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Is it only me who finds bosses - single, highly armed enemies stronger than yourselves, are tedious to fight and are simply indicative of a lack of imagination? The best feature of Jedi Knight 2 is that that bosses are generally Jedi offering you a chance to practice your sabre skills at an advanced level. They were therefore fun to fight. However I thought the Galak Fyyar part was the worst and most uninspiring part of the game, bringing back memories of Wolfenstein and almost every pre-Half Life shooter.
Half-Life set a precedent of making bosses that could both scare the bajesus out of you and be defeated by completing the rest of the level (eg. the tentacles in Blast Pit). They were memorable, enjoyable to kill yet it never felt like you were fighting a punch bag - simply throwing ammunition at them until they die. I thought newer shooters would follow this example, but Wolfenstein was a terrible offender with its countless super-soldiers. I find it more enjoyable, and indeed realistic, to fight large amounts of enemies that can be killed quickly and easily with a bit of skill, my favorites being the HL marines, Reborn and Wolf paratroopers. If developers want to make a level more demanding, they should improve the AI of their enemies, or place many in strategic positions to present a spectacular challenge - not just jack up the size to stupid levels and let you blast away at one target.
Some bosses can be quite interesting. Take the Gonarch from Half-Life for example. Quite a compelling physiology it has there, and in my opinion, it would have made a better final boss than Nihilanth, if only it was a good bit larger. Sometimes it can be fun to just mow down countless enemies at once (like that bit in Serious Sam with the huge herd of Kleer Skeletons! Crunch!). As long as you don't run out of ammo all of a sudden. Of course, they're just dumb and it is more satisfying to kill an enemy (even a small one) that has really proven a challenge. Not forgetting the human assassins from HL too.
It really is baffling that developers persist with producing unoriginal, shuffling giants that could vaporize you in an instant but are so slow you can just circle-strafe round them to avoid their attacks. Enemies in general in Half Life were fun to fight primarily because they were fast and had decent AI (ninjas, marines), so just running loops round them firing your best weapon wasn't going to have much effect. The Super soldiers in Wolfenstein looked fantastic but they were just so slow it meant beating them was a piece of cake. Ok, so some bosses are alright, just as long as they're not the ‘chuck everything you've got at me’ type. What would be far better is an enemy that has EXACTLY the same skills and health, maybe even weapons as you do. The Reborn from JK2 are perfect examples of this, fighting three at once was one of the best moments in the entire game for me. Desann, was, well, pathetic really. Tavion was a great boss, simply because she had more force powers than you.
Developers have the right idea in that they are intending to create a spectacular finale, but doing it simply by providing a huge opponent with strong weaponry is a fairly lame approach, unless you do it on the scale of Serious Sam. If anyone remembers Turok and Goldeneye on the N64, they were characterized by good final bosses and in both instances your opponents were human size, yet the scale of the arena and the pace at which the battle took place made it a fitting ending.
I don't think large end of level/game bosses have a place in the FPS genre. The only true large end of level boss I've liked is Ug Zahn (or however that's spelt) from Serious Sam. It's just the way that he appears, bounding over enormous obstacles, able to be seen from space (probably). They need to start taking inspiration from arcade shooters. They need bosses, which are: Utterly gobs-mackingly massive - truly epic in size and scale. Ugh-Zan was a step in the right direction. Bosses should resemble, at the very least, a large angry skyscraper. You should have to dismantle the bosses, shoot off their first weapons, (like destroying Ugh-Zan's four pistols), and they produce larger ones, getting more impressive and destructive until you expose some sort of core (head, heart, glowing ball of energy, whatever) and you can destroy the boss itself. This would make boss fights seem like miniature wars, and would keep you on your toes, waiting for the next target to expose itself. It would also lend itself well to co-op fighting, with different people taking on different targets. Ugh-Zhan is officially the greatest FPS boss ever. In fact, that made me all the disappointed to find out that SS2 had a ‘punch bag’ boss that was highly unremarkable. What the hell was Croteam thinking of? However, Serious Sam 2's bosses are what FPS bosses should be like though, they were all original, challenging and never dull to fight.
Taking that into account, the one at the end of Opposing Force was an arcade style boss in that it was a question of 'work out the attack pattern, shoot the weak points' and the fact it became progressively more difficult as platforms around you collapsed. However it was pretty under whelming for a finale and it looked as if Gearbox had just run out of ideas. The old bosses in platform games and scrolling shoot-em-ups on the 16 bit consoles obeyed the criteria and they were satisfying and challenging to face as a result. FPS games have so much more potential and only Serious Sam and its sequel have come close to fulfilling it.
