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Are there FPSes with good boss fights?

D

DocSeuss

Member
I was playing Darksiders 2 for Playfire rewards, and in doing so, I was reminded how ridiculously fun that game was.

I'm in the mood for a shooter right now, however.

Thing is, I can't really think of any shooters with good boss fights in 'em, aside from Serious Sam 2 of all things. That game had a massive bee, a giant baby, a dragon that could only be defeated with springy shoes and crossbows, and other awesome stuff.

Beyond that, I'm kinda stumped. Sure, the other Serious Sams had their bosses, but beyond that, it seems like shooters are just

25509-217160-4030187ejpeg-620x.jpg
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And that bugs me. Shooters are smart. The smartest games I've ever played have all been shooters, with the exception of Thief: The Dark Project. But when it comes to bosses, it's like designers throw their hands up in the air and just give you a guy that has a lot of HP and requires getting shot at a lot with whatever guns you've got on hand.

Bioshock 2 gave you something neat and let you set up, plan, and engage in boss fights/enemy assault waves at will, which was super cool.

The worst offender, off the top of my head, is Half-Life 2, where literally every boss fight is "hey, see this box of rockets? Fill it up, then fire rockets at the striders/hover guys. The only exception is a helicopter with glitched infinite bombs, which is a terrible idea someone here at Valve thought was funny."

So:

What FPSes out there have good boss fights? If you think FPSes don't have good boss fights, what do you think needs changing to make that happen? Deviation from the pistol/ar/shotgun/sniper/rocket weapon stable? Something else?
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
DocSeuss said:
I was playing Darksiders 2 for Playfire rewards, and in doing so, I was reminded how ridiculously fun that game was.

I'm in the mood for a shooter right now, however.

Thing is, I can't really think of any shooters with good boss fights in 'em, aside from Serious Sam 2 of all things. That game had a massive bee, a giant baby, a dragon that could only be defeated with springy shoes and crossbows, and other awesome stuff.

Beyond that, I'm kinda stumped. Sure, the other Serious Sams had their bosses, but beyond that, it seems like shooters are just



And that bugs me. Shooters are smart. The smartest games I've ever played have all been shooters, with the exception of Thief: The Dark Project. But when it comes to bosses, it's like designers throw their hands up in the air and just give you a guy that has a lot of HP and requires getting shot at a lot with whatever guns you've got on hand.

Bioshock 2 gave you something neat and let you set up, plan, and engage in boss fights/enemy assault waves at will, which was super cool.

The worst offender, off the top of my head, is Half-Life 2, where literally every boss fight is "hey, see this box of rockets? Fill it up, then fire rockets at the striders/hover guys. The only exception is a helicopter with glitched infinite bombs, which is a terrible idea someone here at Valve thought was funny."

So:

What FPSes out there have good boss fights? If you think FPSes don't have good boss fights, what do you think needs changing to make that happen? Deviation from the pistol/ar/shotgun/sniper/rocket weapon stable? Something else?
Click to expand...

Since most FPSes don't have controls besides WASD, fire, jump to really use, this won't happen until an actual inventive dev thinks of a good genre mix, I guess.
Then again, all it needs is probably just ONE actually inventive dev, and that probably won't be Infinity Ward.
 
Z

Zakalwe

Banned
Far Cry 3 tried something different. I liked it, it added a lot of atmosphere and fit the insanity theme.

Human Revolution isn't a pure FPs, but the re-worked boss fights in the Director's Cut are a lot of fun as you have multiple ways to win.
 
M

mclem

Member
Quake's bosses were unconventional, at least, albeit not particularly complex.

I'd say Krom and Flynt were good boss encounters in Borderlands (more of a 'gauntlet' nature than a pure single-target nuke)
 
F

FYC

Banned
Agreed on Serious Sam 2. Love that Dragon fight in particular.

I kinda like the final boss fight in the original Rise of the Triad, El Oscuro(Final Form).

nVS2n7D.png


He's essentially a bunch of heads chained together that chase you around in an arena full of weapons and armor. Spread across the arena floor are a bunch of small lava pits, and you can only damage him when he's above these pits. You have to make him chase you over the pits and strike quickly.

Also, if you simply just beat him, you get the bad ending. However, at the start of the level there are a bunch of eggs with his spawn that you need to destroy, and then in the arena itself, you have to hit ~4 secret switches to gain access to another area that is filled with even more eggs. If you destroy all the eggs and then beat him, you're rewarded with the good ending. He's a bit of a pushover, but I think it's pretty neat overall.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
Phazon said:
Try Metroid Prime. Some great boss battles and mechanics :)
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Most people I know don't consider these games to be first person shooters, and get upset when you mention that.

