10 Video Game Boss Fights That Broke The Rules
4. The Other Player - A Way Out
A Way Out was director Josef Fares' follow-up to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, a game which required the player to control two brothers simultaneously - one with each thumbstick.
A Way Out is an evolution of that concept, a two-player co-op experience where players each control a convicted criminal, with the stories unfolding in parallel both together and apart.
But the game's ingenious rug-pull comes in its final "boss" encounter, where after hours of working together to escape, protagonists Leo and Vincent are pitted against one another after it's revealed that Vincent is an undercover cop.
The climactic sequence is an epic showdown between the two players, ending with each man wounded and scrambling to pick up a gun first. Whoever gets the gun ends up shooting the other dead.
Forcing players who've been collaborating for the entire game to suddenly get combative with one another was a totally neat and unexpected twist on what players expected after playing through Fares' previous game.
Hopefully his upcoming co-op joint It Takes Two might find yet more creative ways to experiment with both co-op play and boss battle conventions.