2156: Five Favourite Final Bosses

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I beat Splatoon’s single player mode this evening, and was thoroughly impressed with the final boss battle — a thoroughly old-school and long fight that demanded you put into practice pretty much every skill the rest of the game had subtly taught you up until that point.

That got me thinking, then: what are some of my favourite final boss battles? I am, as I’ve previously mentioned on these very pages sometime in the dim and distant past, a real fan of a good finale to a game, since I’m one of those apparently rare breeds of gamer that actually likes to beat games. I love well-done final boss fights that go the whole hog, with impressive graphical effects, a stirring and unique soundtrack and a feeling of excitement and satisfaction unlike anything else in the rest of the game.

So here are five of my favourites. Not necessarily my absolute favourites, but five that spring immediately to mind, and in no particular order.

Final Fantasy VIII: Ultimecia

The easy choice would be Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth, of course, and to be sure the battles against Bizarro Sephiroth and Safer Sephiroth are indeed spectacular, particularly with the stirring tones of One Winged Angel accompanying the latter.

But I actually really appreciated Final Fantasy VIII’s final conflict, because it unfolded in a number of interesting and dramatic phases, each one raising the stakes significantly until the final final boss, which, by this point, you absolutely wanted to throw everything you had at.

The battle begins with the party attacking a regular-sized Ultimecia accompanied by the “sorceress battle” music that has marked major battles throughout the rest of the game. This is then followed by Ultimecia summoning Griever, an embodiment of the protagonist’s image of the “ultimate Guardian Force”. New music comes in here. After this, Ultimecia “junctions” herself to Griever, creating a monstrous entity, and fighting the party to the sounds of the famous battle theme Maybe I’m a Lion. And finally, the obligatory “fighting the true form of the final boss in something that looks like space” phase is accompanied by The Extreme, a high-intensity, pumping piece of music that gives this final phase of the battle a real sense of urgency.

Like most Final Fantasy games, Ultimecia was a bit of a pushover if you’d spent the time preparing properly, since final bosses are never the most powerful things in a Final Fantasy game; optional, so-called “superbosses” are, since their extreme difficulty would likely prevent more casual fans of the game from clearing the story. Make no mistake, though, she didn’t go down particularly easy — particularly compared to Sephiroth in VII — and the necessity of throwing your most powerful spells and Limit Breaks at her meant that the fight was consistently interesting and thrilling to watch.

Space Channel 5 Part 2: Purge

It’s kind of strange to think of a rhythm action game having a final boss, but Space Channel 5 was far from being a typical rhythm action game; the emphasis was very much on the “action” side of things, as between the two installments, it told an enjoyable — if utterly camp — story filled with dancing, singing and guitar battles.

The final battle in Part 2 felt surprisingly climactic and movie-like. It was also a textbook example of a “spirit bomb” battle, in which the protagonist looks like they’ve been completely defeated — indeed, some theories suggest that Ulala is outright killed by Purge’s initial assault — but is then given new-found strength and abilities by the power of friendship/love/belief/whatever. In the case of Space Channel 5, this is reflected in both the visuals — you see throngs of people dancing behind Ulala as the battle progresses — and the audio, which features a crowd of people shouting the directions as opposed to just Ulala as in the rest of the game.

This battle also does something I particularly love with its soundtrack: it provides a new twist on the game’s main theme, bringing a wonderful sense of closure to the whole experience.

Super Mario World: Bowser

I mention this one not because it’s a particularly amazing fight — compared to some other battles I could mention, it’s fairly unremarkable — but because, to the best of my recollection, Super Mario World was the first game I ever played to completion and saw the end credits of. Consequently, it was also the first time I had ever encountered a final boss battle, and I very much enjoyed how it was a slightly different setup to the rest of the game, that made you realise Shit Was Getting Real.

The usual status bar at the top of the screen was no longer there, it was a single-screen stage rather than a scrolling level, and it was accompanied by unique music and graphical effects — in this case a rather rudimentary but effective thunder and lightning effect.

This being the era long before GameFAQs use was widespread, I had to work out how to defeat Bowser myself. It took a good few attempts to determine what to do, and a good few more to actually correctly put it into execution. But my goodness when I finally achieved it for the first time it felt absolutely amazing. I probably cheered. Like, out loud. I forget. But, needless to say, it was a very exciting moment indeed.

Ace Combat 4: Megalith

I came to the Ace Combat series relatively recently and still haven’t played them all to completion, but I was thoroughly impressed with Ace Combat 4 from start to finish. It took air combat, something that could have easily been extremely dry and clinical — the old MicroProse sims of yore sprang to mind — and turned it into something cinematic and dramatic, with wonderful setpieces and incredible music.

The crowning glory of the game, though, was the final mission, which was set up and executed absolutely perfectly. The prior missions had set you up to expect something horrendous to fight against, and it’s finally revealed as “Megalith”, a superweapon that will, not to put too fine a point on it, wreck everyone’s shit if allowed to do its thing.