Bufbaf said:
Since most FPSes don't have controls besides WASD, fire, jump to really use, this won't happen until an actual inventive dev thinks of a good genre mix, I guess.
Then again, all it needs is probably just ONE actually inventive dev, and that probably won't be Infinity Ward.
Click to expand...

Well, the Infinity Ward guys who have become Respawn are... uh... ridiculously inventive, in my opinion. Titanfall is superb. Sure, other games have done the whole wall-running thing, but Titanfall's blend is great. Problem is, it's... multi-player only.

The thing more people need to recognize is that shooters are built around motion, moreso than shooting. It's a bit more than just WASD/shoot/jump.

Think about using items like, say, a grappling hook, or going with the mobility in Titanfall, Far Cry 3's slide, special items in Rage, Bioshock's ability to set traps, Far Cry 2's "these levels are huge and you can do whatever you want," FEAR's bullet time, Bulletstorm/Shadow Warrior's point system, Serious Sam's enemy management, Halo's trickable enemies, SWAT 4's nonlethal weaponry... there's a lot out there. Heck, if I actually had the resources I need to work on the project I want to do, I'd be borrowing things like Hotline Miami's "throw stuff at people" mechanics. Let's not forget about things like Binary Domain's "strip armor off enemies" idea...

Zakalwe said:
Far Cry 3 tried something different. I liked it, it added a lot of atmosphere and fit the insanity theme.

Human Revolution isn't a pure FPs, but the re-worked boss fights in the Director's Cut are a lot of fun as you have multiple ways to win.
Click to expand...

How'd Human Revolution do on that front? I played the DLC that had the sort of... prototype for that, and the battle was laughably easy: I climbed up above him, then did a takedown. Goodbye.

I was one of those guys who didn't hate the boss battles, though. I accepted that I might be put into situations beyond my control--that came with the "realism" of the game world. It was reasonable to think I wouldn't have complete and total agency. Someone could get the better of me and trap me in a room from which I had no escape and had to fight my way out. I'm weird that way. It felt more real than "oh come on please let me ghost this game."

Triggerhappytel said:
Metroid Prime
Resistance 2
Resistance 3

Cant think of any others. It seems to be a fine art that most developers cannot master.
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Resistance 3 was pretty good, though it got a bit wonky near the end (healthkit-based design requires that you stop behind cover, pop out, kill enemies, and move on--unfortunately, having enemies with x-ray vision/weaponry meant you weren't safe anywhere, and the final levels, where healthkits became rarer, were frustrating). I thought Resistance 2 was one of the worst shooters I've ever played, down there with Darkest of Days, Legendary, and Killzone 2.
 
Sentenza

Sentenza

Member
DocSeuss said:
The worst offender, off the top of my head, is Half-Life 2, where literally every boss fight is "hey, see this box of rockets? Fill it up, then fire rockets at the striders/hover guys. The only exception is a helicopter with glitched infinite bombs, which is a terrible idea someone here at Valve thought was funny."
Click to expand...
Ironically enough, the final battle in Episode 2 is *precisely* the first thing I thought about when I was trying to remember what was the best "boss battle" I played in a FPS.
 
C

Comfort Jones

Banned
DocSeuss said:
And that bugs me. Shooters are smart. The smartest games I've ever played have all been shooters, with the exception of Thief: The Dark Project. But when it comes to bosses, it's like designers throw their hands up in the air and just give you a guy that has a lot of HP and requires getting shot at a lot with whatever guns you've got on hand.
Click to expand...

I grew up with a lot of shooters. Played the hell out of them, but seriously I feel like most shooters have taken MASSIVE step backs, hell I don't even think HL2 really smartly expanded on any of HL1's gameplay. Made the game slower, made the enemies far more basic, things are way less consistent with lots of stuff like gravity gun puzzles and boat rides etc. A fuckton of them make very little attempt to do something smart or different with most of their mechanics, I mean seriously think of the number of slow campy shooters with ADS we got within what, less than a decade?

Almost all of the games I'd list as incredibly smart than actually expanded on ideas are not even kinda related to shooters.

Phazon said:
Try Metroid Prime. Some great boss battles and mechanics :)
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Can't even sorta agree. A lot of them are pretty easy to just dodge then punish, and most of them have some really fucking obvious solution. There's a rock boss thing in Prime where the fight is, what, dodge his roll attack (which isn't hard) and...scan for his weak point. Repeat til finished. Great.
 
