You’re not the boss of me now!

Microsoft versus Sony, Battlefield versus Call of Duty and Forza versus Gran Turismo. These are some of the rivalries that can get people talking about console wars. “Game On or Game Over” is your place to get inside the minds of Nicholas and Andy as they seek to find the true meaning of gaming and tackle some of gaming’s most controversial subjects. Both are award winning authors – although the awards haven’t been mailed or created yet — but trust them. Would they lie to you?

Nicholas: I think it’s safe to say that over the past few years we’ve written a lot of these articles – 121 to be exact! I then think about the fact that we’ve therefore covered essentially 121 different topics almost. Sure, there are times when we’ll overlap but for the greater part we keep it unique each and every week. It was therefore surprising to me that we haven’t discussed the topic that I’d like to delve into this time around, especially given how common-place it is in the games we play.

So what is this topic you ask? Well, it came to me in the early hours of last Saturday (2:30AM to be exact) as I was completing Quantum Break. I am of course referring to final bosses. After 15 hours of game time I finally got to the end of the game to face off against the last enemy. I spend perhaps an hour trying to defeat him, having died at least seven times in the process, but when I finally did though, cue the last cut-scenes, the onslaught of completion achievements and then the credits. It was a great feeling indeed.

While there’s a whole lot I’d like to get your thoughts on this week with this topic, there was one thought of mine that I’d like to start on. As I was being killed time and time again that morning I started to think to myself, “there’s a chance I’m never going to finish this boss and in-turn, this game”. It was a really worry and it started to bother me that after all this time, I’d never experience the ending for myself. Of course, I finally discovered the rhythm and was able to get on-top, but it crossed my mind nonetheless.

So, to start things off, have you ever had a similar experience where a game’s difficulty ramped up significantly in the final boss fight and you thought you wouldn’t be able to finish it? Is there perhaps any game you haven’t finished because of the boss fight, and if so to both questions, what elements about it made it so difficult?

Andy: Ah, the dreaded end-game boss battle. I’ve played hundreds of games – maybe even a thousand who knows – so I’ve certainly had my share of frustrating encounters. Some I tried over and over… and over again until I somehow got lucky (or the game just felt sorry for me) and beat it. Some, I had to enlist the help of a friend or my brother-in-law and admittedly there were a few where I just stared at the “Game Over” screen and tossed the controller down and walked away never to return to it.

Thinking back there are a couple that really stand out for being over traumatizing to me. The earliest one I can recall is Punch Out. Sure there was a bit of a learning curve to progress through it, but once you hit that final fight against Mike Tyson all bets were off and the game literally beats the crap out of you. I think I was traumatized for months from that game. I tried over and over again to beat him. I’d get frustrated and put it to the side for a month or two and try again to the same result. I was finally able to beat him and you want to talk about a throw the controller and scream “Hell yeah!” moment that was it. That difficulty spike was insane.

The other one that comes to mind is General Raam from the original Gears of War. That was before I discovered the beauty of co-op gaming, and before I really understood internet message boards. So I had zero help trying. I’m happy to say that I was finally able to beat Raam last year (2015) with a friend on co-op. It was funny because when we beat him I was quiet listening to the cut scene and my friend said something and I admitted I’d never seen that scene before. It was a pretty cool moment. I’m surprised I never went back to try it in between but I avenged that scar on my gaming record.

For me what made those two the worst for me is because I have this habit, and still do it today, of trying the same thing over and over again until it works. Even if it’s the completely wrong way to do it, even if I have a 0.01% chance of success once it becomes a matter of principle I stop being rational and just keep bashing my head into a wall. It’s even worse for platformers for me. Man I die so many times trying to make things more difficult than what they should really be. What about you though, are there any games from your past that you never finished because of a badass boss? Or like me, are there games that you gave up on only to return months, if not years, later and finally conquer?

Nicholas: To answer the last part of your question first, while it wasn’t a boss battle, the closest thing was a mini-game from Donkey Kong 64. It was the original Donkey Kong arcade game that Rare put into DK64, and defeating it would grant you a special Nintendo coin. As a kid I could never finish it, but when I tried it years later as a teenager I was actually successful. I won’t lie, I was super pleased with myself.

When I think of a boss that I couldn’t defeat, the one game which comes to mind is surprisingly enough, Donkey Kong 64 again. Now in this instance it isn’t the final boss (I actually never got to him), but it was the third or fourth level boss (a Jack in the Box crossed with a dinosaur) that I could never best as a kid. I’ve tried firing up my Nintendo 64 in the following years but I was never able to find the entrance to the boss battle, so to this day I’ve never been able to attempt it again and ultimately finish the game. Keep in mind, I was able to beat the bosses after that level (since you’re progress isn’t determined by defeating the level bosses, but rather the golden bananas you collect) but it was that particular one which had me beat. I’m looking forward to finding time to download the game on my Wii U via the Virtual Console and trying it as an adult though. Soon.

