Dang, apparently I played better than the developers anticipated anyone to play. :) IIRC, I saw the Lance guy on the second floor of the mansion near the side door, and I shot him there on his tracks, all the way from the door of my office.

And I already uninstalled the game, in order to make some room for some other games... Otherwise I would have tried to replay the mission in order to see how it was actually supposed to go. I wonder if it supports cloud saves? GTA3 didn't seem to.

Fair enough, I wouldn't want an action boss fight to the end of e.g. a turn-based RPG, or a point&click adventure, either.

But then to take my Halo example, the Halo 2 ending (shooting) was closer to the gameplay of the rest of the game, than the Halo 1 ending (racing to safety on a tight time limit; sure there was driving earlier in the game too, but it was never really the main point of the game, and it was rather relaxing otherwise). Yet, of those two, I much preferred the "unconventional" Halo 1 ending. In fact I found it refreshing that it wasn't about shooting some big powerful boss at all.

You're just actively trying to find the worst possible uses. Yes, designing a boss in a way that it doesn't break the general gameplay is difficult, that's why designers cheap it out by turning FPS into a puzzle game - it doesn't mean that it's a particualry good approach, it's just an easy one. Hard boss fights can be be either good or bad tho, depending on how well the encounter is designed and how well it fits with the general theme. It works very well with DMC games as good reactions, learning of enemy tells and taking as little damage as possible (since even the common enemy can kill you quite easily) is the essential part of gameplay. It doesn't work in XIII because half of the game is quite stealth orientated and enemies generally don't last very long, so their hitscan weaponry is generally not a problem. Boss then actively breaks most of that, so no, he doesn't really keep to the general gameplay.

I don't think you can make a good boss for most FPS games, not really - you either cheap the fight out which seems to be the way you prefer, or it can't be a single creature that you're fighting. FPS games never focus on fighting individual, exceptionally strong targets, so putting one in as a boss is, for the most part, a very bad idea - surprisingly enough, a very good boss design, albeit arguably not all that difficult one, was present in Bioshock Infinite

*spoilers*
it was basically a wave-based combat arena which combined everything you have learned in all the previous encounters into a single long fight. There were some slight changes of the mechanics, but were very minor for the most parts and you couldn't really use them to influence the fight itself all that much
*/spoilers*

Other good endings for FPS games would be stuff like HL2: Episode Two - again, even tho it changes gameplay slightly, it still builds upon the skillset you were acquiring throughout the entire game. Freespace 2, very dramatic and well done ending, again quite difficult, again only taking what you have learned. Some games are just, by design, not really meant to have single-enemy hugeass bosses - and I think game designers are finally realizing this.

I considered it a mid-level boss, e.g. the end boss of e.g. HL: Opposing Force was a bit similar in my opinion; you couldn't kill it either by just shooting at it continuously, you had to find a way to destroy it. Either way, that (the pit monster) is one kind of FPS end boss I don't necessarily mind seeing, in case the ending is about a boss fight anyway.

Fighting GLaDOS was a boss fight, much like any other, the part near the end of Portal I thought was cool was when you escape the test chambers and start exploring the rest of the facility and the contrast between the sterile chambers and the alarmingly rusted industrial environment of the rest of the place!

And as it got mentioned: yes, I found the GLaDOS fight at the end of Portal overall quite satisfying as well. At first it felt quite hard (and I did run out of time), but soon I got the grasp of it, and afterwards it was quite easy to finish it as you knew the best approach. And the GLaDOS remarks cracked me up.

Probably because of mouse aim.

That's plausible. I forgot I'm probably the only person to ever play the GTA games only on PC, others played them on PS2 mostly.

I played 3 on PS2 but I waited for the PC versions every time after.

Nope, I've played them all on PC too. Well, up to and including San Andreas, anyway. I haven't played any of the later GTA games since Rockstar started shitting on the PC gamers.

If I may ask, what did you find so difficult about him? I remember my dad finished the game before I did, and he told me he was really tough, so I panicked, but when I got there I had no trouble at all, really.

Also, it's not quite the very end, but it's close enough to count, FEAR 2, right at the end had a turret section, normally not something to get excited about, but this one was decent fun, but the awesomely over-the-top song playing during the scene pushes it over to ridiculously fun. It's a little jarring to go from that to the unnerving ending. Just have to get in one last smile before things go to Hell I guess.

Ah, I think I had a more fighty build. I remember that I did have several dark side powers, despite being light side, so when I noticed him life draining the imprisoned Jedi, my thought was "hey, I could do that myself!" which not only healed me, but kept him from healing.

Yeah I read some tips after I beat him and I guess you can remove those jedi with some force powers I didn't have. All I had was heal, shield, speed, that kind of stuff. The way I won was force speed plus every stim I had plus flurry. I had to heal every turn though. Crazy.