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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."
When I saw the headline, and even after reading the first few sentences of the intro, I thought this was about the sort of "boss" that employs you, not the video game variety. And I had to wonder, why isn't my boss cool enough to have laser blast?
This is really the article I needed to see. I've been trying to defeat Tom Nook for ownership of my house for the longest time. At the part where he pulls out the rockets and blasts the whole screen, I kept trying to hit him with my shovel. Now I see that if I had just stood there and let him set his own fur on fire in his rocket frenzy, I would have won. Well, time to buy some medicine and try again!
I think these strategies can be applied to real bosses or PHBs. For example:
-Keep moving.
If you aren't where they expect you to be, they can't ask you to come into work on Saturday.
-If the boss stops, panic.
S/he is likely to give you a mundane task that is below your abilities or ask you a stupid question.
-Scan for weak spots.
If you know their weak spot, you can always bring it up in a time of dire need.
-The quarter rule.
At the end of a quarter expect your assigned tasks to multiply, there are deadlines to be met.
-Take a break.
The water cooler is an excellent place to share boss strategies with your comrades.
In Doom 2, I remember turning off clipping, then I found John Romero's head behind the boss, and chainsawed away. In Hexen, I just stayed behind a pillar and fired at the boss between shots, like a wild west movie. Wasn't really fun but I nailed him in the end. Very n00b I know, but I got the job done. Killing bosses in 80s RPGs like Ultima or Bard's Tale wasn't just fun, but it always felt glorious afterwards.
From the Article: Keep moving. Whatever you do, don't stand still. Even for a second. This is the only cue an end-of-level boss needs to swipe at you with a giant fist or ...
...assign you to a doomed project.
>Scan for weak spots. Every boss has one...
... usually vulnerable to the Sycophanty Manouevre, but occasionally old-fashioned blackmail can work, too.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
And here I thought this article would help me at work.
Damn games section.
Somehow, I'm thinking that this address will be getting a lot of mail. "Take a break. If you feel yourself becoming enraged beyond the realms of human endurance, give up and do something less stressful for a few minutes - like filling in a tax return." I can't wait for the first person to try this strategy, and suffer a stroke or heart attack brought on by the high blood pressure.
Basically, if you're having so much trouble beating a boss that you are actually getting angry -- stop playing. Not just for a little while, wait until you have either talked to a friend about the game (getting a fresh perspective often helps), slept a full night's sleep (if you are fully rested, you are much more likely to be alert. Plus, gamers seem to do better in natural light.) and learn that one ultimate lesson: It is only a game! So calm down! Breathe deep, try again later.
games journalism blog
1. Save the state of the emulator at the beginning of the boss level.
2. Try to defeat him.
3. On failure, load the state previously saved, until you succeed.
4. Post this advice on Slashdot as a numbered list, and resist the temptation of writing 5. ??? 6. Profit!!! mostly that it would only make yourself sound dumb.
You just got troll'd!
This is so true. I've managed to avoid Trevor Belmont's attacks (Castlevania: Curse of Darkness) just by reading his movements. When he unleashes the whip attack, I dodge, wait 1/10 of a second, then dodge again until he stops (don't do the double-dodge, there is an awful delay when you do the second dodge, and he'll get you there).
In most fighting games (if not all), the boss usually makes some move indicating what he's going to do. A good example is the final boss in Prince of Persia. When the boss moves his wings to grab a pillar and throw it at you, you should roll in the opposite direction.
So it's all about dodging... this is why defeating Julius (in Aria of Sorrow) was so difficult, he wasn't moving like a boss, but like a player. And even then you could decipher some of his moves , just by watching the color of the glow before he throws a subweapon at you.
Oh lord... Don't remind me... Thats one reason I quit playing "the most addictive game ever". At 60, its just tedium.
I remember my 60 druid, pre-druid patch. "Heal heal, heal, RAISE!, envigorate!, wash rinse repeat." And remember never go feral to save your hide.
Meh to that game. Suffers the same problems as Diablo II multi. Do the same formula to collect better items, to compete with wankers with WAY too much time on their hands.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"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.
In most cases I found the "maximum offensive exchange strategy" works best.
;) so I just backed off all the rest to the corner and put this one to exchange blows with the boss. Hitting him with a puny tiny knife because it didn't conflict with anything from the armour and took little time units. The battle lasted quite long but I didn't take a single hitpoint of damage.
I keep powering myself up during very cautious "level gameplay" and when facing the boss, just blow a full frontal attack, rarely dodging anything.
Bosses are meant to be "difficult to beat" so they often try to overwhelm you with firepower, so you have no time to strike back, they sweep the area with fire so what's the point of dodging, but they are meant to last about a minute or three of cautious gameplay with few, rare shots. Assuming some 20 serious shots per minute from the boss, during these three minutes you will take maybe 10 hits or so, dodge another 50. If you blow all your worth at it, own damage notwithstanding, it will take less than 20 seconds to beat. You may end up taking less damage than while dodging, getting hit by 7 out of 8 shots the boss gets to launch at you before falling dead.
Nice ending of "Chaos Engine": I accumulated 28 extra lives during the game, taking time to unlock every secret possible and killing every enemy that would bring cash, maxing out almost everything.
I just stood in front of the final boss and kept shooting. It went down when I was down to 22 lives.
Later I tried the same with dodging. I ended up with 18 or so lives left, failing to avoid the attacks and rarely taking a pot-shot at it.
Now playing Zelda: Majora's mask. The goddamn fish boss, why would I ever care to dodge it? I have fucking 5 bottles with fairies filling my 13 heart containers each! If I didn't move at all, it would take it half a hour to finish me off!
A fine old Amiga game of Perihellion. I took a bit different approach: built up defenses on one character to the level where he had over 100% of immunity to mostly everything outside some obscure, rarely seen attacks (like "extreme sound"
XCOM: Defense. "As you approach the alien brain, before you shoot it, it says..." what a bullshit. I didn't approach the alien brain. I kept launching blaster launcher missiles from several rooms away, until they dug up enough passage to launch one directly at the brain. Half of the crew of 26 was armed with blaster launchers. The other half didn't because I didn't have room for all the ammo needed. (fyi a blaster launcher pops an explosion tha is ridiculously big and destroys most it finds on its way, including hard soil between rooms in underground bases (yay, new corridors!), alien alloys (making backdoors in alien ships), and whole houses ("in this house there is NO enemy now, for sure.")
The worst situation is with games that artificially limit your "capacities". Half-Life 2. 3 rockets, okay, rockets are big. But 3 energy balls, 100 armour (these batteries are small!), 12 magnum bullets(?!!), 10 crossbow bolts, 3 frigging carabine grenades, 3 reloads of the energy rifle, 8 seconds of shooting each! And you end up fighting the boss or a big battle with a shotgun... (and in the meantime, the enemies have infinite ammo but when they die, they drop less than one reload of given weapon)
Do I have to say I hate such "gameplay ballancing"?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"