10 Video Game Sub-Bosses Who DESTROYED Players

If you look up “absurd difficulty spike” in the Encyclopedia Of Good Game Flow, the Boost Guardian is the king, queen and all of their subjects, the singular most outrageous example of “how to make your player swear” design you’ll likely find applied to a miniboss.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is already actually quite a tricky game in general; Echoes takes a very “trial by fire” approach to most of its encounters, with some early fights in particular sure to rip your health bar apart without much remorse.

But, as Samus searches a whole other dimension to regain all of her lost abilities absorbed by the dark world’s creatures, the Ing, she gets several tastes of her own medicine as they use her abilities against her.

The infamous Boost Guardian has absorbed her Boost Ball ability, and must be fought as it zips around the arena (doing enormous damage to anything it collides with). At one point, Samus can only hurt it by using morph ball bombs, but without her boost ability, catching up to the lightning-fast critter is easier said than done.

I died to the Boost Guardian more than all other enemies combined.

And I said F. I said F... a lot.