10 Video Games That Reused Bosses (And Made Them BETTER)

Game development is hard. To compensate for that, just like any other job, it’s filled with shortcuts to make things easier on the developers. Whether it's cutting chunks of the story, toning back graphics, or looping music tracks that are too small for a cutscene and hoping nobody notices - it’s all in an effort to complete the game within a timeframe and budget.

Another common practice is reusing assets; this is especially evident in the form of recoloured backgrounds or enemies. Sure you might fight Terry, a blonde punk in a leather jacket, and then two levels later you fight Gary, a brunette punk in a denim jacket - but just wait until you see Larry, the blue haired punk in a black vinyl jacket!

Regular enemies aren’t the only things that get reused, though - whole bosses can be repeated. It's a regular motif of some games, as a matter of fact, such as the Mega Man series. But it’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes bosses are actually better the second - or third - time you see them in a game.

You first encounter the Guardian as a mid-boss in the Evil Within sequel: a horrid amalgamation of butchered woman's bodies, combined into one terrifying monster with a buzzsaw for a hand. The fight is intense, but the whole area is specifically arranged for it and it's a big to-do.

Cut to a level or two later and you learn that more Guardians can be fought...randomly spawning on the map. It's one thing, in a horror game, to fight an abomination of tortured women's bodies swinging a sinew-covered buzzsaw at you in a room designed for it. It is another thing entirely to find it while rounding a corner when you're just hunting to replenish your dangerously low stock of ammo.

In an action game it would probably just be annoying, but because the Evil Within 2 is a horror game – every time you cross paths with the Guardian, unexpectedly, adds to the horror of the situation. It's especially disconcerting when you're trying to skirt around another enemy that you want to avoid and suddenly there's a walking pile of corpses swinging spinning blades at you. Lucky the enemies in the game can't hear your real screams of terror from your couch.