10 Video Games That Reused Enemies (And Made Them WORSE)
Basilisks could kill you with a single spit of smoke in Dark Souls - and they were STILL useless.
Boss battles are a cathartical part of video games.
There's an indelible feeling that comes with playing them; the coup de grace that you've spent a sizeable chunk of a game working your way towards. Whether fighting a brute of a humanoid, a horde of security drones, or your average Joe, boss battles are a genuine make-or-break facet of gaming.
So often, though, developers will bring a boss back. These are usually discernible budget-cutting motifs to save a few notes but hey, sometimes the boss-in-question is actually better the second or third - or fourth... - time around. We recently detailed precisely that.
But what about on the other side of the fence?
The recycling of video game bosses can be tremendously repulsive, either because they've been reused SO much, or because a boss becomes a laughing stock of their former selves.
The Final Fantasy series is notorious for this, as for every delectable, recycled incarnation of Final Fantasy VIII's Seifer, there's the first form of the Emperor from Final Fantasy II, who returns later in the game to a whimpered fanfare, less potent and powerful than he once was.
He's not the only one…
10. Sahelanthropus (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain)
Sahelanthropus is the main boss in The Phantom Pain, the fifth instalment in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. The series’ most potent boss, Sahelanthropus displayed a deft presentation with bipedal limbs that previous Metal Gear models lacked, despite Sahelanthropus chronologically coming before them.
Hideo Kojima's out-of-order errors aside, Sahelanthropus’ first appearance was largely revered as a genuinely difficult boss battle.
At first, players had to weave around the fighting area, evading Sehalenthropus’ assorted attacks for several agonising minutes as they worked out a plan of attack. Your best bet was to gun it down from a rigged-out helicopter as, naturally, this gave Eli a better vantage point.
If you didn’t realise this, though, the beefed-up tank proved an arduous task for Metal Gear Solid V players.
By the time Sahelanthropus returned in the final mission, its intimidation factor was massively depleted, given that you’d already defeated it, and the manner in which to do so again was far more obvious: Throw everything you’ve got at it, making the process a lot simpler.
It’s this Sehalanthropus appearance that gives Metal Gear Solid V the tainted moniker of being a great video game ruined by its calamitous third act; a terrible final mission in every degree.