When I think about the Quantum Break boss and the difficulties I had doing it, the problem was two-fold. One, the tactics deployed were unlike anything I’d seen in the game prior and second, the difficulty had ramped up significantly to the point that there was maybe only one other time in the game where I came close to dying as many times. In your opinion, do you think end bosses like these, where the difficulty is ramped up and where the way you have to fight is different to the rest of the game, is a lame tactic or are they attempts to make finishing the game that bit harder so it seems more rewarding? Do you think there’s any reason why an end boss should be harder than the game before it, or would making it easier diminish the satisfaction of beating the game to begin with?

Andy: I’m actually going to answer that in a way you probably didn’t think I would. In one word my answer is ‘yes’. It’s deeper than just a normal yes though. I actually love the idea of having to use different tactics to beat bosses. It gets you out a that normal rhythm and makes you actually think about what you’re doing and what you are going to do. I don’t see anything wrong at all with making the end boss more difficult. If you really think about it, in terms of the game you are spending the entire time getting to the strongest foe, it should be a challenge.

With that said, I’d even go so far as to say all bosses should be more difficult in games. In my opinion developers often copout with bosses and difficulty. They usually just give them insane amounts of health and it’s more a battle of attrition than it is doing something new. Bosses seem to have become nothing but giant bullet sponges. The normal tactic of, shoot, hide, reload rinse and repeat is how most bosses are now-a-days. It seems more the exception than the rule that you have to adjust on the fly and try something different. Use skills that you usually don’t use, or really think outside the box.

One game that tried to do this was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. So much so that they outsourced every boss battle of the game to another company. Personally for me I didn’t mind that approach at all. Every boss was different and the same approach could not be used on any of them, nor could normal in-game tactics that got you through the game. Some gamers complained that the dramatic shift was too jarring and didn’t feel like one complete experience. While I can understand that, I don’t agree with it.

That leads me right into my next question actually. When I play a game I am looking to have fun, I usually want some form of a challenge as well. It’s not fun to just breeze right through a game at every corner. It used to be a badge of honour to say “I beat <insert game>.” Now it’s “I finished <insert game>.” For a lot of the more recent games these isn’t much of a challenge to beating it. We’ve both already mentioned how immensely satisfied we were when we finally beat our personal nemesis video game bosses, that’s one of the best feelings when playing a game. Maybe it’s a small paradigm shift but we should be encouraging developers to make bosses challenging instead of just being high health tanks. Is that a sentiment you share? Which side of that fence do you think most gamers are on?

Nicholas: I guess I can see both sides of the fence really. You make a valid point that, in most games we’re spending our time to prepare and reach the biggest and strongest foe, so the interaction should reflect that. At the same time though, I can see (and understand) why it is frustrating that you’ve been able to breeze through a game only to struggle on the very last hurdle. Difficulty curves should be incremental and not exponential in my opinion over the course of the game.

As for my personal preference, I guess I don’t mind if the end boss is a little different to defeat that you’re normal enemies, but when I think about games like Perfect Dark Zero and Quantum Break, sometimes I’m left thinking, “how did they come up with that idea?” The end boss tactic should be unique, but not so left-field that you’re left feeling like an idiot that you can’t figure it out until you’ve failed five times or so.

On the flip-side to all this, I agree with you that if the end boss is too easy then that sense of accomplishment kind of diminishes, and that’s how I feel with some Nintendo games when I think about it. Any modern Mario or Yoshi title, their end-bosses are so repetitive and simple to defeat that you’re left wanting just something extra, something to make it feel like you’ve not just defeated a game that is only as difficult as to allow a three year-old to win too.

So far we’ve discussed our hardest challenges and now we’ve touched on the way they’re created into the game, but I’d like to turn the table a little here – what is the most enjoyable boss you’ve tackled, and more specifically, what elements about it did you enjoy the most? Potential spoilers ahead here of course for those who might not have played the games we’re about to mention.

Andy: Man, that’s a tough question because usually when I remember a game I think about awesome stories, the settings and what not. I don’t usually think “Oh man, beating that boss was awesome.” So I started looking through my achievement list and remembering some of the bosses I faced, which ones pissed me off (there were many) and which actually got me to sit back and think “Hell yeah!” and do that little fist pump every gamer has done when they accomplish something. Here’s what I came up with.

The most recent one that I found would have been beating Alex Mercer in Prototype 2. It was one of those battles like I described above where if you tried what got you there (at least for me) it was an almost impossible fight. But, if you adjusted your tactics and used skills you didn’t use very often then it was a different story. Doing that made it a much easier battle and a pretty rewarding one as well. The second one that comes to mind are not really traditional boss battles but the duels in Red Dead Redemption. Some of those I remember being way more challenging than they probably should have been. The last one though, this one I vividly remember and I’m pretty sure you had a similar experience with it.