You know that things are getting real when the pre-mission briefing screen, which usually had some rather arcadey music accompanying it, was instead accompanied by near silence, with only a heartbeat-like throb in the background. And then once the mission begins, you hear this:

Incredible stuff. Particularly as, in appropriate action movie style, you wreck Megalith’s shit by flying inside it and dropping bombs in its most sensitive areas.

Splatoon: DJ Octavio

Finally, the reason I’m writing this at all: Splatoon’s final boss.

The battle against DJ Octavio is a textbook example of an old-school boss battle, particularly those favoured by Nintendo. It’s a lengthy affair that is far more than simple tank-and-spank: you need to make use of all your skills to beat it, and it’s not easy. It’s also quite unforgiving, giving you only three lives to play with (though you can replenish these by reaching checkpoints in the fight, which is one thing we didn’t used to get in the old days) and lots of opportunities to fall off into oblivion or be splattered by his many and varied attacks.

The cool thing about DJ Octavio is that it’s designed in the same way as the rest of Splatoon’s single-player mode: it’s made to encourage you to use various skills and techniques that will serve you well in competitive multiplayer, which is, after all, the meat of Splatoon. Multiplayer battles are chaotic, and the fight against DJ Octavio introduces you to this fact gradually over the course of the battle, beginning by simply throwing missiles and punches at you — the one constant throughout the fight is that you have to “reflect” his punch attacks back at him by shooting them before they strike you or the ground — and gradually, over time, stepping things up with more treacherous ground to fight on, additional enemies, powerful superweapons and more things happening at the same time.

By the end of the fight, you’re essentially handling the same mechanics, but at a much higher speed and with more distractions. Deal with that and you’re almost certainly ready for the unpredictability of human opponents.

For bonus points, the DJ Octavio fight also includes a lightweight spirit bomb in its final phases: the music changes from the dubstep-techno-type stuff Octavio has been playing at you throughout the fight to a song sung by Splatoon mascots Callie and Marie, who have been helping you out in not-very-good disguises throughout all of the single player mode. It’s a great way to close out the fight, with a real feeling that you’re being encouraged to do your best against seemingly impossible odds — and consequently finally getting everything right and clearing the game feels just as satisfying as that first time I beat Super Mario World all those years ago.

So good job, Nintendo; while many people may not think of you immediately when contemplating spectacular finales to games, it’s clear you know your shit when it comes to badass bosses.

Now to get destroyed in multiplayer, I guess…

1591: Beat It

I beat the “bad” ending of The Witch and the Hundred Knight this evening. I’m not going to talk about that right now, though, because I feel there’s at least one MoeGamer post in that game and its interesting story. What I instead wanted to talk about was the idea of “beating” games.

I love finishing games. I love the satisfaction of fighting the final boss — usually, if the game’s sound team has any sense, accompanied by the best piece of music in the game — followed by the story’s conclusion and the credits roll. Well-designed games feature satisfying conclusions that wrap everything up nicely, but at the same time leave you a little sad that you’ll be leaving the main cast behind. Even poorly designed games can give a palpable sense of relief once they’re all over.

Interestingly, though, I don’t seem to see an awful lot of people talking about beating games. There’s occasional talk of scoring a Platinum trophy — usually from trophy whores who make a point of earning Platinum trophies on even games they don’t particularly like — but I very rarely see people publicly expressing satisfaction that they’ve completed a game, seen its end sequence and have finally achieved some closure.

I wonder why that is? Perhaps it’s to do with the excessive spoilerphobia we have on the Internet these days. You can’t mention a single plot point from recent popular media — be it games, movies or TV — without someone complaining about spoilers. It’s a fair concern, if we’re being honest; it’s always nice to have a few surprises in an unfamiliar story. But it does make talking about interesting stories extremely challenging at times. How can you talk about School Days without talking about the ending where Kotonoha kills Sekai? How can you talk about Nier without mentioning the bit where it deletes your save file piece by piece in front of you as your character is erased from existence? What discussion of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory is complete without mentioning the fact that the main villain is a disgruntled, embittered Atari? (Okay, maybe it’s just me who cares about that last one.)

Or perhaps people simply don’t finish games as much as they used to. And if so, that’s rather sad: all those dangling plot threads, ever to be unresolved; all those final bosses, waiting to show you their awesome piece of battle music, ever to remain unfought; all those 20-minute staff rolls left unread.

I’m actually the opposite; I finish a whole lot more games these days than I used to. I remember one of the first games I ever beat — Super Mario World on the Super NES — and it being a huge deal. It was an even bigger deal when I got that magic “96” on the main menu: the 16-bit equivalent of earning a Platinum trophy. Despite the fantastic feeling that came from beating that game once and for all, it would be quite some time before I’d beat any others, though by the time I started getting into point-and-click adventures you couldn’t stop me from reaching the end credits of even the most stubborn games (hello, Discworld) if you tried.

I’d be interested to see the statistics for how many people beat particular games. It sort of is possible to get a general idea these days by looking at achievements — the cynical (or observant) might suggest that achievements are more a means of metrics-tracking for developers than an actual reward mechanism for the player, anyway — but it’s not always easy to get the global picture using these. I have a strange feeling that a lot of games might get started but never finished by a lot of people, and this can be at least partly attributed to the ridiculous pace with which things come out these days. In some cases, you’re barely out of the tutorial levels of one game before the Next Big Thing comes along vying for your attention, and the natural thing to do is to want to try out that Next Big Thing, which leaves the Last Big Thing languishing.

