is a pretty good boss that became legendary because he could shoot you off the screen, never to be seen again. Plus insta-dying in magicka is pretty much the norm.

[Revising Ocelot]

Stop talking about Magicka bosses when the real enemy is that one guy trying to heal beam you while you do the steamy lightning beam, resulting in somebody's meaty chunks spraying across the room. Usually all 2-4 of you.


As for slightly less ludicrously gibby bosses, Vergil from DMC3 was a prime example. They even throw in another villain who, being the poser he is, cannot muster himself to fight you in a form greater than some stupid blob monster to try and trick the player that the game went to shit at the last moment but nope, the final fight is indeed a challenging one on one between two people with ridiculous swords at the mouth of hell. Probably very anime, but I don't watch the stuff. It's unhealthy for you.

[mauve]

Originally Posted by Seil

I was concentrated more on Nightmare there. Because fuck Nightmare.

This is an acceptable answer.

[Amake]

I never even unlocked five or six of Nightmare's fourteen paragraphs of Bestiary text. (Probably because I could never get past level 4 on any difficulty beyond Normal.) In a perverse way I like a boss that has such a complex moveset you can fight it like twelve times before you see everything it can do to you.

Although that brings me to another great boss, M Bison in Street Fighter 2. I just went over his moveset in my head and unless I forgot something he has exactly eight attacks. (Punch, kick, jump kick, glide kick, scissor kick, throw, head stomp, psycho crusher.) In his case it's glorious in its stark simplicity; other, lesser characters have 30 basic attacks of varying speed and strength in various positions, but Bison's punch is both quick and fierce, so he just needs one.

How many hours have you spent cowering in the corner under his relentless barrage of scissor kicks, knowing that any slip will get you pounded into unconsciousness and at least halfway to death, knowing that at any moment he'll stop kicking and instead walk up and throw you unless you have the guts to take one of the small openings he might leave? It's a buttload of hours for me.

So many cries of frustration, so many continues, until his patterns become ingrained in your marrow and you learn the counters and how to manipulate him into leaving himself open and even then, when you can take him apart in your sleep, you can slip up once and have your ass handed to you in five seconds flat and lose out on the ultimate victory. Spoiler: If you beat the game at the highest difficulty without losing a match, your reward is that the credits take place on the boss stages instead of regular stages, and the victory screen has blue background instead of black.

[mauve]

Originally Posted by Ryong

The Kitsune in Okami

OH MAN I FORGOT ABOUT THE KITSUNE! That was an awessome boss fight! And you're right; it was super cool to have to fight a boss that could attack you by using the Celestial Brush at the same time you did. It did a great job of shaking up the gameplay mid-game, taking away those mements where you've trained yourself to assume everything freezes while you draw.

The Strider battle at the end of Half Life 2 Episode 1. It's just one Strider. One goofy looking Strider. But you're woefully unarmed, trapped in a train station terminal trying to dodge its attacks and get to a rocket launcher on thhe platform above you, cowering behind shipping crates as you work up the courage to dart out and hoe youu dodge the doomlasers that are constantlyrattling the shipping containers around you as you hide.A good, atmospheric fight, if a bit disappointing as a final boss.

Let's just go ahead and lump the first few Hunter encounters and the Overseer In A Barn scene/fight from HL2 Ep 2 in there too. Super fun, great setup and a real cinematic feel.