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Pancakes R Us

Member
Call it a FPA of FPS, I don't care. But definitely try the Metroid Prime games (1/2 at the very least), cause they have some awesome boss fights.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
Ironically enough, the final battle in Episode 2 is *precisely* the first thing I thought about when I was trying to remember what was the best "boss battle" I played in a FPS.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that battle just "pick up the thing, throw the thing at the guy, shoot the thing, now drive around and do it elsewhere?"

It's been a while since I played. I remember feeling the moment was climactic, and it was a step up from previous boss battles (just realized I forgot to mention the bugfights, which were just "shoot in the face with a shotgun until they die").

Pancakes R Us said:
Call it a FPA of FPS, I don't care. But definitely try the Metroid Prime games (1/2 at the very least), cause they have some awesome boss fights.
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I've played them. They're not really proper FPSes in terms of controls, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around this stupid lock-on idiocy. Great atmosphere, cool puzzles and stuff, but... then the controls are all about lock-on and stuff. :(

Creaking said:
Oh, well geez, never mind then...
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Horrible FOV + bad player height + bad responsiveness + weak level design + repetitive "go to the thing and defend the thing from waves of enemies" objectives = bad design.
 
C

Creaking

He touched the black heart of a mod
DocSeuss said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that battle just "pick up the thing, throw the thing at the guy, shoot the thing, now drive around and do it elsewhere?"

It's been a while since I played. I remember feeling the moment was climactic, and it was a step up from previous boss battles (just realized I forgot to mention the bugfights, which were just "shoot in the face with a shotgun until they die").
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There's a big sense of urgency though. The Striders are destroying buildings (aka, thing holders) throughout the fight (unless you're fast enough to save them), and eventually converge to destroy your main point of defense. Plus you've got the hunters on the ground to deal with too.

It was pretty good.

DocSeuss said:
Horrible FOV + bad player height + bad responsiveness + weak level design + repetitive "go to the thing and defend the thing from waves of enemies" objectives = bad design.
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A. The game had quite a lot more than just objective defense.

B. I wouldn't call it bad design, just very different from the norm. It's a slow shooter, with a dedicated cover system and frequent (especially near the end, especially on harder difficulties) battles that require you to advance bit by bit, playing very carefully, being smart with your equipment (like grenades), and generally not going in wild guns blazing.
 
T

The Xtortionist

Member
Comfort Jones said:
Can't even sorta agree. A lot of them are pretty easy to just dodge then punish, and most of them have some really fucking obvious solution. There's a rock boss thing in Prime where the fight is, what, dodge his roll attack (which isn't hard) and...scan for his weak point. Repeat til finished. Great.
Click to expand...

To be fair, most shooters don't even have a dodge mechanic. I've played too many shooters where the key to avoiding damage is either sitting behind a wall (boring) or strafing normally (too easy). Prime's simple strafe dodge mechanic enables a far greater level of interaction between player and enemy than most shooters have.
 
Sentenza

Sentenza

Member
DocSeuss said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that battle just "pick up the thing, throw the thing at the guy, shoot the thing, now drive around and do it elsewhere?"
Click to expand...
Well, not exactly.
It's "Pick up the thing (Magnus device), get rid of the adds (Hunters) that are totally focused to screw your attempts to use the thing effectively, THEN throw the thing to the Strider, switch weapon, shoot at it and make it detonate. Go to the next target".
And one could over-simplify all he wants, but it doesn't change that it worked and it was a load of fun.
The Magnus Device itself is a silly weapon that hardly makes any sense in reality but that was built specifically around the idea of making that encounter engaging.


Zakalwe said:
Human Revolution isn't a pure FPs, but the re-worked boss fights in the Director's Cut are a lot of fun as you have multiple ways to win.
Click to expand...
I know I'm in the minority here, but I didn't particularly hate even those boss battles in their "vanilla version".
A lot of people used to whine that "if you are not specced combat you are totally screwed", but let me point that's just bullshit to justify they apparently weren't good enough.
I know it for a fact because I breezed through them *without* any combat oriented talent (at first. Later the games throws so many Praxis points at you that you'll have hardly to make sacrifices about what you want to upgrade).
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
SpeedOfNuts said:
I thought RAGE had good bosses for an FPS.
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I might go back and play this, then.

Creaking said:
There's a big sense of urgency though. The Striders are destroying buildings (aka, thing holders) throughout the fight (unless you're fast enough to save them), and eventually converge to destroy your main point of defense. Plus you've got the hunters on the ground to deal with too.

