Contrary to popular belief, Deus Ex HR actually has good boss battles

I see a lot of people whining about how the boss battles deviate from freedom of choice and forces you to use guns and be aggressive. Apparently they haven't watched the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToxyDZKuMM

Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. You may have played the game on stealth mode but if you can't adapt to the situation at hand you won't survive. You can whine all you want but things change in life whether you like it or not.

This game has taught me a life lesson that being adaptive is very important for survival.

Having the boss battles deviate is a good design in that it forces the player to "adapt" rather than have the freedom to do the same play$tyle. A boss battle would be so lame if you can just defeat him/her with you hiding then shoot then repeat the process. There woudln't be much challenge. doing stealth against a boss is not a good design because unlike levels where you're dealing with cameras, turrets, robots and many enemies, in a boss battle, you're only dealing with one person, the boss.

The 2nd boss glitched on me and stood still while I shot them to pieces. :P

I really enjoyed the boss battles. They're a great change of pace and force you to come up with some interesting tactics depending on your augments/play style. Plus I found the characters you're up against to be quite interesting, and at times I almost wish there was a non-lethal means of taking them down. [spoiler] I found the fight with Jaron Namir to be especially cool, primarily because of the design of his augments and those moving statues around the room. :P [/spoiler] raven_squad

your spoiler bossfight is the least interesting for me; it ends in less than a minute~

and my problem with DEHR bossfights isn't that they're bad (they're not something special either); a forced kill is just so out of sync with the whole game. I don't need non-lethal way of dealing with them, at least I should be able to choose to spare their life after the fights.

Good, but you can turn them (the first three) into a complete joke through application of high explosives. Bosses in most games do have a "best" way to beat them, but in Human Revolution they can all be beaten in the same way.

The final boss is quite challenging, though.

And it does seem odd that in the pacifist playthrough I'm doing right now, I'll have to kill some people. Eidos put so much effort into making this game all about choice, such a jarring about-face seems a tad sloppy (A reason why it shouldn't receive 10/10).

your spoiler bossfight is the least interesting for me; it ends in less than a minute~

and my problem with DEHR bossfights isn't that they're bad (they're not something special either); a forced kill is just so out of sync with the whole game. I don't need non-lethal way of dealing with them, at least I should be able to choose to spare their life after the fights.teardropmina

They are not HORRID, but they dont really add anything imo. Either shoulda been improved boss fights or taken them out imo.

Loved the game btw, my only issue was the boss fights.

I see a lot of people whining about how the boss battles deviate from freedom of choice and forces you to use guns and be aggressive. Apparently they haven't watched the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToxyDZKuMM

Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. You may have played the game on stealth mode but if you can't adapt to the situation at hand you won't survive. You can whine all you want but things change in life whether you like it or not.

This game has taught me a life lesson that being adaptive is very important for survival.

Having the boss battles deviate is a good design in that it forces the player to "adapt" rather than have the freedom to do the same play$tyle. A boss battle would be so lame if you can just defeat him/her with you hiding then shoot then repeat the process. There woudln't be much challenge. doing stealth against a boss is not a good design because unlike levels where you're dealing with cameras, turrets, robots and many enemies, in a boss battle, you're only dealing with one person, the boss.

lordlors

I disagree. I do think that the Boss battles were the biggest flaws of the game. I do think that the game under-delivered in those situations.

The Boss battles didn't so much deviate as they restricted options and alternative approaches. All other aspects of the game offers diverse approaches to solving your problems, the boss battles offers about as much choices as a boss battle in Doom, Quake or Halo. You shoot the thing until it stops attacking you. I felt that it was a major letdown by the developers to not leverage all of the other game systems.

Why didn't the game allow players to use hacking as a means to aid them in combat (hack consoles to engage and use turrets to help you in the fights, hack turrets to remote disable powers and abilities). Allow the player a way to use dialog to aid them. Convince the AI in the second battle to aid the player in various ways by presenting a logical argument for the AI to side with the player. Why not allow the player a chance to make a boss doubt him or her self. Just like all other aspects of the game, there's hundreds of ways that the developers could have allowed the player a great degree of freedom in how they wished to approach this challenge. Instead they failed and the boss battles failed, not only to be memorable, but actually ended up being less interesting and memorable than the non-boss game play.

A good boss battle should force your to use the game mechanics really well, and ideally force you to step outside your comfort zone and challenge you to use all the tools the game has made available to you. These Boss fights didn't do that, instead they simply threw a mob with a big gun and lots of health at you and called it a day.

