9 Incredible Video Game Bosses You Never Got To Fight
An encounter set up across the whole game? Who'd want to play that??
Imagine being most of the way through a Cornetto icecream, when someone suddenly snatches it away as you reach the best part (i.e. the chocolate-tipped cone at the bottom), loudly announcing that they would be eating that part for you.
You’d be furious, and rightfully so.
Crazily, this kind of thing happens in video games all the time. You’ll slog away at an entire campaign, putting up with fetch quests, irresponsible escorts, collectathons, or perilous platforming, and when you get to a big bad boss at the end of the level, the game steals the chocolate tip.
There are countless bosses in modern gaming that have been reduced to quick time events, or simply “Press X to not die” situations, but there are some boss encounters that are even less involved, and their deaths are carried out without any player input whatsoever.
Maybe I'm just being greedy, but when everything in the game's delivery implies a particular baddie is going to provide a great challenge, it being reduced to watching your ultimate antagonist defeated in a non-interactive cutscene can feel incredibly anticlimactic.
Whether the manner of the death itself is satisfying or not, at least let us have some kind of part to play in the execution!
9. The Humongous Mecha - Alice: Madness Returns
In this wonderfully dark version of Wonderland, Alice and the Mad Hatter are making their way through the great industrial maze of the factory when they are cornered by the March Hare and the Doormouse, piloting a giant, imposing, mecha robot. They taunt the pair, and the player, picking up Hatter with a hook, promising to destroy us.
Well, that’s what we were promised, but it’s not quite what we got.
In one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, Hatter frees himself and manages to instantly destroy the mecha with a giant teapot, killing its pilots.
That’s it! No epic insane battle between a handful of fiction’s most iconic characters.
Originally the Mecha was supposed to be a boss battle. It would pound the ground around Alice, and she was supposed to shoot at its chest to defeat it. Maybe the dev team ran out of time to put the fight in, maybe the fight was just too frustrating for the early game, perhaps the team wanted to subvert the cliche trope of having a boss fight at the end of the level.
Whatever the reason, the whole thing feels very sudden, jarring, and completely unfair at the time.