It was pretty good.
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It's got an intensity, just like the strider fight in Half-Life 2 (I think you face three at once?), and that's a good intensity, but the core play breaks down to just "throw the thing at the thing and kill it."

My... thing is that I love shooters because they're about expressive play. They let players be creative, come up with their own solutions, try new things. It's why I love games like Far Cry 2: I can use my sniper to wound a guy and draw out his friends, or I can set up an explosive to set fire to a place and push a guys into a minefield I set up, or stuff like that.

The strider battle's "do the thing, now do it over and over and over again" kinda felt limiting to me? Serious Sam's battles are a bit like that, but at least you have a lot of smaller enemies to focus on at the same time, so you're constantly switching weapons and tactics to deal with multiple converging threats. Strider battle's just "hey, hunters and those striders you can only beat one way."

TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
Well, not exactly.
It's "Pick up the thing (Magnus device), get rid of the adds (Hunters) that are totally focused to screw your attempts to use the thing effectively, THEN throw the thing to the Strider, switch weapon, shoot at it and make it detonate. Go to the next target".
And one could over-simplify all he wants, but it doesn't change that it worked and it was a load of fun.
The Magnus Device itself is a silly weapon that hardly makes any sense in reality but that was built specifically around the idea of making that encounter engaging.
Click to expand...

I wasn't trying to simplify it to make it seem bad or anything. I just haven't played in a really, really long time, so my memory of it was fuzzy. It just kinda bugs me you've got one specific way to beat striders. Hopefully the above paragraph makes sense.
 
D

Dragoon En Regalia

Member
Metroid Prime's are better than most, but that's not saying much.

Think of it this way: early FPS developers sought to recreate top-down or side-scrolling 2D game experiences from the perspective of the player avatar. A boss in a game like Alien Soldier who's dashing all over the place and creating mayhem only appears to do so in two dimensions—how exactly should a developer best translate complex attack patterns and variance into three? Doom's bosses, as such, are very simple and fairly easy to decimate, and the closest id Software got to more complex stuff was with the Icon of Sin or the build-up to the Vores with the Shamblers in the elevator. So many boss-fight strategies aren't based around jumping over bosses like in 2D games, but circle-strafing to take advantage of the additional dimension (and also because it's more difficult for players to look down and instantly know their position). And so it's the players' limited perspective that designers aren't taking fully into account when making boss fights, since they ought to be finding ways to make strafing interesting if they won't develop around vertical avoidance.

Prime and Prime 2 at least try to replicate the Super Metroid boss-fight set-up in first-person, though the bosses are still manageable by most players. Metroid Prime itself has more than a few phases to learn and survive through before players know how to damage it efficiently. Other exciting boss encounters I can think of are Rohm Moc from Dark Forces (decently challenging if you don't know how his unique attack works), Nihilanth from Half-Life, maybe even the whole of Dead Simple from Doom II.
 
M

Magic Mushroom

Member
Metroid Prime series has excellent bosses. They are varied, you need to mix things up and use your different abilities to defeat them and they look great. The Spider Guardian and Quadraxis are particularly good.

I want a new Prime. :(
 
C

Comfort Jones

Banned
The Xtortionist said:
To be fair, most shooters don't even have a dodge mechanic. I've played too many shooters where the key to avoiding damage is either sitting behind a wall (boring) or strafing normally (too easy). Prime's simple strafe dodge mechanic enables a far greater level of interaction between player and enemy than most shooters have.
Click to expand...

But it's functionally just as bad as going from cover to cover, if not worse. I never really thought much about my actual position beyond just "whelp time to press b". Hell, Primes mechanics make positioning fairly awkward, which is why the fights never really factor that in.
 
C

Creaking

He touched the black heart of a mod
KKRT00 said:
Borderlands series?

--------

Terrible

ATAC fight was decent though.
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The ATAC fight was much worse than the Radec fight. You can beat it without even letting the ATAC hit you (and you generally have to in order to beat the game on the highest difficulty) just by constantly shooting the things that stun it and making sure you've always got handy dandy rockets.

Radec had a challenging arena fight followed by an alright one-on-one endurance battle. Compared to a lot of other shooter boss fights or lack of boss fights, I thought it was pretty good. Tough like a boss fight should be, but not cheap.
 
