Death to Bosses

No, I'm not calling for a workplace uprising. Not yet anyway. No, this is something far more insidious. A gaming evil so awful, that the mere mention of it can cause frothing at the mouth. (Perhaps I should see a doctor?)

There you are. You've fought through the hordes of evil, and given them a damn good kicking. You're feeling good.
You've made it this far without dying. You feel righteous. Nothing can stop you. You're a hero. A god even.

But wait? What's this? Some new enemy? He looks bigger than the rest. More heads. More legs. More pointy things for weapons. Oh goodie, it's a boss, here to ruin your gaming day.

The person who invented the end of level boss needs to be taken aside, and forced to play through some of the games that his creation has tarnished. (I say his because no woman would have ever come up with the idea. No, a woman would have been far more subtle.) The harder, the better. Put the game on high difficulty, remove the memory card, and then watch the bastard suffer. For every time he dies at the hand of the beast he?s unleashed into the gaming community, he gets poked with a stick.

Bosses are a tiresome, abused cliche. They serve no real purpose. The justification seems to be that they break up a level in a game. Well, here?s an interesting idea, how about you design the games better, so you don?t NEED a boss to hide your repetition? I?ve even seen some developers claim they put bosses in so they can ?break up the monotony?.
Guys, if your game can, in any way, be described as monotonous, you have a real problem that no amount of bosses is going to fix.

Some bosses aren?t that bad. One game that nailed them reasonably well was the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Despite Robotnik being like the Engergizer Bunny, in that he kept going and going, the battles were never that boring. They were fairly easy to figure out, but still required a fair amount of skill to deal with once you?d figured them out.

Sadly, few games seem to take this route, opting for outright difficulty over actual clever design concepts. Why is it still considered an acceptable gaming solution where the option is repeatedly dying until you can figure out how to defeat a boss? Surely the ?die repeatedly until you know it off by heart? design should be long since dead?

Take something like Devil May Cry, or other games of that ilk. You?ve just slaughtered your way through the bad guys,
only to reach a boss, whose vulnerability is a 3 pixel wide segment on the left ear. Of course you don?t know that.
You?re left to experiment (AKA die) repeatedly until you figure it out. How does that equal anything other than frustration? Games are supposed to be challenging, sure. However, there is a big difference between challenging and frustrating. Challenging is something that gives a game that ?just one more go? feeling, until the next thing you know,
the sun is up, and there are divorces papers sitting in the pizza box. Frustrating is what causes controllers to break as they bounce off the wall you threw them at.

Bosses are thrown in as little more than a bogus method to increase game length. What?s worse is that invariably, if you die in a boss battle, some game designers think it?s acceptable tol force you to do the level over again. If you?re lucky, there may have been a save point recently, but there are games, even now, that seem to think it?s a great design decision to make you play an entire level again, just so you can fight a boss that you?re given no hint on how to beat.

Do bosses still have a place in gaming? Or are they the gaming equivalent of 50?s sci fi, an antique best left on the shelf where we can pretend they never happened?

If you agree that bosses are a concept well past their sell by date, what recent games have frustrated you with them?
If you think bosses are a fine idea, explain, and also tell us what games have especially good bosses, and why they?re good, and why those of us who hate bosses have it all wrong.

STRIEGS?S UPDATE: Don?t know whether or not Steve was aware of
this article posted a few days earlier regarding the same subject, but take a peek for yet more elaboration on the contentious issue of boss battles.