Psycho Mantis was so creative for the time. It remains one of the high point of the series for me.

Runners-up: The Sorrow, The End, Liquid Ocelot and finally Rex vs Ray for the pure fan service it provides.

Psycho Mantis for its sheer memorability. I know it's probably far from being even a good boss fight but it's so damn memorable.

Psycho Mantis and The Sorrow are both great.

Looking at that list brings back memories. With the exception of Psycho Mantis, MGS3 as by far the best designed boss encounters in the whole series. MSG2 is the weakest for me, MSG1 was solid (see what i did there?) and MGS4 just felt boring by that point. Rex vs Ray and Liquid Ocelot are extremely memorable but not because of the gameplay. Every other fights i barely remember anything about them.

liquid ocelot fight in mgs 4, and the boss vs naked snake in mgs 3 were the 2 biggest ones for me.

that liquid ocelot fight was straight up poetic, and then that the boss vs naked snake fight was just tragic due to story reasons.

The way the fight between Naked Snake and the Boss ends and them forcing you to pull the trigger remains to this day the first and last time i was truly shaken by a game.

just that whole character story between the 2 of them in that game from beginning to end, sooo fucked up

The Boss in MGS3 has no equal.

Cyborg Ninja, took me about an hour initially, and then I was killed when he exploded. By the time I beat him I was so in the zone that I have beat it first time on every subsequent playthrough.

The Rays in MGS2 were a similar experience.

fucking hell, say what you will about mgs4 but this was an incredible fight,

i think this is one of the best boss battles this gen,i thought the gameplay was interactive enough to where it was satisfying enough

There's so many standouts I really can't choose. But if there was a single fight that summed up everything dumb/incredible about the bosses in Metal Gear it would have to be Liquid Ocelot... No, Rex vs Ray... No... Psycho Mantis... Fuck this question.

The End and The Boss are my most favorite (voted for The End), but I haven't fought any bosses in MGS4 yet.

Hind D was one of the best boss fights in MGS, the dialogue leading up to the battle and after was brilliant.

While the idea of Psycho Mantis reading your mind is pretty awesome, for a boss battle I'd have to go with The End. I love that it wasn't a simple aim at boss and shoot. It had a real cat and mouse dynamic going on and then tension was just so high. Nothing stands up to it.

Psycho Mantis for me. I like the concept that they made so that I could defeat him and I remember hearing him scream "why can't I read your mind?".

@probablytuna: Killing his parrot is great. Dude gets pissed.

You can't beat that final fist fight on top of Outer Haven.

Surprised that The Boss isn't higher.

The ladder:

This is a bullshit question that nobody can answer with certainty and you know it.

The Liquid Ocelot fight is my one of my favorite boss battles, period. Easily the best of the group. It's the perfect example of how to an intimate, intense, final fight.

Lots of great ones but the Liquid Ocelot fight was so emotional and a perfect combination of watching and playing a game it can't be beat.

The End and The Fury are some of the best I can recall, mainly because they play so well into the game's stealthy strengths.

Metal Gear Ray on Extreme difficulty

Also, you forgot the Hind D and Harrier

The Rex vs. Ray fight in MGS4. Holy shit.

Rex vs Ray was fucking amazing moment, probably my favorite.

It would have been Psycho Mantis but that was ruined by playing the game 12 years later so it just wasn't the same experience

Voted Sniper Wolf.

I'm sorry I tried to pick but I just couldn't. Should have been a check box poll. List reminds me oh just how much more memorable this series is than so, so many games I've played.

Im the guy who voted raging raven. I thought that fight was epic.

@paulwade1984 said:

Most of the B&B fights themselves were pretty fun in general, it's the way they treated the actual characters that I didn't care for.

This just proves how great MGS is and how much Kojima has done for the industry by making games, and not anime. So many great memories, to many to choose from, is a sign of a quality series, and the MGS naysayers can be damned, the world would be the poorer without the franchise. I voted for Psycho before I remembered Big Boss vs The Boss, and then I changed my mind again to MGS4 Snake vs Liquid. And you forgot to include Fortune from MGS2, how could you?!

vamp! so dumb! my god the cut scenes .. so anime.

@ravenlight: Hilarious!

I voted for Psycho Mantis, it was the moment when I was on-board for any future MGS releases.

I'm weird and think that The Fury from MGS3 might be my favorite fight and I don't know why. There's nothing particularly interesting about it. It's probably the music.

Crying Wolf is a similar situation. Boss mechanics aren't super interesting and are actually pretty goddamn annoying, but the music is rad.

From a gameplay perspective, probably Psycho Mantis, but The End is by far the coolest boss fight in the series to me.

That's tough. The Boss and Liquid Ocelot were good. I'll have to go with The End though.

The End because you could set your PS2's system date and time forward and find him dead from old age.

Reading this thread reminds me, holy shit, MGS3 is so fucking amazing.

Always liked the Fury. Spaceman rocketing into a fireball of death. MGS3 is so great. Trying to go back and play it, though, is hard. The camo stuff is far more annoying than I remembered.

@ravenlight: I see your ladder and raise you -

@ultimaxe: I dunno having recently played MGS 4 I think that fight is neat. Having a sniper battle in the middle of a blizzard where you can't even see? Pretty cool.

Psycho Mantis not even a question

Thought the sniper battle in MGS3 was probably my favorite even after finding out about all the easter eggs on how to fight the guy. But that last confrontation with Liquid Ocelot at the end where you had to remember the different hand to hand combat from the previous games was pretty f'in awesome.