D

Dr Dogg

Member
There are a lot of shoot at until it dies or hit the weak points or the law of threes boss encounters in FPS games. Even the older ones like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke 3D etc were just bulletsponge throw downs. Unreal, Quake, Serious Sam and Painkiller had epic bosses bit the principles remained the same. Bulletstorm was a bit of a missed opportunity as some of the encounters let you use the mechanics, skill shots and environment to finish of certain bosses but there were hardly any in it. Shadow Warrior (the latest one) are quite different going full on melee and powers especially when you got some combos unlocked and when things go wrong in Dishonored having a shit load of powers made some assassinations quite fun to be super aggressive (the Daud fight in particular).
 
Y

yamo

Member
Vanquish maybe? I never played it, but still it was the first thing to come to my mind.

I really don't have a clue
 
P

PetriP-TNT

Member
NIN90 said:
I remember the RTCW bosses being pretty great.
Click to expand...


Yeah they were decent (or at least better compared to the usual ones) and agreed, Metroid Prime has some great ones. I remember Resistance 2 and 3 having good ones too.

FPS bosses are tricky cause it seems that there are only couple of ways to do them:

1) Shoot until Cyberdemon dies
2) Shoot until button prompts appear
3) Don't shoot, just do shit until you get to point where the boss dies.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
The Xtortionist said:
To be fair, most shooters don't even have a dodge mechanic. I've played too many shooters where the key to avoiding damage is either sitting behind a wall (boring) or strafing normally (too easy). Prime's simple strafe dodge mechanic enables a far greater level of interaction between player and enemy than most shooters have.
Click to expand...

This is why I love Shadow Warrior 2013.

Dragoon En Regalia said:
Metroid Prime's are better than most, but that's not saying much.

Think of it this way: early FPS developers sought to recreate top-down or side-scrolling 2D game experiences from the perspective of the player avatar. A boss in a game like Alien Soldier who's dashing all over the place and creating mayhem only appears to do so in two dimensions—how exactly should a developer best translate complex attack patterns and variance into three? Doom's bosses, as such, are very simple and fairly easy to decimate, and the closest id Software got to more complex stuff was with the Icon of Sin or the build-up to the Vores with the Shamblers in the elevator. So many boss-fight strategies aren't based around jumping over bosses like in 2D games, but circle-strafing to take advantage of the additional dimension (and also because it's more difficult for players to look down and instantly know their position). And so it's the players' limited perspective that designers aren't taking fully into account when making boss fights, since they ought to be finding ways to make strafing interesting if they won't develop around vertical avoidance.

Prime and Prime 2 at least try to replicate the Super Metroid boss-fight set-up in first-person, though the bosses are still manageable by most players. Metroid Prime itself has more than a few phases to learn and survive through before players know how to damage it efficiently. Other exciting boss encounters I can think of are Rohm Moc from Dark Forces (decently challenging if you don't know how his unique attack works), Nihilanth from Half-Life, maybe even the whole of Dead Simple from Doom II.
Click to expand...

Alright, so... how would you add verticality to the modern FPS? Titanfall seems to be doing that using speed+mantling+wall-running. What else? Unreal-style double-jumping? Jetpacks like Serious Sam? (BFE had a boss fight you beat largely from the air) Serious Sam 2's spring boots? Being able to combine circle-strafing with some form of verticality would be amazing.

Let's tease this out. You've got an interesting position. I'm curious to see what kind of shooter thought experiments we can come up with.

Creaking said:
A. The game had quite a lot more than just objective defense.

B. I wouldn't call it bad design, just very different from the norm. It's a slow shooter, with a dedicated cover system and frequent (especially near the end, especially on harder difficulties) battles that require you to advance bit by bit, playing very carefully, being smart with your equipment (like grenades), and generally not going in wild guns blazing.
Click to expand...

It did. It's just been a long time since I played it, and I remember those the most; I gave up mid-game because I just wasn't having fun, which is kinda crazy when you consider I had a minor degree of fun in Darkest of Days. For me, shooters are all about area and enemy control. That's the most important things. Enemies are supposed to be aware of and react to you. Your job is to manage them until they are all eliminated. Killzone 2's horrific FOV/tank controls just were not fun to use. They need to learn from games like Gears, where they give the impression of weight, while actually being really tight.

Dr Dogg said:
There are a lot of shoot at until it dies or hit the weak points or the law of threes boss encounters in FPS games. Even the older ones like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke 3D etc were just bulletsponge throw downs. Unreal, Quake, Serious Sam and Painkiller had epic bosses bit the principles remained the same. Bulletstorm was a bit of a missed opportunity as some of the encounters let you use the mechanics, skill shots and environment to finish of certain bosses but there were hardly any in it. Shadow Warrior (the latest one) are quite different going full on melee and powers especially when you got some combos unlocked and when things go wrong in Dishonored having a shit load of powers made some assassinations quite fun to be super aggressive (the Daud fight in particular).
Click to expand...