Great game, but if you play the game stealthily then come up against a boss, you will find that your stealthy prowess doesn't go to well.

Great game, but if you play the game stealthily then come up against a boss, you will find that your stealthy prowess doesn't go to well.

Raxzor

The developers really should have taken some notes from the boss fights in MGS4 if they wanted to go the conventional boss route.

[QUOTE="lordlors"]

I see a lot of people whining about how the boss battles deviate from freedom of choice and forces you to use guns and be aggressive. Apparently they haven't watched the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToxyDZKuMM

Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. You may have played the game on stealth mode but if you can't adapt to the situation at hand you won't survive. You can whine all you want but things change in life whether you like it or not.

This game has taught me a life lesson that being adaptive is very important for survival.

Having the boss battles deviate is a good design in that it forces the player to "adapt" rather than have the freedom to do the same play$tyle. A boss battle would be so lame if you can just defeat him/her with you hiding then shoot then repeat the process. There woudln't be much challenge. doing stealth against a boss is not a good design because unlike levels where you're dealing with cameras, turrets, robots and many enemies, in a boss battle, you're only dealing with one person, the boss.

Mazoch

I disagree. I do think that the Boss battles were the biggest flaws of the game. I do think that the game under-delivered in those situations.

The Boss battles didn't so much deviate as they restricted options and alternative approaches. All other aspects of the game offers diverse approaches to solving your problems, the boss battles offers about as much choices as a boss battle in Doom, Quake or Halo. You shoot the thing until it stops attacking you. I felt that it was a major letdown by the developers to not leverage all of the other game systems.

Why didn't the game allow players to use hacking as a means to aid them in combat (hack consoles to engage and use turrets to help you in the fights, hack turrets to remote disable powers and abilities). Allow the player a way to use dialog to aid them. Convince the AI in the second battle to aid the player in various ways by presenting a logical argument for the AI to side with the player. Why not allow the player a chance to make a boss doubt him or her self. Just like all other aspects of the game, there's hundreds of ways that the developers could have allowed the player a great degree of freedom in how they wished to approach this challenge. Instead they failed and the boss battles failed, not only to be memorable, but actually ended up being less interesting and memorable than the non-boss game play.

A good boss battle should force your to use the game mechanics really well, and ideally force you to step outside your comfort zone and challenge you to use all the tools the game has made available to you. These Boss fights didn't do that, instead they simply threw a mob with a big gun and lots of health at you and called it a day.

[QUOTE="Mazoch"]

[QUOTE="lordlors"]

I see a lot of people whining about how the boss battles deviate from freedom of choice and forces you to use guns and be aggressive. Apparently they haven't watched the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToxyDZKuMM

Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. You may have played the game on stealth mode but if you can't adapt to the situation at hand you won't survive. You can whine all you want but things change in life whether you like it or not.

This game has taught me a life lesson that being adaptive is very important for survival.

Having the boss battles deviate is a good design in that it forces the player to "adapt" rather than have the freedom to do the same play$tyle. A boss battle would be so lame if you can just defeat him/her with you hiding then shoot then repeat the process. There woudln't be much challenge. doing stealth against a boss is not a good design because unlike levels where you're dealing with cameras, turrets, robots and many enemies, in a boss battle, you're only dealing with one person, the boss.

lordlors

I disagree. I do think that the Boss battles were the biggest flaws of the game. I do think that the game under-delivered in those situations.

The Boss battles didn't so much deviate as they restricted options and alternative approaches. All other aspects of the game offers diverse approaches to solving your problems, the boss battles offers about as much choices as a boss battle in Doom, Quake or Halo. You shoot the thing until it stops attacking you. I felt that it was a major letdown by the developers to not leverage all of the other game systems.

Why didn't the game allow players to use hacking as a means to aid them in combat (hack consoles to engage and use turrets to help you in the fights, hack turrets to remote disable powers and abilities). Allow the player a way to use dialog to aid them. Convince the AI in the second battle to aid the player in various ways by presenting a logical argument for the AI to side with the player. Why not allow the player a chance to make a boss doubt him or her self. Just like all other aspects of the game, there's hundreds of ways that the developers could have allowed the player a great degree of freedom in how they wished to approach this challenge. Instead they failed and the boss battles failed, not only to be memorable, but actually ended up being less interesting and memorable than the non-boss game play.

A good boss battle should force your to use the game mechanics really well, and ideally force you to step outside your comfort zone and challenge you to use all the tools the game has made available to you. These Boss fights didn't do that, instead they simply threw a mob with a big gun and lots of health at you and called it a day.

