There are few moments in videogames that manage to either underwhelm so severely as to undercut the collective experience of playing the game from start to finish, or be so odds with the journey that the destination feels so out of place, but it does happen, and more than we’d like. Of course, it’s all subjective. In recent conversation with a friend, he cited one of his favourite final boss battles as one of my worst (number 4 on this list). There will be many of you who read this and entirely disagree with my choices, waving your hands up in protest at some choices that made it on here whilst decrying ones that didn’t.

Many of the entries on here are from the current generation – that’s not to say that this generation has produced the largest number of the most disappointing final bosses in videogame history – it’s simply more relevant. That said, there are some entries that date back as far as the PSone, and they sit mighty high on this list. They stand the test of time because, even more than ten years on, those final bosses still stick in our craw. And hey, it wasn’t easy diluting this topic down to just ten entries. A word of warning though, this list obviously contains some very major spoilers for a lot of the biggest games this generation.

Here are the main offenders.

10. The Destroyer – Borderlands

Borderlands was very much the PS3′s Gears of War – a shooter that came out of nowhere and that nobody really expected a whole lot from until it we were actually playing it. In no time at all it managed to set the world on fire through a blend of coffee-black humour, RPG elements, a unique art design and loot. Lots and lots of loot. Take all that and combine it with online four play co-op and you have a recipe for unmitigated success, which developer Gearbox certainly achieved.

It’s disappointing then that after anything up to fifty plus hours into the game, the game’s final confrontation with The Destroyer is so unchallenging and unrewarding. Taking down the game’s final big bad consists of pretty much hiding behind a rock on the occasional moment when you’re threatened to be a victim of tentacle porn then sticking your head out and monotonously laying down round in the beastie’s clearly visible and well-exposed weak points. Worst of all, the Destroyer doesn’t even change position or make any attempt at manoeuvring, making it akin to shooting fish in a barrel.

After so much investment in building up the ultimate badass character, this was a true wet noodle of an enemy, undermining all the looting and levelling we’d taken so much time in to achieve. Here’s hoping Gearbox learned their lesson with Borderlands 2.

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