OH. I HAVE SOME PAINKILLER HD DLC I SHOULD PLAY. TOTALLY FORGOT.

I would love to play a Dishonored game where I could be hyperviolent, because the violence is so GOOD, but I want the good ending, and violence would rob me of that. :(

NIN90 said:
I remember the RTCW bosses being pretty great.
Click to expand...

It's been years... but huh. I should check that out.

yamo said:
Vanquish maybe? I never played it, but still it was the first thing to come to my mind.

I really don't have a clue
Click to expand...

Nah, Vanquish is pretty terrible. Really stupid design decisions mixed in with a lot of useless/overlap weapons. Great audiovisual presentation makes it feel like you're doing a lot, but it's actual super rudimentary.

Also, it's a TPS, not an FPS. As Third Person Shooters go, Binary Domain is a much deeper, more engaging experience. And it's not written like crap.
 
T

The Xtortionist

Member
Comfort Jones said:
But it's functionally just as bad as going from cover to cover, if not worse. I never really thought much about my actual position beyond just "whelp time to press b". Hell, Primes mechanics make positioning fairly awkward, which is why the fights never really factor that in.
Click to expand...

Personally, I'd choose a mechanic that keeps me in the action over hiding behind something for X seconds until I can move.

Maybe I'm just biased. I love dodge mechanics in almost every game they're in. That feel when slamming down the button to dodge to the side and narrowly avoid an attack. It's just fantastic.

You bring up a good point about positioning. It's something the Prime games could definitely do more with. Though I do imagine that balancing keeping tabs on the boss while also maintaining situational awareness and navigating jumps and such can be tricky to pull off. But it would be cool to see more of that, definitely.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
The Xtortionist said:
Personally, I'd choose a mechanic that keeps me in the action over hiding behind something for X seconds until I can move.

Maybe I'm just biased. I love dodge mechanics in almost every game they're in. That feel when slamming down the button to dodge to the side and narrowly avoid an attack. It's just fantastic.

You bring up a good point about positioning. It's something the Prime games could definitely do more with. Though I do imagine that balancing keeping tabs on the boss while also maintaining situational awareness and navigating jumps and such can be tricky to pull off. But it would be cool to see more of that, definitely.
Click to expand...

Games like Gears of War used enemies that could get you out of cover. Not an FPS, of course, but still, the burrowing grenades, mounts, babyspiderguys, massive waves of zombies, maulers, and tickers could all get you out of cover in a hurry. Plus, the lancer actually incentivizes leaving cover. Combine that with a shift+anydirection button like Shadow Warrior, and you've got really solid shooter mechanics right there.

It's good to let players take cover, regroup, and jump out into the field to get their murder on, but having enemies/weapons that encourage players to spend most of their time moving around the combat space is far more important. If I had the resources to make the game I'd want... well, the design doc's had dodge mechanics in it for a while now.
 
Z

Zakalwe

Banned
DocSeuss said:
How'd Human Revolution do on that front? I played the DLC that had the sort of... prototype for that, and the battle was laughably easy: I climbed up above him, then did a takedown. Goodbye..
Click to expand...

they're just a bit more interesting. For instance, the Barret fight has a computer terminal in a room above. You can use it to take control of a couple of turrets, then hack a door pad to gain access to them.

Or you can hack a few rooms to get access to heavy weaponry.

Or just take him on with what you have.

They're not completely re-worked,they jsut give more options that make you feel like you're making use of the skill sets you spec'd into.

TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
I know I'm in the minority here, but I didn't particularly hate even those boss battles in their "vanilla version".
A lot of people used to whine that "if you are not specced combat you are totally screwed", but let me point that's just bullshit to justify they apparently weren't good enough.
I know it for a fact because I breezed through them *without* any combat oriented talent (at first. Later the games throws so many Praxis points at you that you'll have hardly to make sacrifices about what you want to upgrade).
Click to expand...

It was easy to win in vanilla, it was just a little dull: spam emp nades/mines, shoot. If you had spec'd into hacking you couldn't make use of it, if you were stealth heavy you couldn't really use it a great deal.

The re-work just makes the encounters more interesting.
 
