Boss Fights

Final boss on Megaman X. I had a Super Nintendo back when it was the shit. This guy makes it look wayyyyy easier than it is... Also little did I know that one hadoken would kill him. Tricky part is maintaining full life.

 
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Pl4t0 said:
Meeting GlaDOS was certainly the most memorable, mostly because of the game leading up to it. I'll always cherish the first Portal for having the singlehandedly most brilliant narrative ever. It drip-feeds you information; you don't know who you are, where you are, or why you are there, and the only other sentience you encounter is that goddamned disembodied voice playing in the elevators. You end up hanging on her every word, wondering just where and who she is. I remember hearing the phrase "Android hell is a real place" - uttered casually, humorously, but with the weight of a fucking freight train behind it because my perception has been smashed and all of a sudden GlaDOS is telling me that I'm an android in the subtlest way possible (whether or not that is true remains ambiguous, which is also brilliant). By the time you finally break free of the chambers and traverse the bowels of the facility to find her, your limited communication with her has become so evocative and you are so emotionally invested in finding this woman and bringing her justice that the discovery that she is a robot, while almost cliche at that point was the perfect twist. The boss battle that follows is not exactly very invigorating, but the emotional investment is what makes it amazing.

But the best? Probably any of the various encounters with Mr X in Resident Evil 2 (that would be from Claire's perspective, then). I still think that RE2 is the best story-based zombie game largely for its methodical sense of pacing, George Romero influence, and generally excellent understanding of narrative games, and it shines through particularly in these encounters. They always occur when you least expect them and are entirely unannounced - I recall putting one piece of a multi-faceted puzzle in place, my mind absorbed in where to find the next piece, dashing out into the previous hallway with no music playing and suddenly he's just there. "Jump" scares are often contrived and are starting to lose their terror, but my God I'll always remember those sequences for how well they understand what can really be achieved with a little bit of surprise. That's what makes it so good as a boss fight, right there: the encounter is spread across the entire game and is far more than the sum of its combat.

Having not played any of the Metal Gear games, I can't lend my opinion on what people have called the definitive story-based boss fights.
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I've never been able to experience the Portal game to it's full, since I already knew from reputation that Glados was "the greatest villian ever" and I knew all the twists and exactly what was coming in the end. Yet even still, knowing full and well what was going on, I could still feel how eerie and mysterious for people who had never known the spoilers and never acutally expected anything from the game itself.

I wish I had a mind-wiper so I can experience the game how it was meant to be by Valve :eek:
 
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