Talk about extreme! I would like to point out that technically, the fight with Luca isn’t particularly too challenging-you just need the spend a right amount of preparations and grinding I personally had some troubles during my first playthrough, but beat him very smoothly on subsequent playthroughs. Each party consists of 6 characters, so with 3 parties, that means you are amassing a massive 18-character-squad just to gang up on one guy. When the player is about to face him, you need to organize 3 different parties in preparation. Being a sadistic, murderous psychopath, the design of Luca’s boss fight in this game, also did well to expose Luca’s ruthlessness and even resilience. The warmonger literally destroys everything that stands in his way, with his unstoppable White Wolf Army. In the story, Luca Blight is the tyrannical insane Prince of Highland, more commonly known as “The Mad Prince”, who somehow gained control over the Highland Army. Additionally, the soundtrack is picture perfect in this boss fight The quiet, slow-sounding, creepy melodies build on the menacing atmosphere of the battle, and gives the boss fight a completely different “shape” than other boss fights with typical rock soundtracks, or just fast-paced, rhythmic songs in general. His attacks are abnormally high, being able to sometimes even incapacitate a character in one turn. Id, in the game, as a being completely bent on destruction, is definitely one of the most challenging bosses. All of these are cleverly based on psychologist Sigmund Freud’s idea of there being three different psyches: the Id, ego and superego. In most cases, Fei was the one which kept everything in check, the Superego, and there also exists The Coward, a third personality to keep the other two personae in check, which is the Ego. As far as I remembered, Id is the personification of the main character, Fei’s desires – a manifestation of all of Fei’s impulses and satisfactions which are all gained from chaos and destruction. One thing I like about Id’s boss fight (and his character, while I’m at it), aside from the challenge, is that it uses this very psychological idea as a setup. Some of the main themes behind Xenogears is based on a number of psychological concepts – mainly Freudian and Jungian psychology. More than any guns-blazing, stealthy or technical boss fights, the boss fight with Liquid Ocelot to this day, remains my favorite in the whole Metal Gear Solid universe (with the boss fight with “The Boss” in Metal Gear Solid 3 coming in a VERY close second). It was a simple fight, a stark contrast to the other complex boss battle designs that we are so familiar with, yet, an extremely emotional one. With the music playing the main themes of the MGS games way back from the very first game to the fourth, it gave the impression that these two warriors, had went through a lot, looking to end their extremely long-term rivalry right then and there. In here, we have two warriors, two brothers, two veterans with different ideals on the battlefields who had experienced wars, and who had stared at death right in the face numerously duking it out in the most basic hand-to-hand combat – a CQC fight. However, despite all the fancy, unique, and sometimes flashy designs, there are a few battles in the Metal Gear Solid universe, which, in terms of emotions, just wouldn’t be able to topple off, and one of them is the boss fight between Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 4. We have the very epic psychological-sniping warfare between Naked Snake and The End, the very massive, large-scale, destructive battle between Metal Gear Rex and Metal Gear Ray, the intense bout between Solid Snake and Gray Fox, and even the boss battle with the “4th wall breaking” Psycho Mantis. The Metal Gear Solid is known for very interesting, or I might even say, mind-blowing boss battle designs. The list I will share with everyone here, is what I feel, the best 5 bosses (not in a consecutive order) I had ever came across and they are gauged not just by difficulty alone, but also presence, design, atmospheres, concept, technicality and so on. As with any other lists, all lists are subjective, especially for a medium like video games, there are a lot of games which I haven’t play, and quite obviously, even if one of those games have bosses who are more than qualify to be on this list, I will have to personally play and experience them first to consider adding them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |