From the Platform and RPG to the Shoot-em-up and Adventure game, the iconic boss fight has always been a bitter-sweet experience for gamers. Often these battles are filled with repetitive dodge-and-attack techniques and restarts as they filled with glitches, boring arenas and sometimes the difficulty is just TOO DAMN HIGH! Here, we list the ten ways of making that perfect boss battle...
10. Difficulty
The most common problem with boss battles that don't work are because they are either way too easy and so don't present a challenge (Lucien in Fable 2 a prime example. Come on, 1 shot kill? What the hell was that about?!) to those which require many painstaking hours (Zeus in God of War 2, still haven't forgiven that game). There needs to be a perfect balance with not being too easy and not too hard. There needs to be a gradual increase in difficulty throughout the game leading to that final boss battle to challenge a player. Challenge, remember, not cause people to throw their controllers at the television screens. It can happen.
9. Technique
The way the boss is defeated also needs to be perfected. Players don't want just a slightly harder enemy that they've spent a whole 9 hours of game-play facing. There needs to be a change in how they are defeated and offer a slightly different challenge. Assassin's Creed is an example of a game that got it wrong, with bosses simply involving repeating the steps of previous assassinations. This is what we call boring. Ideally, a game should bring together all the different tactics you've used previously to culminate in a glorious victory. Not just gun n' run and hope for the best.