Boss Battles

Friday 20 Apr 2007

If you are a gamer, the chances are that you have played a boss battle, unless of course you are Miyamoto’s wife and you refuse to play anything but Nintendogs and the Everybody Votes Channel. I find boss battles interesting and the more games I play and the more boss battles I fight or watch my friends fight, the more hilarious they become to me.

It has over the course of many years been becoming clearer and clearer to me how to know precisely when you are about to encounter a boss battle. I thought that I would save you gamers out there the frustration of being killed the first couple of times in a boss battle – yes, it happens to the best of us, but I am here to help. There are clues to be spotted and it is best that you don’t ignore these clues since you will probably end up getting your a$$ kicked if you do.

Gloom and doom

Firstly, always be on the lookout for ominous sounding music which generally starts to play just before you are just about to walk around the corner into a boss battle. You may think this is trite, but gloom and doom generally spells death and reload.

Secondly, the developers have left an uncharacteristic amount of health lying around. Be warned, developers never ever give you health just because they felt like it. Developers like to see you die, they are heartless, so even if there is a copius amount of health strategically placed before a dark, strangely lit room face it, it will probably still not be enough to facilitate your defeat of the boss first time round (unless of course you are playing on weener mode). Whatever you do though, let me give you this piece of advice, which I advise you to treat like a pearl of wisdom and clutch dearly to your breast until the day dawns, if ever, that you trade in your gaming fingers – take whatever health is lying around, no questions asked, just take it. Chances are that if the sadistic bugger is allowing you to level up, you are going to need everything you can possibly get your hands on, including toothpicks and sanitary towels.

Thirdly, and this kind of ties in with number two, the developer leaves enough weapons to support America’s war in Iraq for the next ten years just lying around. Like health, developers do not just leave weapons around to brighten your day. Take everything, everything that you can possibly carry and shove into every nook and cranny that you have. Even with this small arsenal, you will still only have a fighting chance and are doomed to die a couple of times before mastering the particular boss’ weaknesses.

Boss minions

Fourthly, no matter how many enemies, or what I like to refer to as boss minions, you face before entering a boss battle it will never be anything in comparison to what you are about to face in a boss battle. Five hundred, eleven thousand, hell why not throw in twenty five million because someone’s coffee machine had run out that day. My personal favourite is the boss minions who fire at you from the sidelines in a boss battle. They are not packing anything dangerous enough to seriously damage your health, but every little pinprick of health they sap away counts and they are normally just out of reach too. Anyone who has played God of War or Lost Planet will understand this feeling only too well. You are engaged in a fiery battle with a mean looking beast while scrawny acne-covered tosses target you with fire arrows from above or, my personal favourite, 50 carbon copies of yourself attack you. Snap out of it gamer, this is what you live for remember?!

Health bars…gotta love ‘em

Fifthly, a health bar suddenly appears on the screen. Mostly it appears in the centre at the bottom of the screen but is has also been known to migrate to the top of the screen, or even to the left or right – so keep your eyes open! Although boss battle health bars are helpful in that they indicate how much health you have taken off your foe, sometimes they can be a dead giveaway. Picture it, the game is building up an eerie atmosphere, you don’t quite know what is going to happen next, your heart is beating fast, your palms are sweating…and then a health bar appears. Just like that – bam! – and now the guesswork has been taken out of the game, you know for sure it is a boss battle. During the many hours of games which I have played with my friends, I think that I have killed this aspect of gaming because never does a boss battle go by that I don’t yell out, ‘Gee, a health bar, this must be a boss battle.’ Sorry guys, it is just too good an opportunity to pass by and I can’t help myself. I must admit though that I have recently played some games without the health bar appearing, how refreshing, but be warned that it can be damned annoying too. Just don’t ruin my gig and tell my cronies that.