Y

yamo

Member
DocSeuss said:
Nah, Vanquish is pretty terrible. Really stupid design decisions mixed in with a lot of useless/overlap weapons. Great audiovisual presentation makes it feel like you're doing a lot, but it's actual super rudimentary.

Also, it's a TPS, not an FPS. As Third Person Shooters go, Binary Domain is a much deeper, more engaging experience. And it's not written like crap.
Click to expand...

Bummer, I tried to help at least...
:(
 
D

Dr Dogg

Member
Another thing that's just came to mind is that it seams all the innovation in FPS games has been the weaponry. Turok 2 for instance has the fucking awesome Cerebral Bore but that wouldn't fit and was never put into a boss encounter. Lots of crazy weapons but not having to swap them up as a form of strategy.

It's not like it needs bags of innovation here as other genres do it just fine with simplistic mechanics. Look at Resonance of Fate where you can cause direct or scratch damage with different weapons, scratch accumulating faster put not fatal where as direct is the only way to kill but takes long to build up. Even look at Shadows of the Damned and the last boss there, you had to use every weapon in your small arsenal to finish that fight. Grenade launcher to take his shield down, pistol for the headshots and the machine gun to take out the supports.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
Creaking said:
The ATAC fight was much worse than the Radec fight. You can beat it without even letting the ATAC hit you (and you generally have to in order to beat the game on the highest difficulty) just by constantly shooting the things that stun it and making sure you've always got handy dandy rockets.

Radec had a challenging arena fight followed by an alright one-on-one endurance battle. Compared to a lot of other shooter boss fights or lack of boss fights, I thought it was pretty good. Tough like a boss fight should be, but not cheap.
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In atac fight You had to observe atac all the time and run from point to point and do 'objective' to success.

The whole Radec fight was about how fast can You turn camera by 180 degree and shot him. The only reason why it was challenging is the fact that pad sucks for camera control and KZ2 input lag and fps drops didnt help either.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
'bout to sleep, but I love dem FPSes...

yamo said:
Bummer, I tried to help at least...
:(
Click to expand...

You did. You made me want to try Binary Domain again.

Dr Dogg said:
Another thing that's just came to mind is that it seams all the innovation in FPS games has been the weaponry. Turok 2 for instance has the fucking awesome Cerebral Bore but that wouldn't fit and was never put into a boss encounter. Lots of crazy weapons but not having to swap them up as a form of strategy.

It's not like it needs bags of innovation here as other genres do it just fine with simplistic mechanics. Look at Resonance of Fate where you can cause direct or scratch damage with different weapons, scratch accumulating faster put not fatal where as direct is the only way to kill but takes long to build up. Even look at Shadows of the Damned and the last boss there, you had to use every weapon in your small arsenal to finish that fight. Grenade launcher to take his shield down, pistol for the headshots and the machine gun to take out the supports.
Click to expand...

At the same time, it seems like truly unique weapons are rare. I think Halo's done the best with them, because, sure, many games have awesome guns (hi, Resistance 3's vomit gun, Bioshock 2's turret gun, etc), but Halo's the one where it was like... weapons were a sort of rock, paper, scissors thing. Different enemies responded to specific weapon types. Your weapon limit meant you constantly had to pick and choose what was best for the enemies you would be facing (Halo's a game that's about replays, I think--you learn the space, then go back through and strategize, getting progressively better at the game's various combat encounters).

So it's not so much "yeah, nothing like the needler has ever existed and it's the greatest gun ever," or "that plasma pistol's pretty cool," but it's the way all the weapons in the game interact. Plasma pistol's great for elite/jackal shields. Shotgun's best for hunters up close. Pistol's great for grunts at range. Different level design/enemy variety in any given space determines what tools you'll want.

That kind of consideration is what puts Halo above and beyond for me. Gears Judgement could have pulled it off even better with that interesting "enemy variety changes each time" twist, but that botched execution and horrible script (the writer was almost as bad as Yohalem or Cage ffs; how do these guys get jobs?!) really hurt it.
 
T

Tanned-

Banned
not a fps but tps

gears of war 1 berserker fights using hammer dawn and having a boss that moves from your noise since it can't see
 
H

Hyperactivity

Banned
DocSeuss said:
I've played them. They're not really proper FPSes in terms of controls, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around this stupid lock-on idiocy. Great atmosphere, cool puzzles and stuff, but... then the controls are all about lock-on and stuff. :(

.
Click to expand...

