Who's the boss?

How many boss fights has the average gamer partaken in? I’ve been playing video games for over thirty years, so I’d say that I’ve taken part in a fair few. Boss fights, end-of-level-bosses, the big baddie, call them what you will; they’re there to offer a challenge and help advance the story.

Ask any gamer and they’ll easily regale you with tales of the hardest, the zaniest, or the most inventive and enjoyable boss fights of their gamer career. They may come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have common elements. There are patterns to be learnt and exploited, weak spots to be targeted. There’s trial and error, repetition, frustration, and elation. This week I encountered the shortest and easiest boss fights I’ve ever come across. It was truly bizarre.

When Deus Ex: Human Revolution was released people found the boss fights to be at odds with the general stealthy tone of the game. They were flat out action segments that didn’t gel with the rest of the sneaky experience. As it turned out it was because these sections of the game were farmed out to a different developer, which helped explain the disconnect felt. What it doesn’t explain is why the second boss took me all of ten seconds to defeat. And eight of those seconds were the animation of my character unleashing a special move.

Deus Ex’s protagonist Adam Jensen is an augmented human/cyborg capable of incredible technological upgrades that make him something akin to Solid Snake meets Robocop. One of these upgrades is the typhoon weapon system, which at the press of a button sees Jensen whirl around and unleash a volley of deadly projectiles in a 360 degree arc. Upon performing this assault you witness a four second animation of the carnage being unleashed.

As is typical before any end-of-level boss fight there is a cut-scene that sets up the fight. I watched the cut-scene, and then the fight began. The boss, a female cyborg, started to rush at me. Instinctively I pressed the button that activated the typhoon attack. I watched the animation deal her untold damage. Control was returned to me, she stumbled, wounded. I shrugged, pressed the button again, and watched the same animation unfold. The boss was hit with the projectiles and fell down, dead. Cue another cut-scene that told me where I’d be going to next. Achievement unlocked, and I was ushered on to the next level. It took you longer to read that than the entire ‘fight’ did in real time.

Normally I would be annoyed at the lazy, crappy design of this boss fight, but in reality I was glad it was over quickly. It wasn’t that much of a problem. I was enjoying the game for what it was. I wasn’t interested in a lengthy shootout with some random boss. I was quite happy to continue sneaking my merry way through air vents.

After some more enjoyable sneaky shenanigans, and another boss fight that wasn’t particularly taxing or interesting, and not even worth remarking on, I got to the final boss at the end of the game. This one I dispatched by merely shooting with a laser beam for five seconds or so. But I had to vault over a few barriers first in order to avoid some sentry turrets, so that ended up making this stunning battle last longer than the previous record setting encounter, and thereby made it far less impressive. Although defeating the very end boss in twelve seconds could be seen as even more ridiculous, as the end boss is supposed to be the hardest of the lot. But at least this easy final boss let me get to the credits a lot quicker, and these were unique.

The credits featured photos of the Eidos Montreal development team throughout the various stages of development. Sometimes they were in the office working. Sometime they were having meetings filled with smiles. Mostly they were partaking in fun team building activities like table-hockey, or football in the park. And drinking. Lots of drinking. Seriously, someone had a drink in their hand in about 75% of these pictures. So much drinking. No wonder they had to farm out those boss fights.

28 down, 22 to go.