I think a main problem with FPS bosses, or in fact any game boss, it that they either have to be huge armored beast people who have weak spots or they're just normal blokes who have an impossibly high health level. I think the JK2 bosses are the best because they don't really have amazing health; they're just very skilled in the art of fighting. I don't actually think it's necessary to have bosses though, think about MOH:AA, which really wouldn't have worked with bosses. That said, it wouldn't have worked at all considering it's a realistic WWII game. I think the bosses in HL and RTCW worked because they weren't trying to be realistic. Bosses don't seem to work in realistic 1st person shooters, because you don't get bloody massive monsters or people with 100,000hp in real life.
If you look at it from a realism-based standpoint, that fighting a human boss can be better than fighting some huge alien monster. Out of a battle between, say that Lava Golem from Serious Sam, and Walton Simons, the battle with Simons was a lot better (and tougher). Probably because if you're fighting against another human, they're more "on your level" and it seems more of an equal match. That, and Simons was a right pain in the axe with that Plasma Gun. Kept on filling my screen with green until I couldn't even see what I was shooting at, not to mention the karkians I would always end up getting mauled by at the same time.
Regarding Jedi Knight 2, I would have rather fought a human at the end than a lizard...but still a good fight.
Thanks for reading,
LF
Half-Life set a precedent of making bosses that could both scare the bajesus out of you and be defeated by completing the rest of the level (eg. the tentacles in Blast Pit). They were memorable, enjoyable to kill yet it never felt like you were fighting a punch bag - simply throwing ammunition at them until they die. I thought newer shooters would follow this example, but Wolfenstein was a terrible offender with its countless super-soldiers. I find it more enjoyable, and indeed realistic, to fight large amounts of enemies that can be killed quickly and easily with a bit of skill, my favorites being the HL marines, Reborn and Wolf paratroopers. If developers want to make a level more demanding, they should improve the AI of their enemies, or place many in strategic positions to present a spectacular challenge - not just jack up the size to stupid levels and let you blast away at one target.
Some bosses can be quite interesting. Take the Gonarch from Half-Life for example. Quite a compelling physiology it has there, and in my opinion, it would have made a better final boss than Nihilanth, if only it was a good bit larger. Sometimes it can be fun to just mow down countless enemies at once (like that bit in Serious Sam with the huge herd of Kleer Skeletons! Crunch!). As long as you don't run out of ammo all of a sudden. Of course, they're just dumb and it is more satisfying to kill an enemy (even a small one) that has really proven a challenge. Not forgetting the human assassins from HL too.
It really is baffling that developers persist with producing unoriginal, shuffling giants that could vaporize you in an instant but are so slow you can just circle-strafe round them to avoid their attacks. Enemies in general in Half Life were fun to fight primarily because they were fast and had decent AI (ninjas, marines), so just running loops round them firing your best weapon wasn't going to have much effect. The Super soldiers in Wolfenstein looked fantastic but they were just so slow it meant beating them was a piece of cake. Ok, so some bosses are alright, just as long as they're not the ‘chuck everything you've got at me’ type. What would be far better is an enemy that has EXACTLY the same skills and health, maybe even weapons as you do. The Reborn from JK2 are perfect examples of this, fighting three at once was one of the best moments in the entire game for me. Desann, was, well, pathetic really. Tavion was a great boss, simply because she had more force powers than you.
Developers have the right idea in that they are intending to create a spectacular finale, but doing it simply by providing a huge opponent with strong weaponry is a fairly lame approach, unless you do it on the scale of Serious Sam. If anyone remembers Turok and Goldeneye on the N64, they were characterized by good final bosses and in both instances your opponents were human size, yet the scale of the arena and the pace at which the battle took place made it a fitting ending.
I don't think large end of level/game bosses have a place in the FPS genre. The only true large end of level boss I've liked is Ug Zahn (or however that's spelt) from Serious Sam. It's just the way that he appears, bounding over enormous obstacles, able to be seen from space (probably). They need to start taking inspiration from arcade shooters. They need bosses, which are: Utterly gobs-mackingly massive - truly epic in size and scale. Ugh-Zan was a step in the right direction. Bosses should resemble, at the very least, a large angry skyscraper. You should have to dismantle the bosses, shoot off their first weapons, (like destroying Ugh-Zan's four pistols), and they produce larger ones, getting more impressive and destructive until you expose some sort of core (head, heart, glowing ball of energy, whatever) and you can destroy the boss itself. This would make boss fights seem like miniature wars, and would keep you on your toes, waiting for the next target to expose itself. It would also lend itself well to co-op fighting, with different people taking on different targets. Ugh-Zhan is officially the greatest FPS boss ever. In fact, that made me all the disappointed to find out that SS2 had a ‘punch bag’ boss that was highly unremarkable. What the hell was Croteam thinking of? However, Serious Sam 2's bosses are what FPS bosses should be like though, they were all original, challenging and never dull to fight.