I’ve had to discipline myself pretty ruthlessly to avoid this going on. Once I start something, I try and finish it — unless I’m really not enjoying myself, in which case I’ll abandon it. Spanners have occasionally been thrown in the works by review obligations, but after the end of June I won’t have to worry about those any more, meaning I can concentrate on clearing my ample backlog. (And purchasing all the titles I mentioned yesterday, of course, along with a couple of others I’d forgotten about — Mind Zero and Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection). For the most part, this strategy works well; I’m in the good habit of playing a game as much as I find enjoyable, then setting it aside once I’m done, perhaps to be replayed at some time in the future. For games I particularly enjoy or want to show my appreciation to, I make an effort to obtain that Platinum trophy; not only is it satisfying to know I’ve been rewarded for everything the game is offering rewards for, it also provides the aforementioned feedback to developers that someone, somewhere out there enjoyed their game enough to want to see everything it had to offer.

So, an open question to anyone reading and comment-inclined: how often do you beat games? Do you tend to focus on a single game and play it to completion, or juggle lots of games at the same time? How do you keep track of them all, if so?

1073: It’s-a Me!

As I said I probably would, I picked up New Super Mario Bros. U or whatever it’s called today. Mario in HD is a pleasing sight, though I’m one of those people who still likes the blocky old pixel-art too, and to whom SD graphics aren’t as offensive as they appear to be to some. But I digress.

It’s somewhat ironic that the most old-school Mario experience you can get today comes from a subseries with “New” as part of its title. Ever since the first New Super Mario Bros. launched on the DS and provided traditional 2D platforming with an up-to-date 3D aesthetic, this particular offshoot of the Mario series has remained firmly and staunchly set in its ways, providing gameplay that is not fundamentally any different from Super Mario World, which, let’s not forget, came out in 1990.

This is not, I hasten to add, a bad thing. Super Mario World is probably my favourite Mario game of all time — at least it was. It remains to be seen whether or not this new Wii U version will be able to uproot it, but I will always have a very fond place in my heart for the SNES classic. It was so perfectly balanced, so completely fair all the way through — even on the ridiculously difficult Special Island levels — and so packed with things to discover that I actually played it through several times, which I don’t normally tend to do with platform games. 96 levels (or, more accurately, exits) was a big deal at the time, too. It’s still pretty massive for a platform game even today.

New Super Mario Bros. U follows the Mario World tradition very closely, with a few bits and pieces from Mario 3 along the way. You have your top down map screen with multiple routes to your eventual destinations (castles housing bosses, naturally); you have a mixture of levels where the challenge comes from evading enemies and levels where your pixel platforming skills are tested to the limit; you have a selection of interesting but natural-feeling puzzles incorporated into the gameplay; and you have gameplay so intuitive that there isn’t a tutorial because there really doesn’t need to be one. (After playing so many Facebook games for work where the tutorial literally doesn’t let you press anything you want to press for anywhere between ten minutes and half an hour, this is a breath of fresh air.)

There are a few intriguing additions, however, some of which may have been present in the previous Wii-based New Super Mario Bros. game which I haven’t really played much of. First up, there’s the baby Yoshis, who can be carried around and fed, but unlike in Mario World, their special abilities can be used even in baby form. The pink one, for example, blows up like a balloon and can be used to reach otherwise inaccessible areas; the yellow one explodes in light, useful for dark caves. I’m not sure (yet) if there’s anything more to them than this, but they add some interesting new game mechanics which, as Mario games always have done in the past, encourage experimentation.

I really haven’t played a Mario game seriously since Super Mario Sunshine, which I didn’t really enjoy all that much, and certainly haven’t finished one since Super Mario 64. I was never quite sure how I felt about Mario’s shift into 3D — although I respected Mario 64 in particular, I always felt like I preferred 2D platformers, and the same is still true today. New Super Mario Bros. U looks set to scratch that itch with tight controls, challenging levels and an interesting-sounding cooperative mode that I’m keen to try out when I get some friends around.

I’m very much enjoying the Wii U so far, if you hadn’t already gathered. It’s a console designed for pure fun. Whereas both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are trying desperately to be that “one box you need under your TV,” Nintendo are once again sneaking past to provide a system that is fun, accessible and entertaining for the whole family. It may not be the most technologically advanced system in the world (though the Gamepad is super-cool — I’m looking forward to seeing some creative uses of that), the games may not be the biggest-budget blockbusters (though the presence of Arkham City, Darksiders II and Call of Duty in the launch lineup suggests that big-name publishers are at least willing to give it a shot for now) and it’s doubtful it will become any “serious” gamer’s primary console, but it does what it does extraordinarily well — and that is to provide “pure” gaming experiences such as those Nintendo has always provided. Hopefully we’ll see some niche publishers taking a few risks like we saw towards the end of the Wii’s lifespan, too — sequels or follow-ups to Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower would be just lovely, thankyouplease.