Boss fights in first-person shooters

Why is the first-person shooter genre so devoid of good boss fights? It's always a shitty helicopter boss, a puzzle boss, some bulletsponge you circlestrafe around, or a summoner kind of enemy. Every other genre has some example of memorable boss fights, including third-person shooters, so first-person shooters have no excuse.

There's some FPS bosses with cool presentation like the SS3 final boss, but they're often reliant on new gimmicks or abstract puzzle solving which has nothing to do with testing you on the skills you've honed throughout the game. Like seriously, did absolutely nobody even bother to try making a good first-person shooter boss, or is the problem really that inherent?

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".

Because it requires actual effort.

Take some pointers from rail-shooters like Star Fox?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Holla Forums is a progressive anti-racist board, buddy. Act like daddy Spencer and get punched in the face.

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Metroid Prime did it right.

lol, that is not even remotely the problem. The problem is that far too often FPSs have a slavish devotion to real-world mechanics such as the speed of bullets (everything must be instantaneous), low verticality, and humanoid enemies.

And it's led to an absolutely staggering variety of boss types over 30 years of shooters. Just look at all the different types of things just one game can do with huge bosses.

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.

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

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Kill yourself, kike.

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.

Reported.

>>>Holla Forums
Back to where you came from.

Stay mad, kike.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

like pottery

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:

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.

Get a load of this faggot

coons

cuck

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.

Wel l waht ei f the character is boss?

It's actually surprisingly simple, though the execution itself might be more difficult depending on what kind of shooter you're wanting to make. The general idea is that you don't want to make an enemy a bulletsponge that eats up ammo, but is still better equipped than you are. For example, say that you're playing an FPS with a high movement speed where standing still is basically a death sentence: Most enemies are pretty slow themselves and rely more on overwhelming you with numbers. A good boss for this type of game would be one where they have the same speed and freedom of movement as the player, which means that it basically becomes something like an Unreal Tournament match where each opponent has to carefully plan their movements to catch the other unaware and get the final blow. A second example would be for a more slow paced shooter that relies on tactics, like SWAT 4 or Rainbow Six where you enter a sniper battle where cover and finding the best vantage point is the key to success while also taking into account that your opponent is doing the same. So it basically becomes a tense game of hide and seek, trying to find your opponent before they find you.

user you need to stop eating from a dumpster and play better games.

What the fuck kind of games do you play

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.

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).

You're saying that bosses suck because they're stronger than trash mobs and sometimes take longer to defeat. What the fuck is wrong with you. Granted what you find to be "memorable, engaging or interesting" is entirely subjective, but you're still a retard

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

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.

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

Borderlands tho

Pick up monster hunter and shadow of the colossus before you post on Holla Forums next time you ledditard

Alright nigger I dug up my fucking ideaguy .txt from the old external drive let's see what we've got

Boss #1 Tests – general mechanics.
Just a fuckoff big dude/robot that flails around with tons of health, damage, shitty reaction times and turning speed so you can run circles around it.
Some regular mobs spawn in the boss room, but not too many and not too frequently. They are just there for player to kill while dodging bigguy.
Attacks rip off chunks of armor, weapons and limbs off of this fuck. And you can shoot directly at the part you want to lop off.
Each chunk gone changes the movement and attack patterns appropriately, the thing becomes quicker and more dangerous the more you hurt it.
You can use the weapons you rip off of it, and some gibs may act as health pickups, as the player is going to be laying into it for long and pickups will dry up.
The arena is some mall-looking place, central area is relatively open, with some chest-high walls with potted plants and shit, and tons of siderooms of different sizes, plus a second floor with the same shit.
Most of it is destructible, so it starts out as a smaller arena with cover and siderooms on edges, and ends up as one large arena. Maybe have the second floor kind of collapse or just become inaccessible. And it starts out nice-ish looking, and just becomes a fuckall pile of rubble by the time you're done.
That boss reappears later on in the game as a common mob.

Boss #2 Tests – grenades.
A phalanx of riot cops with shields. They march onto you in a testudo, two troops deep, and shooting them doesn't do much. The level is just a big corridor with a couple branches that rejoin the main thing. Branch exits get blocked off as testudo marches past them. The side from which testudo advance is a blob of sterile white light, rear – some sort of dark grate. So it must be some sort of aquifier/drainage works.
Rear cops throw tear-gas nades that serve as a timed area denial thing, by obscuring your vision and quickly draining your hp if you walk into the cloud. You can shoot these midair.
They will mob you without lowering their shield if you get too close. They will actually march much faster if you are close.
You can shoot one in between the top and the front shield. Killing one will cause the cop behind him to rush up to take his place. If you quickly kill that cop too, ones to the side of the break will raise their shields onto sides and the testudo will split. Minimal formation size is 6 – three in front, two covering sides, and one in the reserve. If a formation is smaller than 6, remaining enemies lower shields and run off to the nearest intact formation to join its reserve.
One problem – testudo happens before you get the chaingun or ASMD, and your revolver is only quick enough to kill the reserve cop if you are standing real close to the phalanx, risking damage. So you have to learn to throw nades. A frag thrown into the breach will kill several cops at once. A knife will only kill the reserve. A brick will painstate/stun him, so your revolver can recover from recoil and you can headshot him.
You get an encounter with a small testudo earlier in the level, but you can keep your distance easily (even though you don't have space to run circles around them) and they don't throw gas nades. You also get to see how gas nades work in the same level. You also get to kill several shit enemies that clearly telegraph a weak spot uncovered by a shield. These only show up in this level.
Testudo will reappear as a common enemy later on.

Boss #3 Tests – general skills
Straight up botmatch. Three duels with bots of increasing competency. Same weapons, same abilities, stats and movements.
Map is three DM maps molded together at the seams. They kind of bleed into each other to form a dogleg-bent corridor.

Boss #4 Tests – situational/spatial awareness
A bloodborne kind of cunt wants to fuck with you. Has a sword and a wimpy gun. Is way faster than you and will rape you if he catches you unaware. Face to face you can poop on him easily though. He will attempt to sneak up from the back, and you won't progress until he dies, so you have to bait him into attacking you, then turn around and shit out damage before he skedaddles the fuck out.
Comes back as a common enemy later.

Boss #5 Tests – whatever the fuck i dunno
A good sniper battle

Boss #6 Tests – rocketjumpan, going fast
A flying robot with a heavily telegraphed hitscan lazor attack and fast but predictable movement. Set in a vertical arena with a ton of platforming. Has kinetic shields, so can't be attacked by hitscan revolver/asmd fire. You have to go fast to avoid his hitscan and try to hit him with projectiles midflight.


Boss #?? – THE KING OF EUROBEEEAAAT
EU RO BEAT (yeaaahhh)

I vaguely recall that last one. I imagined like a big breakdancing robot with a discoball for the head, and it would do M.Jackson crotch grabs and lazer show shit with actual lasers that served as area denial. And there were other robots slowdancing in a spiral pattern around the arena that would explode on contact. The entire thing was supposed to play out like a dance to a song where you'd have precise zoning and movement challenges forcing you to move in a pattern and time your shots, as though you and the boss were in a danceoff.
Never wrote it out I guess.

hello @GAMESJOURNPRO cuck

Why wasn't something like that ever made?

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