The Trouble with Tedious Boss Battles

Published by

Ashley

October 13, 2015

I finished Gears of War 3 over the weekend, and it was amazing. I’m totally in love with this series now. All I have left to play is Judgment, which I’ll probably start on tonight…

But there was one thing about Gears of War 3 that drove me a little nuts: the final boss battle.

It was over 30 minutes of shooting at the enemy queen Myrrah while she rode her Tempest mount. Then, when it landed, you used the special Hammer of Dawn weapon to call in an airstrike and fry the creature. Then it would fly again, and you’d keep shooting.

Every few seconds, the Tempest would open its mouth and shriek intense heat at you, so I would hide behind a pillar. As soon as the shriek was over, I’d pop back out of cover and shoot for a few more seconds. I guess that was supposed to be interesting, but just felt like it slowed down the process to have to hide several times a minute.

It was rounds and rounds of this. I thought the beast might have to land two or three times before dying, but I’m pretty sure it was at least five or six… maybe more. Later, the Tempest started climbing the tower, so you’d shoot it up there too. I just found the whole process to be really tedious.

The thing is, this isn’t uncommon in video games. I can think of a few other boss battles that were similarly repetitive and punishing, like the Reaper battle on Rannoch in Mass Effect 3. The thing is, these fights are not that challenging, and they barely feel unique to that particular enemy. It’s fun when you have to figure out a boss’s weak spot is or get creative to take them down… but in battles like this one, it’s just a matter of figuring out what you are supposed to do (usually something simple), dodging attacks, shooting when you can, and then starting the process over as the enemy gets weaker and weaker.

It wouldn’t be quite so bad if it didn’t take so long. But it feels like the game makes the battle long, just to make the whole thing feel challenging. When it’s really not. It’s just boring.

— Ashley

7 responses to “The Trouble with Tedious Boss Battles”

A. K. Bogert

October 13, 2015

That final battle is bad, for sure, but on insane mode it’s the kind of thing people murder over.

I was thinking about this recently when trying to beat the final boss in the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition on Nightmare difficulty. It wasn’t about strategy or skill. It was pure endurance — something the industry really needs to do away with.

Reply
1. Ashley Hagood
  
  October 13, 2015
  
  Yes! I haven’t played the Trespasser DLC yet. But yeah, these kinds of battles are really annoying and fairly common. Feels more like busy work than a real challenge.
  
  Reply
  1. A. K. Bogert
    
    October 13, 2015
    
    It reminds me as well of the Deathstroke fight in Arkham Origins. So many things already work against people with limited time playing games, and fights that are intentionally designed to be time-sucking don’t need to be part of that list.
    
    Reply
Matthew Thompson

October 15, 2015

You have really nailed a pet peeve of mine in this post. I like a challenging boss fight, but a tedious one as you put it can be awful and boring. Few things break my will in gaming like dying towards the end of one of these tedious fights and having to start it over. At least with a normal-length challenging fight, you die, you learn and can have another quick go. In the tedious ones it just seems like a slog getting back to where you failed last time. Very annoying.

Reply
1. Ashley Hagood
  
  October 16, 2015
  
  Yeah, I totally agree. It’s so frustrating to have to start a tedious battle over just because you made one small mistake toward the end of the fight. It’s nice when a boss has tiers with save points so you can at least start at the beginning of the latest “weak stage” of the enemy… but that doesn’t happen all that often.
  
  Reply
  1. A. K. Bogert
    
    October 16, 2015
    
    I particularly like when these are paired with unskippable cutscenes to really accent your failure.
    
    Reply
    1. Ashley Hagood
      
      October 16, 2015
      
      Oh yeah, that’s the worst. I forgot to mention that a lot of parts of Gears of War have a little problem with that, actually — not during the boss battles, but save points are often at the beginning of cutscenes before really challenging gameplay!
      
      Reply

I’m Ashley

Welcome to my cozy corner of the web! I’m a long-time gamer, indie author, and toddler mom on a quest to level up IRL. Whether it’s a fantasy book or an RPG, I’m always exploring new worlds—usually with coffee in hand.

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