Taking that into account, the one at the end of Opposing Force was an arcade style boss in that it was a question of 'work out the attack pattern, shoot the weak points' and the fact it became progressively more difficult as platforms around you collapsed. However it was pretty under whelming for a finale and it looked as if Gearbox had just run out of ideas. The old bosses in platform games and scrolling shoot-em-ups on the 16 bit consoles obeyed the criteria and they were satisfying and challenging to face as a result. FPS games have so much more potential and only Serious Sam and its sequel have come close to fulfilling it.
I think a main problem with FPS bosses, or in fact any game boss, it that they either have to be huge armored beast people who have weak spots or they're just normal blokes who have an impossibly high health level. I think the JK2 bosses are the best because they don't really have amazing health; they're just very skilled in the art of fighting. I don't actually think it's necessary to have bosses though, think about MOH:AA, which really wouldn't have worked with bosses. That said, it wouldn't have worked at all considering it's a realistic WWII game. I think the bosses in HL and RTCW worked because they weren't trying to be realistic. Bosses don't seem to work in realistic 1st person shooters, because you don't get bloody massive monsters or people with 100,000hp in real life.
If you look at it from a realism-based standpoint, that fighting a human boss can be better than fighting some huge alien monster. Out of a battle between, say that Lava Golem from Serious Sam, and Walton Simons, the battle with Simons was a lot better (and tougher). Probably because if you're fighting against another human, they're more "on your level" and it seems more of an equal match. That, and Simons was a right pain in the axe with that Plasma Gun. Kept on filling my screen with green until I couldn't even see what I was shooting at, not to mention the karkians I would always end up getting mauled by at the same time.
Regarding Jedi Knight 2, I would have rather fought a human at the end than a lizard...but still a good fight.
Thanks for reading,
LF
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Is it only me who finds bosses - single, highly armed enemies stronger than yourselves, are tedious to fight and are simply indicative of a lack of imagination? The best feature of Jedi Knight 2 is that that bosses are generally Jedi offering you a chance to practice your sabre skills at an advanced level. They were therefore fun to fight. However I thought the Galak Fyyar part was the worst and most uninspiring part of the game, bringing back memories of Wolfenstein and almost every pre-Half Life shooter.
Half-Life set a precedent of making bosses that could both scare the bajesus out of you and be defeated by completing the rest of the level (eg. the tentacles in Blast Pit). They were memorable, enjoyable to kill yet it never felt like you were fighting a punch bag - simply throwing ammunition at them until they die. I thought newer shooters would follow this example, but Wolfenstein was a terrible offender with its countless super-soldiers. I find it more enjoyable, and indeed realistic, to fight large amounts of enemies that can be killed quickly and easily with a bit of skill, my favorites being the HL marines, Reborn and Wolf paratroopers. If developers want to make a level more demanding, they should improve the AI of their enemies, or place many in strategic positions to present a spectacular challenge - not just jack up the size to stupid levels and let you blast away at one target.
Some bosses can be quite interesting. Take the Gonarch from Half-Life for example. Quite a compelling physiology it has there, and in my opinion, it would have made a better final boss than Nihilanth, if only it was a good bit larger. Sometimes it can be fun to just mow down countless enemies at once (like that bit in Serious Sam with the huge herd of Kleer Skeletons! Crunch!). As long as you don't run out of ammo all of a sudden. Of course, they're just dumb and it is more satisfying to kill an enemy (even a small one) that has really proven a challenge. Not forgetting the human assassins from HL too.
It really is baffling that developers persist with producing unoriginal, shuffling giants that could vaporize you in an instant but are so slow you can just circle-strafe round them to avoid their attacks. Enemies in general in Half Life were fun to fight primarily because they were fast and had decent AI (ninjas, marines), so just running loops round them firing your best weapon wasn't going to have much effect. The Super soldiers in Wolfenstein looked fantastic but they were just so slow it meant beating them was a piece of cake. Ok, so some bosses are alright, just as long as they're not the ‘chuck everything you've got at me’ type. What would be far better is an enemy that has EXACTLY the same skills and health, maybe even weapons as you do. The Reborn from JK2 are perfect examples of this, fighting three at once was one of the best moments in the entire game for me. Desann, was, well, pathetic really. Tavion was a great boss, simply because she had more force powers than you.
