On another gaming site I read an article posing the question: Do we still need Boss Fights in video games?
It's thought-provoking, so thought I'd post the article link here (LINK) along with a few thoughts of my own, and hopefully gauge what you all think about the role boss-fights play in today's modern games. ***Possibly minor spoilers on games you should have all finished by now*** ; )
In regards to the article's question - do we still need boss fights? Well, I'm in two minds. It really depends on the game. There are those game where boss fights mesh well with the rest of the game play (Borderlands, Gears of War, Dark Souls, Dead Space to name a few) and those where the boss fights do not mesh well with the rest of the game (Batman: AA, BioShock, the final Fontaine boss fight that is, and ANY FPS game akin to Army of Two).
But there is some middle ground to consider - people in the comments do make a good point in suggesting boss fights add tension as you're expecting a fight and the closer you get, the more wary you get. Examples of this: The Leviathan in Dead Space is one; You see its effects throughout the level with its alien form warping the nature of the ship around you. Or whenever your HUD tells you there's "Some weird happenings" in a game and you begin to see more and more human bones and gore the closer you get to a particular point; you begin to silently sh*t yourself! I mean even though there was no boss fight, who wasn't wary when you see the globs of guts and weird marine in Halo: CE right before you see the Flood? You're going "Hey, this gunk must come from something... Gee I don't want to meet it!"
And then think when you're utterly let down by the anticipation of a boss fight. Foremost in my mind is Fable 2. You're building up to a massive showdown as in the first game, but when you finally meet your nemesis, it's an on-rails scripted fight that you only shoot one bullet in!! LET DOWN!! You felt cheated and robbed! So in terms of tension and keeping a game moving forward, boss fights are in my opinion, necessary. And if not boss fights, at least a harder enemy or tricky situation.
And that brings me to the other thing to consider: Demi-bosses. I'm talking about the ones from BioShock, the mini bosses from Dark Souls and the Dragons from Skyrim. They're great for multiple reasons: Firstly you're not abruptly placed inside an arena with maybe a few waves on enemies trying to figure out a weakness and slowly whittle down a health bar before he goes into a berserker state etc. There's no sudden lava pit around you or dodging or scripted machine guns and thrown mines. It ain't Crash Bandicoot basically! Secondly, they're natural and flow with the gameplay more. As in BioShock and Skyrim, they're usually strolling around doing their thang. You could meet them in multiple places and have different situations. You're often not stuck in to versing them and can usually run away. And lastly, the approach you use can vary. Some boss fights are unvarying - you must use X weapon to take down X weakness then attack with X weapon until X health when X happens etc etc. With Demi-bosses, you usually can set traps, choose the right moment and use a lot of different techniques depending on the surroundings. For example in Skyrim I provoked a dragon into attacking, leading it to a small keep where I took cover and whittled it down. And in BioShock, Big Daddies were always easy prey when they ventured into water or near a bunch of explosives! So in terms of breaking up the monotonous equation of Level then Enemies then Boss Fight then Next Level, Demi-bosses are great for inserting when a player least expects it and can be used to expand areas far beyond if they'd simply had a big boss at the end.
That said, one of the best games I played on the PS2 was Shadow of the Colossus, which is pretty much an open world comprised ONLY of big boss battles! Go figure...
Considering those things, it brings me to a last point to consider: difficulty. Nothing annoys me more than utterly enjoying a game and only to find my enjoyment cut fully short by a boss battle that is too difficult to pass. I know this doesn't happen too much any more, but sometimes a boss fight is simply too hard. This can be compounded by the possible fact that you may indeed KNOW how to defeat the boss but simply cannot due to poor reaction times or a faulty controller or maybe impatience! I know that even if I've done the same attack several dozen times on a boss, that if I get him down to one bar of health left and need to simply do one last attack, it'll be THAT time when my heart begins to pump and I make the one mistake and have to begin the task all over again. Enjoyment=zero. This happens very rarely with Demi-bosses, and that why I prefer games without large scale boss fights, so boss difficulty in these fights is really hard to perfect but essential.
On the flip side, easy boss fights just make you yawn and detract from the game. You breeze by them and wonder if you have any final climax to look forward to at all! It probably even makes the game feel boring and repetitive, if all you're doing is slashing through foes to reach a boring boss.
So considering all this, I have to agree that in general boss fights are obsolete. And by obsolete I mean not necessary EVERY game. This is not Sonic or Mario. There is no princess in the other castle and there is no Doctor to defeat at the end of every stage. If it suits the game's theme, by all means put in a boss fight. Maybe supplement them with Demi-bosses (yeah, I'm definitely copyrighting that term...) but be careful the big boss fights don't ruin the flow of the game. So if you're playing Modern Warfare and suddenly a genetically altered Captain Soap comes out with a massive machine gun and waves of screaming suicide bombers, then this would be a perfect example of a flow-breaking, BAD boss fight lol. And by golly make sure the difficulty if damn perfect, and if not, make a path to circumvent them for a while. I know I go on about the game a lot, but Dark Souls really is what I see as a perfect example of a perfect boss game: It's a fantastical mythical world where large monster bosses don't feel out of place. Most bosses you can avoid for a time or all together (the multiple pathways means some bosses don't even have to be fought at all!). As you rank up the bosses get slightly easier, but are still very challenging if you don't know what you're doing or make a lot of mistakes/come unprepared. They can be fought co-operatively if you're still having a really hard time. And the game is wrought with Demi-bosses to make stages feel well spread out and well paced. And the sense of accomplishment is huge because the game is so hard, so all in all, the game shines in this regard.
My 2 Cents (or several of them) anyway, now tell me what YOU think. : )
Log in to comment