You know the feeling. It’s final level time and after killing your way through scores of stupid enemies you finally approach a room and watch the impending cut-scene. Out comes the bad guy stating that you’ll never stop his plan for world domination before you’re returned to the game with that sinking feeling knowing that after the hours you’ve put into the game all you’re left with is a battle of attrition to see whether you can complete it or not.
Yes, that’s right it’s our good old friend the end of level baddie. Simply put it’s normally an amalgamation of everything that’s preceded it only bigger and tougher with more weapons and a weird DNA thing gone wrong making it practically impossible to defeat unless you’re prepared to sit there for hours pounding it with bullet after bullet.
The attacks are predictable meaning it’s only a case of learning how to avoid said attack and then continuing the slaughter with your own weaponry. Even more annoying is that most games these days don’t even have a health bar so you never know how long is left before the bugger drops dead.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the end of level baddie though is that the sense of satisfaction you receive upon killing said baddie is practically non-existent, so why bother? Not matter how good the quality of the game is beforehand the end of levels never seem to have any thought or design put into them.
Let’s take Return to Castle Wolfenstein as an example. Not the greatest shooter ever made, but a fun, cleverly designed game with some great levels, but the final boss is terrible. It’s almost like we’ve got back in time 10 years. Is circling and shooting really the pinnacle of 21st century gaming? Even worse is Hitman 2 where 592 individual bullets are required to finally kill an evil Columbian drug baron. 592?!? See how long it takes you to count to 592. Done yet? Nope, didn’t think so. Still going? Right, you’ve finished then. See, it takes a long time.
What we really need are more intelligent endings such as the one found in Max Payne. The final part of the final level was a refreshing change as it made you think rather than simply keeping your finger pressed down on the shoot button. It still required some shooting, but it also required you to think and when you finally realised that the idea to shoot the four cables holding up the tower might work it gave you a great buzz.
Is it really that much to ask for some more endings like this? It’s
not like we’re asking for the world, we’re not even asking for
the obliteration of end of level baddies just some thought and a shift of
focus from firepower to brainpower.