[QUOTE="Mazoch"]

[QUOTE="lordlors"]

I see a lot of people whining about how the boss battles deviate from freedom of choice and forces you to use guns and be aggressive. Apparently they haven't watched the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToxyDZKuMM

Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. You may have played the game on stealth mode but if you can't adapt to the situation at hand you won't survive. You can whine all you want but things change in life whether you like it or not.

This game has taught me a life lesson that being adaptive is very important for survival.

Having the boss battles deviate is a good design in that it forces the player to "adapt" rather than have the freedom to do the same play$tyle. A boss battle would be so lame if you can just defeat him/her with you hiding then shoot then repeat the process. There woudln't be much challenge. doing stealth against a boss is not a good design because unlike levels where you're dealing with cameras, turrets, robots and many enemies, in a boss battle, you're only dealing with one person, the boss.

lordlors

I disagree. I do think that the Boss battles were the biggest flaws of the game. I do think that the game under-delivered in those situations.

The Boss battles didn't so much deviate as they restricted options and alternative approaches. All other aspects of the game offers diverse approaches to solving your problems, the boss battles offers about as much choices as a boss battle in Doom, Quake or Halo. You shoot the thing until it stops attacking you. I felt that it was a major letdown by the developers to not leverage all of the other game systems.

Why didn't the game allow players to use hacking as a means to aid them in combat (hack consoles to engage and use turrets to help you in the fights, hack turrets to remote disable powers and abilities). Allow the player a way to use dialog to aid them. Convince the AI in the second battle to aid the player in various ways by presenting a logical argument for the AI to side with the player. Why not allow the player a chance to make a boss doubt him or her self. Just like all other aspects of the game, there's hundreds of ways that the developers could have allowed the player a great degree of freedom in how they wished to approach this challenge. Instead they failed and the boss battles failed, not only to be memorable, but actually ended up being less interesting and memorable than the non-boss game play.

A good boss battle should force your to use the game mechanics really well, and ideally force you to step outside your comfort zone and challenge you to use all the tools the game has made available to you. These Boss fights didn't do that, instead they simply threw a mob with a big gun and lots of health at you and called it a day.

There's no reason why hacking couldn't force a hacker to step outside his / hers comfort zone. Hacking under fire, a unique level of difficulty and so on. The point still stands. Boss fights are supposed to be the highlights of games. In Deus Ex they are the opposite, they are the least unique and impressive part of an otherwise exceptional game.

So some Darwin quote makes the actions in a video game acceptable and actually good? Darwin wasn't playing a stealth game at the time.

The biggest problem for me regarding the boss battles was that they didn't play by the same rules, even though supposedly, Adam's augmentations should be working better than normal. When I launched three rockets at the first boss and then had to charge him with my smg was when I decided I hated the boss battles.

I see a lot of people whining about how the boss battles deviate from freedom of choice and forces you to use guns and be aggressive. Apparently they haven't watched the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToxyDZKuMM

Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. You may have played the game on stealth mode but if you can't adapt to the situation at hand you won't survive. You can whine all you want but things change in life whether you like it or not.

This game has taught me a life lesson that being adaptive is very important for survival.

Having the boss battles deviate is a good design in that it forces the player to "adapt" rather than have the freedom to do the same play$tyle. A boss battle would be so lame if you can just defeat him/her with you hiding then shoot then repeat the process. There woudln't be much challenge. doing stealth against a boss is not a good design because unlike levels where you're dealing with cameras, turrets, robots and many enemies, in a boss battle, you're only dealing with one person, the boss.

lordlors

agreed, i really enjoyed having some fighting thrown in as i went full stealth/hacker and only ever had a 10mm pistol for boss fights on me and they were tons of fun all reviewers are knobs...

Oh I didn't use any guns at all ... just typhoon 2 times and whoever it is - dies ... upgraded typhoon though :P

Deus Ex did it better, Flatlander Woman.

I think the part with the two big robots patrolling the landing zone was a boss. But it certainly didn't feel like it. Qixote

that's not a bossfight.

Oh I didn't use any guns at all ... just typhoon 2 times and whoever it is - dies ... upgraded typhoon though :P

Code135

if do everything possible in the game, in one bossfight you won't be able to use typhoon (which makes it different from the others but just as easy anyway).

The final boss is quite challenging, though.

LordRork

you mean the very last sequence before you make the final decision in game? sorry but I don't see an active boss there~

I haven't played the game yet but it does sound like you're making excuses for the games shortcomings.