As you know I’m a racing game fan. For a couple of years I faded away from them and was finally drawn back to the fire by a game that seems to divide gamers but I loved it. Need for Speed Carbon. It got me to fall in love with the racing genre all over again… until I had to race Darius. Ugh, ugh, ugh. That entire end sequence of racing the three territory leaders a second time just to get the chance to race Darius in what turned out to be a pretty long race, whew that was a challenge. I’m pretty sure it’s this race that really got me to appreciate planning a route, learning when to break, to accelerate and when to hit the NOS. It was a labour of love/hate to do that race so many times but it really taught me how to drive in a game and appreciate the nuances of it. Pretty sure when I beat that one I tossed my controller in the air, jumped around like Kriss Kross and most likely scared the crap out of my dog. But it was all worth it.

Is there a boss or bosses from your gaming past that you legitimately enjoyed battling even if they were frustrating as hell? In addition to that do you think bosses in games are becoming too predictable, a little challenge isn’t a bad thing is it?

Nicholas: When I think about it, and as I peruse my gaming library, there’s no modern games that I’ve completed and thought to myself, “yeah, I really enjoyed that encounter”. Sure, there are games that I’ve finished where I enjoyed the entire experience, but like you’ve mentioned, it’s not like memorable bosses is something that comes to mind, or is something that you really reflect on at the end of a game. Perhaps the only thing that comes close are the first three Donkey Kong games that I played through last year on the Wii U Virtual Console. Reason being, while it was pure platforming and while you knew what you had to do, it was getting the timing right that proved the most difficult. I died to many times but eventually I got it right and I defeated the final boss, and I think that was pretty awesome.

As to whether bosses are becoming predictable, yes, yes they are. You summarised it fairly well earlier on in this piece – most of them fall into two main categories (in my experience) – you either have to rinse and repeat a formula – deplete their shield, take a shot, let them regenerate and then repeat, or, they’re bullet sponges and you’re either ducking or shooting for a few minutes. It’s rare that a game really mixed that formula up. On that note, is a little challenge a bad thing? No, not particularly, but at the same time, having every game be like General Raam that you mentioned above isn’t acceptable either in my opinion. An end-boss should be challenging but not ridiculously difficult as to turn the player away or require another player to beat it – to me that’s overkill.

As we approach the end of this week’s article I wanted to ask you whether the end boss is even required in gaming. So far we’ve discussed them being easy and them also being incredibly difficult, but what about excluding a final boss all together? Do you think games need to have a last hurdle, or would you prefer it being narrative-driven where instead of a boss battle there’s just a decision and a cutscene in its place? Do you feel cheated when there isn’t some big showdown at the end of your campaign?

Andy: Ah, we’ve finally came to the crux of the issue I think. Including an end game boss just to include one doesn’t make sense all the time. In a game where there is a certain degree of build up there has to be some emotional payoff that makes sense. Otherwise gamers are left with a sour taste in their mouth. A great example of that is Dying Light. It was a really fun game, I actually enjoyed it way more than what I thought I would. Throughout the game you are building up to face one person. There’s a reason why you’re going after him. To ascend a multi-storey building to get to the confrontation, battling a horde of zombies on the way. You get to the top and you’re greeted with… a quick-time event sequence. The decision to go that route still makes no sense to me. The payoff was definitely not worth.

In a narrative-based game it makes sense to have the end of the game be a decision, maybe with a small fight but it doesn’t have to be a battle. The end of Red Dead Redemption is a perfect example. It wasn’t a big shootout with guns blazing. Rather, it was a small scale decision type thing that is still one of the most powerful moments of any game I have played. I think on the developer side of things it’s a double-edged sword and the developer is stuck in the middle. If they make the end boss battle too easy the hardcore fans will complain, if they make it too hard the more casual fans will complain or not even finish.

Yet, at the same time the very nature of an end-game boss is to complete the story and to offer a sense of accomplishment. I don’t see a problem with bosses being a little bit more difficult as the game goes on, then having a hard boss at the end that forces you out of your comfort zone. Doing that maximizes the experience for everyone. It doesn’t have to be too hard, but it should be challenging. Going back to what you said before about being killed time and time again until you figured it out. That should be the mentality of all gamers. It’s what we used to do in old school platformers. You had to learn the level through trial and error. Not every level, or every boss, should be beaten on the first attempt. After all, where would the fun be in that? In a masochistic way sometimes it takes getting killed to enjoy the game just a little bit more when you finally beat it. I say bring on the hard end-game bosses.

Tune in next time for the next instalment of Game On or Game Over. If you have any ideas for our next article, feel free to contact Andy or Nicholas on Twitter.