Friday Five: Boss Fights

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After fighting your way through a mysterious cavern that you discovered behind the secret door in the back room of the guest house at 101 Creepy Mansion Street, you stumble upon a mysteriously placed save point. This save point acts as both a beacon of return, allowing you to record your progress and return to this exact moment in the event of failure, and a signal that the end is nigh. The end of what? The level of course! Just a few steps beyond that save point awaits an enemy. Not just any enemy, but the strongest you’ve yet faced! This mighty foe will challenge your skill, tactics, and endurance. It will unleash a devastating flurry of grandiose attacks, that are often times incredibly cheap! And if you happen to bring this beast to the brink of death, but fail at the final moments, you are forced to live through the battle once more. . . These are Boss Fights! The biggest cliche of gaming, but one aspect no game can be without.

Welcome to the Friday Five, where each week we help you get to know us a little better with a little help from a Top Five list! This week’s Friday Five explores the deepest, coolest, and most interesting Boss Fights we can remember. The best part: Only one of us picked Sephiroth! So read on, and don’t forget to tell us about your favorite Boss Fights in the comments below!

Anthony

Ah bosses, at times, they make up the most epic battles in a game, sometimes, pretty disappointing. *cough* Batman Arkham Asylum. I get nervous when a boss comes up because I don’t like dying and having to replay things.

1. Psycho Mantis – Metal Gear Solid – He not only insinuates that Snake is gay, he reads your mind (memory card), and you have to switch controller ports to beat him….hwhat?!
2. Selvaria – Valkyria Chronicles
3. Bowser/King Koopa – Not so much saying the battles were all that epic, though in Mario Galaxy they were pretty sick. He’s one of the most famous bosses in video game history!
4. Metal Sonic – Sonic the Hedgehog 2
5. Phantom Train – Final Fantasy VI – An undead train! Very menacing! Its also very satisfying to kill it in one shot using a phoenix down.

 

Chris

Boss fights, love em or hate em, they’re there to give us a reason to play a game. If every enemy could just simply be beat with a single jump on the head or a few punches we’d get bored. But knowing that at some point some crazy mother f’er is going to show up and reck our lunch keeps us on edge and always trying to be as well equiped and powerful as possible.

1. Odin – Final Fantasy VIII – This wasn’t a hard fight, but you had 20 minutes to get to him and beat him or it was game fucking over. Plus you didn’t even get to use him he just showed up randomly, granted it was pretty cool when he gets put down by Seifer and Gilgamesh pops up and takes over.
2. ALL OF THEM – Shadow of the Colossus – Every fight was a Boss fight, and every one was epic.
3. The Elite Four – Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow – The Elite Four are in every pokemon game, but the first iteration was definitely the best, you didn’t know what to expect and it was just one crazy fight after another, no healing between or anything!
4. Bowser – Super Mario World – It was different for a Mario game, you didn’t jump on his head, or hit a switch on a bridge. You through those weird little wind up thing at him and when you’re like 6 years old it’s hard.
5. Ridley – Metroid Series – I think he’s in almost every Metroid game in one form or another. And he usually has you on edge for an entire level until you find him. Oh and he’s a space dinosaur which is pretty badass.

 

Eric

Bosses have defined gaming standards since the beginning of time. Finish a set a levels, fight a boss to move on. Lost that fight? Fuck you, start over! It seems kinds of dated, but at the same time it’s so natural that when a game doesn’t have boss battles it feels… wrong. So let’s keep the tradition going! Let lesser enemies act as nothing more then cannon fodder to satisfy out blood lust, till the moment a new hulking villain vainly attempts to stand in our way!

1. Diablo – Diablo Series – The Primevil Lord of Terror! Ruler of hell! So awesome, that his minions have minions! And if we’re lucky, he’ll make an appearance in Diablo III!
2. Leviathan/Poseidon – God of War III – The first boss of the game showed off truly how brutal Kratos could be. It was almost too disturbing to watch… almost. Do not piss off the Ghost of Sparta!
3. Sin – Final Fantasy X – Sin is a monstrous whale/embodiment of human Sin… Sounds strange, but every battle with him is incredibly exciting. The first fight with Sin, aboard the S.S. Liki, is one of the coolest fights in FFX.
4. Big Daddy – BioShock – You’re taught to fear them, and rightfully so… The first time you’re forced to fight one is one of the scariest and most memorable moments in gaming history.
5. The Butcher – Diablo – The first boss of the game, set the tone for the rest. He also scared the living hell out of me as a kid!

 

Walnut

Boss battles hold games together. It is hard for me to decide what my favorite battle is. Most of what I play are FPS games that don’t really have have an actual final boss. So I will pick my favorite boss levels.

1. Mass Effect 3 – Final battle and sequences are awesome. All the events leading up to the Boss Level makes you feel the weight of the galaxy on your shoulders.
2. Modern Warfare 3 – The boss level of that game sums up the entirety of the series.
3. Shadow of the Colossus – I agree with Cobb all the bosses are awesome.
4. FFXIII – The final boss in this game was awesome but I say the best fights are against the summons.
5. Jurassic Park for the Sega – The 2 raptors at the end took me so long to figure out how to beat them.

Drootin

1. Velius – Final Fantasy Tactics – One of the harder boss fights in a game that I have ever played. He was the 2nd Lucavi battle and a rare two-part battle that was just all-around difficult.
2. The Turks – Final Fantasy VII – Reno, Rude, and Elena aka The Turks pop up multiple times thru the game and you know it when their special (and totally awesome) theme song pops up.
3. Psycho Mantis – Metal Gear Solid – Like Anthony said the crazy things like reading your “mind” and having to switch controller ports were totally mind blowing when the game came out
4. The Butcher – Diablo – “Ah fresh meat!” hearing that when you opened the door to his room is one of the creepiest things in a game I’ve ever played and totally set the tone for this series
5. 9 Toes – Borderlands – 1st boss in the game didn’t really do anything special, but his intro was f’ing hilarious. Also, he has 3 balls.

 

 

Eric is not a boss. You can Email Eric or follow Eric on Twitter @EricSweeten or Facebook

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