10 Worst Video Game Boss Battles Of 2018
They can't all be winners.
2018 has been a year of tremendous highs and abyssal lows for the video game industry. We've been graced by monumental releases like Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Hitman 2, and many others, but we’ve also been forced to slog through the tragedies of Fallout 76, Agony and Metal Gear Survive.
While gameplay, pacing, and storytelling used to be central to a game’s aspect, consumers today seem to more than ever factor a product’s monetization schemes and marketing into their judgement of a game’s overall quality.
That’s rightly so, as this generation has given rise to some downright shady activity, though it does mean that certain elements have become less relevant—Call of Duty dropped its campaign mode entirely, and that was far from the top criticism levelled at the release.
That said, we aren’t so far removed from the days in which single player experiences were the norm that we would allow the year’s worst boss fights to go completely ignored. With games media now drip-fed to us piece by piece and released in unfinished states, some villains come off as total afterthoughts, and these ten were particularly underwhelming.
10. Amaru - Shadow Of The Tomb Raider
Debuting in 2013 with the eponymously-titled Tomb Raider, Lara Croft’s recent reboot trilogy has gone over fairly well with series fans. Though it may borrow a bit too heavily from Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise in some places, these three games are by-and-large enjoyable.
That said, Square Enix’s tomb raiding triptic ends on a bit of a sour note. The lead up to the boss fight against Amaru in Shadow of the Tomb raider is suitably epic, but the fight itself is not.
Despite having been imbued with the power of an ancient Mayan deity, all Lara has to do to take this guy down is topple three totems and stab him with a dagger three times. Though it may well be a decent challenge on higher difficulties, this duel can be dealt with in all of five minutes on the more forgiving settings.
Though he boasts an AOE fire attack and shoots his bow once Lara gets out of range, Amaru is a pushover. The backup he calls in is less accurate than a stormtrooper with a faulty blaster, and players likely felt that the game’s ending was a bit of an anticlimax as a result of this woeful encounter.