This. It's from an age when circle strafing was still novel.

Depends on genre and how they are implemented, but there have been to many times when I had to quit a game in frustration because I could not get past a boss. Badly implemented bosses should be a thing of the past. Well implemented ones can be good, but the trick is in balancing and making them fit to the game. I remember the Ceasr boss in F:NV after the bridge attack, which you can actually one shoot with a sniper rifle if you have invested in it and take him by surprise.. That is a well implemented boss. Bullet sponges with 100k HP and can one shoot you are badly implemented.

In some games a traditional end boss might not be appropriate. The ones that tries to look & feel realistic would just feel odd if you would have to fight a gigantic tank or a human that can take several full mags in the chest.
But for games where an end boss fits in, I don't see a reason why they should be a thing of the past. Heck, with today's technology we should be able to create more interesting end bosses than we could 15 years ago!

The realistic bosses can be boring, for example Modern Warfare 2 was my first COD and was getting pretty excited about the upcoming boss fight only to find out it's a boring cutscene/QTE fight. I don't care if he needed unrealistic amount of bullets to finish him, I would have preferred any boss fight then none at all.

Personally instead of a normal enemy with 100x times health it should just be a different style of fighting than normal, that's why Batman: Arkham Asylum's boss fights were so fun (well most of them) especially Killer Croc or Scarecrow's were the highlights of the game, (The joker himself wasn't too great)

Uh...depends on the game?

i like final boss, why would they stop them?

Shot boss until it dies - stay in the past.
Puzzle based on figuring out how to kill the boss - yes, please!

Well, should maybe the question be: are the current boss fights as enjoyable for game-play as those of the past? Do they live up to great possibilities of story-devices?

I personally object to:

- End games that are from tactics and gameplay perspective radically different from the previous campaign, for example BG II expansion pac final fight that would just linger on and on and on, or Divine Divinity II final fight

- Scripted boss fights, at any chapter really, like Witcher II that had essentailly only one replicatable linear solution that became uninspiring pretty fast, particularly with the appalling PC "controls."


Edit: two replies on distinct views merged - don't like it, so eliminated the latter.

There's nothing wrong with bosses, as long as they're well done, they make sense in the game world and they actually require skill to beat instead of just being huge piles of hp with powerful attacks.

The problem is that most games implement them badly. In games that are supposed to be realistic, bosses typically feel silly.
Deus Ex: HR was one of the worst offenders; it was a game made so you could sneak around and basically be a ghost, and yet you're for some reason forced into straightforward combat encounters with cyborgs that can take dozens of bullets.
The Brayko boss fight in Alpha Protocol was really silly too; AFAIK, no amount of cocaine gives someone the ability to soak up bullets like they were drops of water.

Once again, implementation is the key. But definitely, if you cannot make a good encounter then you're better off not making one at all. And in general I despise everything that wants to feel 'epic' in a game. Perhaps because I cannot really get immersed in most games thus the efforts just seem really cheesy and crappy.

This.

Shooting some huge badass monster Duke Nukem style is ok. Having unreal superhumans when they're supposed to be just highly skilled normal people is not. And being forced to fight head on an enemy when the normal gameplay involves sneaking is a big no-no, specially when it's an RPG and you find yourself having spent your XP in stealth upgrades that don't do shit in the boss fight.

And having "bosses" that are enemies can still work, character wise. I can't recall many examples, but I particularly remember this one boss in the original Deus Ex that came after you with a sword, and I killed her with one shot to the face. I felt so cheap I actually reloaded and re-killed her with my own sword.

They have all our quarters from long ago! They sit inside laughing as you run around in a circle shooting them. They are laughing. Laughing at all of you....

So many games (especially RPG's) have over-levelled end bosses. So you go about the game at your own pace, and then to get the ending, the boss attacks you once or twice and kills you in an instant, despite being able to smash around every other boss in the game with ease.

I hate it when that happens in games.

This. I don't want a boss that has 10x more HP and takes forever to trial & error in a ridiculous dance because I've too low HP or something else.

A boss with good AI and a puzzle around him, preferably, thrown together in sequences is better.

As for bosses in general, I prefer a more linear but flexible difficulty curve rather than easy mobs and than a boss with a cool name and huge model and 10x HP.

Haha, I failled miserably on the last boss. I noticed the pattern on how to play pretty fast but it became a drag because it took so damn long to finish him and I made a few mistakes in between and had to do some retries. When I finally killed him I noticed that my Aard, fully upgraded, damaged him a lot more than I thought and I noticed a new tactic to avoid being hit so I could basically have won in a few minutes instead of the 30 minutes it took when I finally defeated him.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Risen 1 make me agree with the statement, bosses are unneeded...

but, there are games that need a boss.. an end goal.... and some which have a story thats so strong a boss is unneeded, just a great cutscene and closure..