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Know Thy Bosses
The Guardian Gamesblog has a piece on knowing your enemy to better pwn him. Specifically, they go through some tried and true rules about surviving boss battles. From the article: "If the boss stops, panic. Bosses usually move about - when they stop it means they're about to unleash their signature move, the aforementioned fist or laser blast. Try to avoid being parallel to them when they stop. Unless, of course, it's the sort of boss who blasts the whole screen apart from the thin corridor directly in front of them. In this case stay where you are."
"I see. So, it's the designers fault if a person can't beat the game simply because the final boss is actually _supposed_ to be just that, a final challenge? [...] I just hope that this whole story is a joke, because if it isn't, society has failed "
Dude, a game's _only_ purpose is to entertain you. That's it. If it doesn't, then, yes, it is the game designer's failure. It's that simple.
Repeat after me: I _don't_ have some duty to finish non-fun games. I _don't_ have to overcome any challenge if it's not fun. And I certainly don't have to put up with crap tricks to make a short game seem longer, in a non-fun "ha ha, we'll just make you reload 100 times" way. And I _don't_ have any kind of duty to sponsor games I don't like.
There is good game design, and there is crap game design, and there is just game design which doesn't match my tastes. My purpose is to entertain myself and relax. If a game doesn't do that for me, then yes, I won't think I failed the game, it's the game designer that didn't catter to my tastes. And I have no duty to spend hours finishing it, nor to sponsor it. Good luck to the designers making a living out of the people whose tastes they did catter to, but if they want my money too, they better catter to my demographic segment too.
And yes, that does apply to bosses too, end-game or otherwise. If overcoming one turns into a non-fun activity, of the kind that makes tax forms seem more fun, then yes, that game failed to entertain me. It's that simple.
It's the same as with any other product. I don't have to watch a crap movie, if I don't like the genre, or if I don't like their "Noooooo" scene in the trailer, or for whatever other reason I choose. I don't have to put up with a car I don't like, I don't have to watch a sports game if I don't like that sport, and I don't have to wear an analog or digital watch if I like the other kind more, etc. For whatever reason. If _I_ don't like the product, then _I_ don't have to put up with it or blow my money on it. So just in the same spirit, I have no duty to spend hours on finishing a game I find crap, or overcoming some poorly designed game element that's no fun. It's that simple.
In a nutshell: it's just a game. If you think it's a society failure when people just want some entertainment and relaxation from a game, then you're taking it way too seriously. Go out some more, get some real life achievements instead, or join some 12 step group. It's just a game, not something you're duty- and honour-bound to achieve and overcome. Noone gives a fuck about your beating up a pixelated game boss, and certainly noone has a duty to do the same if they don't find it fun.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That works in many games, but not in all. RPGs and action games, yeah, that tends to work. The first time I beat FF7, I was so freaked about the Sephiroth fight at the end (having watched someone beat it who hadn't taken the time to unlock everything) that I went around and unlocked EVERYTHING, and spent serious time levelling up the powerful materia. As a result, when I finally got to Sephiroth, it only took a few turns of quadruple-cast Knights of the Round to do him in.
The prime counter-example would be the Mega Man series, where a quick frontal attack on the level boss in question is far more likely to get you a quick death than a quick victory. The boss battles are about about learning the pattern. Hell, the entire series is about learning the pattern.
Other examples of this are the Metroid Prime games, and just about any shoot-em-up or platformer.