Via Intelligent Artifice, The Guardian Gamesblog features a pretty nice guide on how to defeat end-of-level bosses. Highlights:
- Keep moving. Whatever you do, don’t stand still. Even for a second. This is the only cue an end-of-level boss needs to swipe at you with a giant fist or blast you with deadly lasers.
- If the boss stops, panic. Bosses usually move about – when they stop it means they’re about to unleash their signature move, the aforementioned fist or laser blast.
- Scan for weak spots. Every boss has one, sometimes more. They’re either permanently vulnerable but hard to hit, or they only become vulnerable at certain moments, usually after their signature attack.
- The quarter rule. Keep checking the boss’s energy gauge – when there’s around a quarter left, more often than not, they’ll introduce a new attack, which throws you off-guard.
It reminds me a bit of the “How to be an evil overlord” list in that it’s an analysis of genre conventions posing as a practical guide.
OK, so it’s a list of genre conventions. But can you spot the pattern in the conventions?
Rules 2-4 all involve reversals:
- Stopping > dangerous assault.
- Seemingly invulnerable boss > weak spot.
- Terrifying attack > weak spot exposed.
- Allmost no energy > new attack introduced.
I think even Kirby’s Canvas Curse followed these conventions.
Here I am supposed to write something about that games designers should start thinking outside the box, and that these are just random conventions that could easily be changed.
But really, I think the current boss conventions work quite well because reversals are basically exciting, dramatic if you will.
There are also modal conventions: whack away at their “force field” generators in order to have some time to whack away at them, before they bring up the force field again.
Saw it in the Hulk recently, but I’m sure I’ve seen the same convention elsewhere.
Another common convention is for the boss to have multiple “states”. When you defeat his first “state”, the boss then morphs/transforms/evolves/degrades/etc. into a new (and more powerful) “state”.
I agree that reversals are exciting and that we seem to have settled into these conventions quite comfortably.
I partially understand the trials and pitfalls of development having been involved with a 6 month student development project but it’s hard to believe that we keep seeing these boss models over and over again. And they wonder why game sales are slowing (somewhat).
The current boss conventions are just the obvious ones, aren’t they?
Any examples of interesting bosses?
The obvious one is Psycho Mantis on MGS. Even though it is quite easy to beat once you get the pattern, the way that pattern is presented, and how it is entangled with the physical presence of the game (console, controller, memory card) makes it, IMO, the best boss out there.
But then again, I actually don’t like bosses in games, it’s a too predictable trick.
(Still waiting for the SotC bosses, which may be interesting as it seems they are more like mini puzzle games than bosses – but isn’t any boss a kind of puzzle game?)
If you will categorize bosses in games then also add the “endurance boss”. I.e. there is no possible way to kill that boss so you have to dodge and run to stay alive until some kind of “timer” runs out or a “puzzle” is solved.
Recent “timer” example is the boss fight between Raiden and Fortune (who has some magnetic device that repels bullets which makes her impossible to kill) in Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 2.
The “puzzle” example would be the final chase sequence of the LucasArt’s game Full Throttle.
A mix between both endurance and standard type of boss is something you’d encounter in Final Fantasy 7. I.e. the fight against the Turks Reno and Rude. When their health was low enough, they would deliver some lines and run away. Similar was with aquiring Yuffie.
Another mix would be that from the beginning, the boss is impossible or hard to bring down. Which is more of a puzzle boss fight. Example is the fight at the colloseum in Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. You had to make speed kill moves in order to blind your giant opponent before you can actually fight him.
I’m pretty sure I did encounter some more of endurance bosses in older games but they are clearly less common than the standard type. Where boss fights were common that they had to break the variation in some way.
Boss fights is since recently not a common game design element. Why, I don’t know, but they do tend to become a test of your skill. I could say that from a usability standpoint, boss fight segments are not very “user friendly” as those were more difficult than normal gameplay. Which would probably warrant for not including them in the game nowadays. Even less endurance bosses because the player would probably not understand what to do in that situation from the beginning.
I wonder if anyone has pondered upon endurance type bosses.
Ah yes, I just realized there are several endurance bosses in Metal Gear Solid 3 but they’re mostly of puzzle type…
Endurance Bosses (Timer) in MGS3: The chase sequence with the Shagohod. You had to dodge the bullets and get away. It is however also broken down in cutscenes as well.
Endurance Bosses (Puzzle) in MGS3: The almost-dead sequence is an endurance boss if you want the Shadow camoflague, but also a puzzle. You have to “die” and then use the revival pill in order to continue the game (an idea that I thought was a quite clever thought up puzzle).
The bosses that you fight during the game you can finish off in a “non-lethal” way by draining their stamina. It requires a great set of skill or some clever thinking to do this. If you do the game rewards by giving you special items (like useful weapons and camoflauge).
And then there’s a more “zen” kind of boss in Karateka: You can only win if you don’t approach the princess with a fighting stance.
Having played a great deal of fighting games like, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, ect. I can relate to morphing and changing state of bosses. You don’t many casual game downloads dealing with this though.