I know it's been covered before most likely, but the boss battles absolutely ruin this game. Instead of the madcap tactical craziness of the open plan levels, you're forced into a frustrating grind of luck. Best example, the boss in Showdown.

Who thought that was fun at all?

It's awful, nearly game-breaking. This was my second playthrough and I've just given up on it now. I can't be bothered getting past those ridiculous cats, just to get knifed because the ninja lady is remarkably accurate and I'm too stupid to duck. Then to get shot just because I was a little too far out of cover and have to do the whole, damn thing again... UGH.

For such a wonderful game, you just wonder why they left garbage like that in. If games want to get to a wider audience, we need an end to bosses.

I will concede that bosses in a game like Hotline Miami need to go, at least when they resemble the ones in the game, as they break the flow and all that. However, I take issue with the idea that all bosses should be eradicated from all of gaming. A good boss should be a pinnacle of challenge, making the player use the skills that they have been practicing during the rest of the game to come out on top, not unlike some kind of gaming equivalent of an exam; however, unlike an exam, which can be a pain to study for and is ultimately not very fun, a good boss should add a touch of variety and ramp up the challenge in a creative manner. Throwing more and tougher enemies at the player achieves this goal somewhat, but in a way that lacks creativity and can only be pushed so far.

Don't get me wrong, there are games were a traditional boss is out of place and a more appropriate end game challenge substitute would be appropriate, but this is not the case for all gaming. Take the Legend of Zelda series; those games are full of bosses that require the player to utilize skills and equipment that the player has been using throughout the course of the dungeon/game and serve as climactic moments throughout the game. Taking away boss fights from a game series like that would only hurt it.

See the part of my response where I concede that bosses do not belong in some games. I've never played the Mafia games, but if I might supply my own examples, traditional bosses in, say, a Splinter Cell game or Hitman game are a bad idea. Splinter Cell and Hitman are primarily stealth games (albeit adopting different philosophies and methods of subterfuge), and the idea of having a boss rock out from the shadows requiring that you engage in a protracted firefight with them would make about as much sense as a Dadaist rendition of Alice in Wonderland; those games wisely eschewed boss fights in favor of ramping up the challenge in a manner that provided variety and high stakes while still keeping the game focused on the core gameplay. A universe in which all movies required a fistfight (or,indeed, [url=http://zeropunctuation.wikia.com/wiki/Silent_Hill:_Homecoming]a line dancing competition[/url]) would be moronic, but that's not to say that the equivalent phenomenon is present here; rather, we expect games to build to points of climax which may or may not involve a fistfight.

To the extent that this is a problem because developers think that they have to crowbar in bosses out of some misguided sense of tradition instead of in cases where they are actually determined to be a good idea, the issue seems less that bosses should be done away with and more that more software developers need to start putting more thought into the design of their product. Arguing for the removal of bosses under this rationale is akin to arguing that since everyone feels the need to include a fistfight in a film, all films must cease to have fistfights, even in films where such a scene would make sense; sure, you've fixed the problem of everyone mindlessly trying to cash in on something that they don't understand, but now the thing can't be used in situations where it can and arguably should be used. Hell, Half-life's emphasis on storytelling led to people trying to catch that same brand of lightning in a bottle by using cut scenes which ranged from good to unnecessary and bad; had we eradicated this particular trend from gaming, we would never have been able to play Half-Life 2, an amazing game that uses the same storytelling techniques as its predecessor to great effect. To go one further, if the entire trend of story-driven gameplay, which some games have admittedly run into the ground by shackling the player to poorly told and needlessly long winded plots, were to be subjected to this same rationale, then we might all be stuck playing plotless diversions that could never be considered works of art, while titles like Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, Silent Hill 2, and many other games with incredibly moving stories and fun gameplay would never come into existence.

tl;dr: just because some idiots don't know how to apply a certain concept, one should not be so quick to encourage that that concept be discarded entirely, preventing its proper application in the present and its possible future evolution.

The Hotline Miami end boss was game-breaking for me. I just couldn't do it, no matter how many times I tried. Best I did was to kill the cats and avoid that knife. However, the gunshot got me. Most of the time, though, it was either the second cat or the knife that did me in. The result was that I couldn't beat it and gave up. Game was subsequently uninstalled and I watched the end on YouTube. :(

End boss is nasty, I agree, but in my opinion he is not broke. This is just hard situation, and like in many rougelike games, you need to be perfect with fingers for couple of seconds. I needed 20 minutes to figured how to use column to kill them all (and I am not the hardcore player, I finished Mass Effect on easy with some troubles and don't even finished FTL yet :P ).

