/v/ - Video Games

What else can you do? A whack-a-mole boss who deals shit damage could be interesting but would easily go into annoying territory. Boss fights in FPS will always boil down to "hold LMB and dodge the projectiles".

Typical FPS mechanics simply can't support an interesting boss fight. It requires a gimmick to make the encounter stand out from all the shooting you've done up until that point.

>>14144911

>Typical FPS mechanics simply can't support an interesting boss fight

Why would that be? Better boss fights have been made in games where the only thing you can do is jump and slash. And then there's Vanquish with some pretty good boss fights, and at a base level sets itself apart by letting you slide around (in slowmotion). And it's not like there has been a shortage of first-person shooters with cool movement systems.

The whole “first person” part of the first person shooter really limits you to begin with.

Second, for the entire game barring any fight-specific gimmicks, you have one tool: shoot. Sometimes you shoot different weapons or your shoot is anchored in place, but these games have a tendency to limit your only interaction with the world to point and click.

Shooters are generally more interesting the more numerous your foes are, whether the gameplay is about dodging projectiles that need to come from multiple directions, prioritising the targets who are the most immediate threat to you or using the environment to control how many enemies in are in line of sight of.

The core premise of a boss fight is that your enemy is a single foe, there really isn't that many ways you can make a fight against a single enemy interesting, even making them fucking huge only really serves as a gimmick.

>Every other genre has some example of memorable boss fights, including third-person shooters, so first-person shooters have no excuse.

You might want to name some examples of good third-person shooter bosses.

>>14144986

>You might want to name some examples of good third-person shooter bosses.

Take a look at the final boss fight of Vanquish and what it challenges you about. You got two flying fucks with insta-kill sniper lasers, both trying to outflank you and making it tougher for you to keep track of both of them, and forcing you to take cover when necessary. However, the cover in the arena constantly shifts from place to place. They will throw EMP funnels which will overheat you if you get close, and these funnels need to be shot as well. They like to dodge around like mad when they're flying and can only be consistently hit if you activate slow-motion, which you cannot do without exposing yourself to their snipers. So you want them to bait into doing their insta-kill melee attack so you can either chain stun them in order to deal damage while they're trying to recover, only for the other active guy to keep assaulting you. You can stun 'em with your nades which are of limited supply, or with a melee attack which overheats you.

It becomes a challenge of moving around, controlling both boss enemies at once, knowing when to dodge and recover energy and when to attack, and using your stuns wisely. It challenges you on what you have learned throughout the game properly.

>The core premise of a boss fight is that your enemy is a single foe, there really isn't that many ways you can make a fight against a single enemy interesting, even making them fucking huge only really serves as a gimmick

There's a lot in the way of interesting attacks a boss could throw at you. I don't think that the boss fights in nuDoom were actually good, but an interesting thing they did was ripping off some boss attacks straight from Ys and applying it to a first-person shooter. Bosses in Ys being one small or big guy and the gameplay of Ys mostly being about jumping and slashing. So you'd actually have to consider how you move and jump in order to evade the boss's attacks in nuDoom. It's some basic shit which manages to be leagues ahead of whatever was tried in the entirety of the first-person genre.

And as Vanquish shows, boss fights do not need to be against just one enemy. If a shooter is centered around fighting a fuck dozen enemies at once, then it would make sense that boss fights consist of multiple types of special enemies fighting you at once.

Also, take a look at this FPS called Gunbuster released in the arcades in the same year as Wolfenstein 3D. It's actually a fucking boss rush game, and you can see what makes it kind of work despite being in first-person.

In order to offset your limited aim and movement, you can shoot down enemy bullets to keep yourself safe. And some bullets you can't shoot down at all. The kind of attacks enemies throw at you can vary, ranging from homing missiles to straight lasers to mines with multiple weakpoints which need to be shot before being destroyed, to wide spreadshots, and so on. The bosses you encounter also always have something interesting to them. One boss tries to dazzle you by constantly diving underwater, another is a motorcycle chase where you need to dodge the grenades of your target and his followers trying to chase you from behind, another is a 2v1 in an arena, another tries to straight up ram you, another constantly spawns popcorn enemies, another chases you around with hit 'n run attacks in a small arena while disabling your minimap with jamming grenades, and so on. Yet most attempts at FPS boss fights manage to be blander than a 1992 arcade FPS game which didn't have any template to work off (unless you count light gun games despite usually not being able to move in one). It's as if only the Japanese know what makes a good boss fight.

I really enjoyed the fight against Marguerite Baker in RE7 if that counts.

>>14144986

This wasn't really a boss fight, and it was a third person shooter, but the suicide mission at the Collector base in Mass Effect 2 had Harbinger download himself into random Collectors in order to power them up. This could work really well in an FPS as a boss fight if they transformed form of the regular enemies was a lot more significant than what it was in ME2, and capped it off with a fight against the actual boss.

Eclipse from Borderlands: the pre-sequel. You had to constantly avoid his attacks and listen for audio cues when he was about to fire the missiles, stop and shoot them down before they hit you. Fire at the orbs around the arena to activate healing and poison damage to stop his shields from regenerating. Get behind cover when you hear him charging his laser and emerge to shoot before he cycles his attacks again.

Metroid Prime did it right.

>>14163055

I feel like the jarring camera switch between first-person and morph ball and the hand-holdy circle-strafing gimmick were sometimes to its detriment. It's still a good example of pulling off varied boss battles in an FPS though.

Drunken Robot Pornography is pretty much a FPS boss rush. Now while the game pretty much lacked any sort of challenge outside of the final boss, it did a few things right.

