10 Exact Moments That Saved Terrible Video Game Bosses

In the original version of Half-Life, Gonarch's Lair is an incredibly short chapter lasting a mere number of minutes, in which while Gordon Freeman explores the alien world of Xen, he crosses paths with the giant, spider-like creature known as the Gonarch.

Battling the Gonarch simply involves repeatedly inflicting enough damage upon it that it flees through various areas of the lair, until it eventually dies and leaves a portal for Gordon to go through.

In the original game the Gonarch was a relatively bland, generic monster baddie for the player to defeat, but in the third-party remake Black Mesa, it becomes an epic and seriously challenging foe.

In Black Mesa the Gonarch's Lair chapter was given a significant expansion - running around 30 minutes instead of five - with the Gonarch appearing numerous times throughout.

Crucially the Gonarch is presented in a far more intense and terrifying way in Black Mesa: its attacks and charges are considerably more aggressive, resulting in a much more difficult fight.

As with this chapter as a whole, the reworked boss fight just bleeds atmosphere that felt comparatively lacking in the original - aided in no small part by a truly kickass new soundtrack.

Given that Xen felt rather rushed in the original release, Black Mesa's greatest triumph might be doing more fleshed-out justice to it, and making the Gonarch less a generic monster and more a genuinely fearsome enemy.