Developers have the right idea in that they are intending to create a spectacular finale, but doing it simply by providing a huge opponent with strong weaponry is a fairly lame approach, unless you do it on the scale of Serious Sam. If anyone remembers Turok and Goldeneye on the N64, they were characterized by good final bosses and in both instances your opponents were human size, yet the scale of the arena and the pace at which the battle took place made it a fitting ending.
I don't think large end of level/game bosses have a place in the FPS genre. The only true large end of level boss I've liked is Ug Zahn (or however that's spelt) from Serious Sam. It's just the way that he appears, bounding over enormous obstacles, able to be seen from space (probably). They need to start taking inspiration from arcade shooters. They need bosses, which are: Utterly gobs-mackingly massive - truly epic in size and scale. Ugh-Zan was a step in the right direction. Bosses should resemble, at the very least, a large angry skyscraper. You should have to dismantle the bosses, shoot off their first weapons, (like destroying Ugh-Zan's four pistols), and they produce larger ones, getting more impressive and destructive until you expose some sort of core (head, heart, glowing ball of energy, whatever) and you can destroy the boss itself. This would make boss fights seem like miniature wars, and would keep you on your toes, waiting for the next target to expose itself. It would also lend itself well to co-op fighting, with different people taking on different targets. Ugh-Zhan is officially the greatest FPS boss ever. In fact, that made me all the disappointed to find out that SS2 had a ‘punch bag’ boss that was highly unremarkable. What the hell was Croteam thinking of? However, Serious Sam 2's bosses are what FPS bosses should be like though, they were all original, challenging and never dull to fight.
Taking that into account, the one at the end of Opposing Force was an arcade style boss in that it was a question of 'work out the attack pattern, shoot the weak points' and the fact it became progressively more difficult as platforms around you collapsed. However it was pretty under whelming for a finale and it looked as if Gearbox had just run out of ideas. The old bosses in platform games and scrolling shoot-em-ups on the 16 bit consoles obeyed the criteria and they were satisfying and challenging to face as a result. FPS games have so much more potential and only Serious Sam and its sequel have come close to fulfilling it.
I think a main problem with FPS bosses, or in fact any game boss, it that they either have to be huge armored beast people who have weak spots or they're just normal blokes who have an impossibly high health level. I think the JK2 bosses are the best because they don't really have amazing health; they're just very skilled in the art of fighting. I don't actually think it's necessary to have bosses though, think about MOH:AA, which really wouldn't have worked with bosses. That said, it wouldn't have worked at all considering it's a realistic WWII game. I think the bosses in HL and RTCW worked because they weren't trying to be realistic. Bosses don't seem to work in realistic 1st person shooters, because you don't get bloody massive monsters or people with 100,000hp in real life.
If you look at it from a realism-based standpoint, that fighting a human boss can be better than fighting some huge alien monster. Out of a battle between, say that Lava Golem from Serious Sam, and Walton Simons, the battle with Simons was a lot better (and tougher). Probably because if you're fighting against another human, they're more "on your level" and it seems more of an equal match. That, and Simons was a right pain in the axe with that Plasma Gun. Kept on filling my screen with green until I couldn't even see what I was shooting at, not to mention the karkians I would always end up getting mauled by at the same time.
Regarding Jedi Knight 2, I would have rather fought a human at the end than a lizard...but still a good fight.
Thanks for reading,
LF
Half-Life set a precedent of making bosses that could both scare the bajesus out of you and be defeated by completing the rest of the level (eg. the tentacles in Blast Pit). They were memorable, enjoyable to kill yet it never felt like you were fighting a punch bag - simply throwing ammunition at them until they die. I thought newer shooters would follow this example, but Wolfenstein was a terrible offender with its countless super-soldiers. I find it more enjoyable, and indeed realistic, to fight large amounts of enemies that can be killed quickly and easily with a bit of skill, my favorites being the HL marines, Reborn and Wolf paratroopers. If developers want to make a level more demanding, they should improve the AI of their enemies, or place many in strategic positions to present a spectacular challenge - not just jack up the size to stupid levels and let you blast away at one target.