Have you played the Trilogy edition on the Wii?
Much better controls
 
D

Dr Dogg

Member
DocSeuss said:
At the same time, it seems like truly unique weapons are rare. I think Halo's done the best with them, because, sure, many games have awesome guns (hi, Resistance 3's vomit gun, Bioshock 2's turret gun, etc), but Halo's the one where it was like... weapons were a sort of rock, paper, scissors thing. Different enemies responded to specific weapon types. Your weapon limit meant you constantly had to pick and choose what was best for the enemies you would be facing (Halo's a game that's about replays, I think--you learn the space, then go back through and strategize, getting progressively better at the game's various combat encounters).

So it's not so much "yeah, nothing like the needler has ever existed and it's the greatest gun ever," or "that plasma pistol's pretty cool," but it's the way all the weapons in the game interact. Plasma pistol's great for elite/jackal shields. Shotgun's best for hunters up close. Pistol's great for grunts at range. Different level design/enemy variety in any given space determines what tools you'll want.

That kind of consideration is what puts Halo above and beyond for me. Gears Judgement could have pulled it off even better with that interesting "enemy variety changes each time" twist, but that botched execution and horrible script (the writer was almost as bad as Yohalem or Cage ffs; how do these guys get jobs?!) really hurt it.
Click to expand...

Damn how could I forget about the balance Halo has (well had). Yeah a Plasma Pistol on it's own was pretty standard fare compared to the UNSC equivalent, the Magnum but an overcharged shot taking down shields and disabling vehicles made that almost necessary, especially on higher difficulties. But the beauty is that after you've drained your opponents shields the damage from it isn't so hot so the game is forcing you to mix things up to be more efficient so as you say it's a constant juggle of weapons for each situation.

It a shame something wasn't designed as the ultimate test as a boss fight with having constantly manage your arsenal on the fly whilst under constant pressure.

Hahaha it seams we might come up with the blueprint here for what could make the perfect FPS. It's not just your arsenal, it's not just the enemy AI, it's not just grandiose boss battles, spectacular environments, tutorialising through gameplay but how all of these elements mesh and intertwine with each other.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
Dr Dogg said:
Damn how could I forget about the balance Halo has (well had). Yeah a Plasma Pistol on it's own was pretty standard fare compared to the UNSC equivalent, the Magnum but an overcharged shot taking down shields and disabling vehicles made that almost necessary, especially on higher difficulties. But the beauty is that after you've drained your opponents shields the damage from it isn't so hot so the game is forcing you to mix things up to be more efficient so as you say it's a constant juggle of weapons for each situation.

It a shame something wasn't designed as the ultimate test as a boss fight with having constantly manage your arsenal on the fly whilst under constant pressure.
Click to expand...

Human pistol has zoom, Covenant pistol has overcharge. Covenant's great against elites, regular's great against grunts. Both are great against Jackals. It's... just... every time I think about Halo, I am awed by Combat Evolved's perfection. Even The Library is this brilliant series of identical arenas with new enemy mixes to get you to focus more on the shooting than the newness of the environment. It's like "okay, you've learned the space, now get going on the gunplay."

Kinda like how you work your way through a series of identical rooms with different enemy combos/awareness states in Assault on the Control Room, then you play it backwards, but now with Flood and Drones. The whole game is about how weapons and enemy AI control your experience.

It's genius, and it's also why no one ever made a Halo killer: because they thought shooters were "shoot it until it dies." Halo was a game about tools and enemy management. Even FEAR's weapon balance/enemy variety isn't that great compared to Halo. That said, it's the best shooter ever because it has that BRILLIANT level design/bullet time that keeps you engaged and in motion, the greatest particle effects ever, and most importantly of all: you can carry 135 rounds of shotgun ammo iirc, rather than the normal 16-36 of most stupid games.

Hahaha it seams we might come up with the blueprint here for what could make the perfect FPS. It's not just your arsenal, it's not just the enemy AI, it's not just grandiose boss battles, spectacular environments, tutorialising through gameplay but how all of these elements mesh and intertwine with each other.
Click to expand...

Whenever I make a thread about shooters, there's my stated reason (eg: I want to play boss battles) and my real reason (I want to make the perfect shooter). I'm working through some stuff to do a sort of rudimentary shooter--if I'm lucky, the enemy models will look about as detailed as Kentucky Route Zero characters--but it's not going to have a lot of the mechanics I really want, because I have no idea how to do the wallrun/mantling stuff I've been planning for years now...

But yeah. Basically, take it as a given that any time I talk about shooters, it's because I'm hoping to glean new insights and ultimately create some of the most fun shooters that have ever existed.
 
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