Video games are bullshit
Sure, this article is pretty much bullshit too — and rather badly written, at that. You notice how it professes to be a list of the "hardest" — explicitly the "hardest to defeat" — video game bosses of all time? And how it took them all the way to the second entry to shift the criteria away from "hardest" and toward "coolest?" And how the title definitely says "end" bosses and many of them are not? And how entry 11 is explicitly the Death from the NES Castlevania, accompanied by a wonderful screenshot from Symphony of the Night on the PSX? Yeah. Fuck that article.
That’s not what I came to talk to you about. I came to talk about the extreme contempt Square Enix has toward its players. Do you see this? Do you see this shit right there at the top, at number 1? This boss from Final Fantasy 11 that takes twenty-four hours to beat? And the interwebs suggest to me that it isn’t the only takes-an-entire-day boss in that idiotic game.
Now, I spent five years playing World of Warcraft, and I can tell you this: World of Warcraft has its share of awful encounters, but nothing even close to the sheer unstoppable tedium of a day-long fight. Only Square Enix could possibly think that was a good design decision. Remember, these are the same people who thought that shipping Final Fantasy 7 without finishing the graphics or actually making all the plot cutscenes was a good idea. And who thought that shipping Final Fantasy 8 without bothering to include a game anywhere on the four discs was a good idea.
I guess my point is: Dragon Quest 9 comes out in two weeks and better not have anything this goddamn lame in it, or there’ll be hell to pay.
What… what language is that linked article written in? It seems like English, but something is seriously wrong with it.
“[Psycho Mantis] reviews your progress throughout the game, and refer back to games prior Metal Gear Solid. He can, at any moment, take over your control pad.”
This reads like the description of the boss from one of those NES manuals. You know the ones that weren’t really translated all that well.
Comment by Stephen | 1 July 2010
Jesus, it just gets better.
“So if a whole village cannot survive his aggressive tyranny, we can predict the extent of the battle. Kefka first forces the player’s party to fight it’s way through his controlled terrifying goddesses, which as frighteningly twisted human forms look like you have entered the borders of hell, there is no way back, and it is times worse than you could have ever imagined.”
“With a giant freeze ray which the alien ship battle shoots at you and the crazy looking aliens fired upon you, we can see why the final boss is a bit of a gamers legend. It helps that the special effects are pretty quality.”
“With streets of rage, you can see why the illusive Mr X has Shiva as his right hand man.” (Perhaps Mr X is really the Illusive Man!)
“One may devote countless hours of their life to beat Tyson, and never do it. He is one speedy puncher with some top rate moves, such as the one-punch knockout. How can you beat this?!”
“To defeat Satan, you MUST be at level 99, and using Beacon of Assault three times in a row in order to stop him from casting a spell that will destroy you instantaneously.” (Good advice for everyday life.)
Comment by Stephen | 1 July 2010
I bet Mr. X is the Illusive Man. Mass Effect 3 will just be a Streets of Rage update with a lot of cutscenes.
But, yeah, isn’t that awful? I almost FJM’d it, but I didn’t even know where to start. And, really, I mainly wanted to scream and yell about that FF11 boss anyhow.
It helps that the dude’s grasp of English is pretty quality.
Comment by Darien | 1 July 2010
Awful? It’s fucking brilliant! My only regret is, despite being a gamer, I forgot about the old gamer legend of the giant freeze ray at the end of Crysis.
Oh as for that FF11 boss, I say that’s what you deserve for playing FF11.
I read that article that you linked to and was a little confused. Did the guild spend 18 hours on the encounter without wiping? I tried looking up the fight but I guess it’s been nerfed since then so you only get 2 hours to kill the boss (and people have done it), so I’m unclear. I could see guilds in WoW spending 18 hours solid learning a boss through a bunch of wipes, but if it was really 18 hours without a wipe then that’s the worst fucking encounter ever.
Comment by Stephen | 1 July 2010
My understanding — though this is not first-hand, mind you; I only know this from reading intertubes complaining — is that, at one point, anyhow, the boss really was designed to take a whole day to beat with no wipes. Apparently it had several phases, and each phase took hours to complete. Complete bullshit.
Comment by Darien | 1 July 2010