Some bosses can be quite interesting. Take the Gonarch from Half-Life for example. Quite a compelling physiology it has there, and in my opinion, it would have made a better final boss than Nihilanth, if only it was a good bit larger. Sometimes it can be fun to just mow down countless enemies at once (like that bit in Serious Sam with the huge herd of Kleer Skeletons! Crunch!). As long as you don't run out of ammo all of a sudden. Of course, they're just dumb and it is more satisfying to kill an enemy (even a small one) that has really proven a challenge. Not forgetting the human assassins from HL too.
It really is baffling that developers persist with producing unoriginal, shuffling giants that could vaporize you in an instant but are so slow you can just circle-strafe round them to avoid their attacks. Enemies in general in Half Life were fun to fight primarily because they were fast and had decent AI (ninjas, marines), so just running loops round them firing your best weapon wasn't going to have much effect. The Super soldiers in Wolfenstein looked fantastic but they were just so slow it meant beating them was a piece of cake. Ok, so some bosses are alright, just as long as they're not the ‘chuck everything you've got at me’ type. What would be far better is an enemy that has EXACTLY the same skills and health, maybe even weapons as you do. The Reborn from JK2 are perfect examples of this, fighting three at once was one of the best moments in the entire game for me. Desann, was, well, pathetic really. Tavion was a great boss, simply because she had more force powers than you.
Developers have the right idea in that they are intending to create a spectacular finale, but doing it simply by providing a huge opponent with strong weaponry is a fairly lame approach, unless you do it on the scale of Serious Sam. If anyone remembers Turok and Goldeneye on the N64, they were characterized by good final bosses and in both instances your opponents were human size, yet the scale of the arena and the pace at which the battle took place made it a fitting ending.
I don't think large end of level/game bosses have a place in the FPS genre. The only true large end of level boss I've liked is Ug Zahn (or however that's spelt) from Serious Sam. It's just the way that he appears, bounding over enormous obstacles, able to be seen from space (probably). They need to start taking inspiration from arcade shooters. They need bosses, which are: Utterly gobs-mackingly massive - truly epic in size and scale. Ugh-Zan was a step in the right direction. Bosses should resemble, at the very least, a large angry skyscraper. You should have to dismantle the bosses, shoot off their first weapons, (like destroying Ugh-Zan's four pistols), and they produce larger ones, getting more impressive and destructive until you expose some sort of core (head, heart, glowing ball of energy, whatever) and you can destroy the boss itself. This would make boss fights seem like miniature wars, and would keep you on your toes, waiting for the next target to expose itself. It would also lend itself well to co-op fighting, with different people taking on different targets. Ugh-Zhan is officially the greatest FPS boss ever. In fact, that made me all the disappointed to find out that SS2 had a ‘punch bag’ boss that was highly unremarkable. What the hell was Croteam thinking of? However, Serious Sam 2's bosses are what FPS bosses should be like though, they were all original, challenging and never dull to fight.
Taking that into account, the one at the end of Opposing Force was an arcade style boss in that it was a question of 'work out the attack pattern, shoot the weak points' and the fact it became progressively more difficult as platforms around you collapsed. However it was pretty under whelming for a finale and it looked as if Gearbox had just run out of ideas. The old bosses in platform games and scrolling shoot-em-ups on the 16 bit consoles obeyed the criteria and they were satisfying and challenging to face as a result. FPS games have so much more potential and only Serious Sam and its sequel have come close to fulfilling it.
I think a main problem with FPS bosses, or in fact any game boss, it that they either have to be huge armored beast people who have weak spots or they're just normal blokes who have an impossibly high health level. I think the JK2 bosses are the best because they don't really have amazing health; they're just very skilled in the art of fighting. I don't actually think it's necessary to have bosses though, think about MOH:AA, which really wouldn't have worked with bosses. That said, it wouldn't have worked at all considering it's a realistic WWII game. I think the bosses in HL and RTCW worked because they weren't trying to be realistic. Bosses don't seem to work in realistic 1st person shooters, because you don't get bloody massive monsters or people with 100,000hp in real life.
If you look at it from a realism-based standpoint, that fighting a human boss can be better than fighting some huge alien monster. Out of a battle between, say that Lava Golem from Serious Sam, and Walton Simons, the battle with Simons was a lot better (and tougher). Probably because if you're fighting against another human, they're more "on your level" and it seems more of an equal match. That, and Simons was a right pain in the axe with that Plasma Gun. Kept on filling my screen with green until I couldn't even see what I was shooting at, not to mention the karkians I would always end up getting mauled by at the same time.
Regarding Jedi Knight 2, I would have rather fought a human at the end than a lizard...but still a good fight.
Thanks for reading,
LF