I killed this boss at first time, just hide behind plants when he is shooting at you, and attack when he is reloading. And it's last boss but it's not end of the game .

Once you figure out the trick it's pretty easy, but still require decent amount of twitch reflex. The lady ninja won't throw her knife in open area. As for the guy, just sit behind the fountain and throw the knife at him. You can avoid his shot pretty easily as there's pattern to his shooting. One other trick, don't finish the lady off until she's near the fountain (when she dragging herself). So it's easy for you to pick up her knife.

And yes, it's not the end of the game. You still have couple of stages after the credit rolls.

You've missed my point. I've completed it before, but forgot how much the boss battles were just a grind. For a game that, generally, is about emergent gameplay, the boss fights are a complete disaster. Badly designed, poorly implemented and in opposition to the game's core mechanics. It's the same as the hilarious bad battles in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Actually i was referring to korell post rather than yours.

Back to the boss battles, i understand but can't agree completely with you. The majority of the game revolving around reflex, and bit of exploitation because the AI is predictable. The boss battles just up it slightly to the next level. Kinda roguelike mix with rubber-band AI which always mirror your movement and able to read your input. However it's very short battle. For me the bosses are less frustrating than some of the level design and enemy placement, like for example Chapter 10.

how bout follow my experience, i admit the boss is difficult like hell but after while i find solution, first try to bring the cat circle around and try to kill them, then after tat try your best to pull the lady near the door u go in at begin and toss the glass to hit the gal, then dont kill the girl first, try to use the gun shot aim to aim the boss first, after tat finish tat lady and hide behind the door, wait until the boss finish shooting, grab the glass and throw the boss, then hide one more time and throw again, tat all~~ try it if u cant pass through the boss , hope tis will really help u XD

oops, i thought u haven get through, haha, sorry, my mistake, i didnt read properly ^^

*SPOILERS*

I've just completed Hotline Miami and I agree that Showdown wasn't really fun. The panthers aren't that difficult if you back away from them after hitting, and everything else is doable, too, with a little patience and perseverance, but it still sucks. And that's because IMO there are several things wrong with the design:

1. The difficulty of the boss battle is badly motivated; it's completely artificial, as there's no obvious in-game reason why the 'hero' would drop his weapons at the door and enter the room unarmed.

2. Having to watch the short 'cutscene' and click through the dialogue on each new try ruins the fast pace of the other levels that makes dying less of an issue, because you can jump right back into the action again as soon as you press 'Restart' - not so in this one, so the repetition will quickly get on your nerves.

3. It's not do-whatever-you-want gameplay like the regular levels but a quite rigid puzzle due to the short reaction windows you get and the lack of weapon choices or possibilities to take cover (beside the fountains). It's not the most fitting example, but I guess it would feel similar if a free-form RPG was suddenly interrupted by an obligatory and incredibly linear point & click adventure section. There are no 6 million ways to die for the boss, there's more or less just one way to kill him, in three predetermined steps you need to follow.

4. Last and least complaint: Despite the linearity there's still randomness at work, but mostly working against you this time. And the game is buggy and cheats. Not just one time I had the lady ninja throw a deadly knife at me even before her dialogue was triggered. That's a minor issue though, compared to the others.

Still, it's quite an accomplishment of the developers that this was the only level I really disliked, despite dying a lot more often in the others (I guess). :)

Wait, there are like, 2 bosses in this game?
Well implemented bosses are the pinnacle of gaming to me, but they are fairly far between.
For the final boss, you wanna take the panthers down after seeing their movement pattern, throw your weapon at the ninja or she'll knife you, grab a knife, circle the boss at his table and hit his arm, grab the other knife and do it again. Arguably frustrating match, but a boss as fast paced as anything else in the game. I've seen disruptive bosses but this game is surely one of the last I'd mention.

Got that helmeted S.O.B. yesterday. I couldn't get him for 20 minutes and got frustrated. I thought that you need to smack him while he is retrieving his knife but couldn't hit him. I was swinging around like crazy but it didn't do anything. After confirming on forum that this course of action is right I tried again but this time I autoaimed him and killed on second try without a problem and easily (and only because I didn't know that he will be vulnerable after second hit).
So this seem to be a main problem with this guy, if you have problems with him - autoaim him with middle mouse button imediatly,

Yay! Woot! I just beat Showdown (and then went on to beat the rest of the game, including the bonus level). So incredibly pleased that I finally managed to do this. :)