For starters the bosses were massive and had a lot of weapons and attacks weren't all hitscan. Movement was a big deal and I think you had a jetpack for getting around quickly and shit. Bosses like I said weren't that dangerous but the final boss was half platforming, half puzzling, half shootan the numbers add up t. Scott Steiner because you were in space and the only platforms you had were the actual final boss, so you could shoot the boss in a way where you're stuck and you can't move around and your only option is suicide. IT was kind of similar to Ys1's Dark Fact except with actual thought behind it.

>>14144747

I’d kill for another FPS that could pull off an MGS3 The End boss.

I can't really think of a good boss in a first person shooter. All the FPS games I've played are best when you're fighting a variety of different enemies.

>>14163063

>slavish devotion to real-world mechanics such as the speed of bullets (everything must be instantaneous), low verticality

Your biased view is rather apparent.

Neither of those things are "real-world mechanics", or are you really implying theres no verticality in real life? Slow projectiles like say launchers / throwables?

Not to mention plenty of shooters go beyond realistic in their setting and thus weapons with slow projectiles like plasma are a fairly common thing.

Theres plenty of ways to do it well, why it isnt? Well propably because the companies developing/funding games are full of people trying to skin people for their money isntead of making a good game?

>>14165422

Where in the fuck do you think you are, you leftist sack of shit? This isn’t reddit or tumblr. Reported.

>>14163897

How’s about you learn how to read, okay fuckface?

In the dozen or so hours of The Division I played they handled boss fights fairly well.

It became a throw nade, duck behind cover, wait til his buddies arrive, shoot them real fast while the boss is dazed, chain smoke while you headshot as much as possible, repeat as necessary

in short, I think they don't do more because it gets old much faster than in other game styles because the nature of an fps is much faster than a turn-based rpg or a fprpg

Boss fights are about applying skills you've learned to get past a specific checkpoint, but in FPS games, that's the entire game. You're already using the one skill you know the entire time.

>>14165503

>another FPS

>another

I'm pretty sure this was the cause of confusion.

>>14165524

I can easily think of many other skills you could implement in an FPS game besides just aiming well.

Movement, placement, using the enviroment or gadgets to you advantage.

Different weapons could work or not work in certain situations so you would force the player to use the enviroment to get to a better position to use a certain weapon for example.

>>14165492

Jump upwards for a second and tell me how much verticality you have. You can't even jump your own body height, can you?

>>14165679

Verticality also refers to aiming up and down, like shooting at enemies in windows of tall buildings, on rooftops, shooting down at enemies from a catwalk, etc, something that is standard in PC FPS but a rarity in console games due to the awkwardness of using a controller stick to aim. Games requiring camera movement should have stayed on PC and console devs should have focused on perfecting auto camera, console FPS was a mistake.

A couple of things:

>projectile spam is almost always a no-go in fps's, doom ii is about the max you can go before it becomes a clusterfuck

>since it's an fps, you usually don't have to position yourself in order to get a hit in unless it's an overly localized weak point, meaning that positioning usually doesn't matter that much other than for cover

>>14145087

Situational awareness is more difficult in an FPS. It can be done, but it demands more from a player than a third person shooter doing the same. You also can't force the player's perspective onto the boss like you would in some genres, so a player may not see a heavily telegraphed insta kill attack. I would consider that a fair death but I could see that being an issue for a lot of players.

It also ends up feeling stilted depending on design, and it gets even worse if the player has access to hitscan weapons and the enemy doesn't.

cuck

>Every other genre has some example of memorable boss fights

Boss fights are always boring and awful. I remember them like I remember the shitty microwave burrito I just ate. Yep, fought a Ganon on a castle. Totally remember that one time I fought a ghost in a mansion. Killed a god or a demon or something in one of those shitty action games. One time I shot a guy.

Honestly I have no idea where you "memorable boss fight" people are getting this stuff. Bosses are always slogs. I don't feel good or triumphant after beating them, just relieved I've completed the stage. Good, memorable gameplay comes from memorable characters, stories or mechanics - and with characters you end up in "narrative driven gameplay" land where you may just slip into VNs and walking simulators. So really the only thing worth mentioning is mechanics and even those aren't something you remember fondly so much as just enjoy when you play. I just don't get you guys.

>>14166890

Wel l waht ei f the character is boss?

>>14167037

Oh yeah, all kinds of bright flashing lights and millions of projectiles to dodge. That sounds really cool and memorable. Remember that one time you didn't get hit? That was really something.

>>14167057

You misunderstand, or perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Bosses are obviously characters and can themselves be quite memorable. Boss fights are, however, shit. What I was saying was that the gameplay of fighting some super strong guy, or some guy with stages or whatever isn't very memorable, engaging or interesting. The characters, though, are (or rather can be).

Do levels where you have to sneak around to fight a sniper and avoid getting shot not count as boss fights in FPS games?

>>14165492

>Your biased view is rather apparent.

Practically all bosses where the game tries to be as grounded as possible can basically be boiled down to "mild health buff and damage boost" and can still be taken down like a chump. Throwing realism out the window allows for much more variety.

>>14165704

It's pretty obvious camera controls was not just what Anon was talking about.

Borderlands tho

>>14166890

>we need to remove bossfights from videogames because they're too "video-gamey"

>also we need to add a button that just lets me skip to the end and push more fag shit, push more nigger shit, push more cuck shit, more kike shit

hello @GAMESJOURNPRO cuck

>>14167746

Cause aliens is probably the most mishandled property next to sonic.