PC games with your favorite bosses.

What are yours? Your favorite bosses can be for any reason that you regard them highly among others, whether it be how cool-looking they are, how fun they are to fight, how challenging they are, or anything else you can think of. Please specify why you picked the game(s) that you did (that is, please don't just say "this game," and nothing else).

My favorite bosses are those from Doom 3 and Quake 4 (they're tied). The games aren't among my favorites (I like them a lot, but there are better out there), but their bosses are totally kick-ass. If there's one thing the Doom 3 engine has proven to be good at, it's making awesome bosses. The detail to their design, the awesome feel and look they have, I've just seen nothing like it before.

Second place is for Serious Sam (First Encounter and Second Encounter, but not SS2), with The First Encounter having the largest non-building boss I've ever seen in the history of gaming; Ugh-Zan (I say non-building because SS2's Mental Fortress was larger). For one, while Ugh-Zan is bigger than any of them, all the bosses range from very large to huge, and like every opponent in Serious Sam, they're just plain fun as hell to fight.

Third place has got to be the combination of Half-Life and Opposing Forces, with the Gonarch and Nihilanth of HL, the Pit Worm of OF, and OF's final boss. None of them were totally straight-forward fights (the Gonarch was moreso than the others, but not entirely); you couldn't just blast at them until they died, you had to use a certain strategy, which was a nice touch.

Fourth place goes to Jedi Knight and its expansion, Mysteries of the Sith. The original JK may not have done the lightsaber combat nearly as well as its sequel, but it did have more numerous, diverse, and interesting boss fights. Saber combat wasn't bad for the times, really, and I always had a blast with those boss fights. I loved how they got progressively tougher in JK, always stepping it up a notch. JK2 and JA had nice bosses, too, but they just didn't stand out to me particularly the way the original's did.

Fifth place is Descent 2 (if anyone remembers the game). Combine the original game with the Vertigo Missions (an ex-pack, I think it was), and you have a great variety of challenging bosses (numbering over ten, I think) that were cool-looking and a blast to fight in their time.

There are of course a bunch of honorable mentions, as well.
-Diablo 2's greater bosses were pretty cool-looking as 2D games go, and could be difficult as hell to fight, even on the easiest difficulty.
-JK2 and JA, as mentioned, had some pretty nice bosses of their own that were challenging and fun to fight.
-Descent 3 and its expansion Mercenary had much fewer bosses than 2 did, and the battles against them didn't feel quite as much fun, but they were still impressively designed for the time.
-Descent I also shined for its bosses. Unfortunately, it only had two of them, but they were much more difficult than the bosses from the other two games, and you had to play very carefully if you didn't want to be blown to pieces. I remember that tense feeling I used to have fighting them as a little kid, knowing that I had to perform every tactic flawlessly or I was a goner.
-Tyrian 2000 had various impressive and unique bosses among scrolling 2D space shooters that were challenging but not so much that you were banging your head against your computer desk after a dozen failed attempts.
-Lucas Arts' game Outlaws (which I still consider the best Western FPS of all time, though that might be because no one really wants to make games with this premise) had numerous bosses that were mostly typical for a 2.5D game. However, the story was one that really had you rooting for your character, and a cool cutscene would play every time you beat another boss where your character would talk to the boss you just defeated, and that made each boss feel like it had character and uniqueness.
-Good old Wolfenstein 3D. Its bosses were just so much cooler than those of any other game at the time.
-Good old Blake Stone. A lot of people don't like the game for some reason, but it followed W3D's example with graphically well-designed and fun to fight bosses.
-Mega Man X. I'm sure the other Mega Man games had good bosses as well, but as of yet this is the only one I've played. Mega Man games have always basically been about the final confrontations. There were boss battles at the end of every level, and they truly were the highlight of the game. They were challenging and numerous, and you had to use certain strategies to beat all of them.

So, those are my favorites :P. What are yours, and why?

Shodan - System Shock 2.

Not for the fight - the fight itself is pretty underwhelming, but the character is just so amazing. Shodan is easily my favourite character in anythingever. Actually facing her, it felt good.

doom 3 does have a great boss, cuz the cyberdemon was one of my fav enemies in doom 2, but that we couldn't attack it with conventional weapons is lame. and i loved quake 4, but i didn't find the boss all that compelling (just a strong monster with strong weapons - not much character).fireandcloud

I liked that you had to use special tactics to fight the Cyberdemon, myself. And I was actually referring to all four of the bosses in Doom 3, with the Guardian being my favorite of all for its cooler appearance.

The same goes for Quake 4, there were multiple bosses in that game. All of them were cool to me because they just looked so darn awesome, with intricate art design that you just don't see in the bosses of most other games. See, for me, the impression a boss leaves on me is more dependent on how cool it looks, sounds, feels,and the boss fight itself. The character part is much less intrinsic to me. But I understand that other people feel differently, I suppose I feel that way partially because I grew up on older games that had bosses with little to no personality or character (Wolfenstein, Descent, others).

[QUOTE="fireandcloud"]doom 3 does have a great boss, cuz the cyberdemon was one of my fav enemies in doom 2, but that we couldn't attack it with conventional weapons is lame. and i loved quake 4, but i didn't find the boss all that compelling (just a strong monster with strong weapons - not much character).JP_Russell

I liked that you had to use special tactics to fight the Cyberdemon, myself. And I was actually referring to all four of the bosses in Doom 3, with the Guardian being my favorite of all for its cooler appearance.

The same goes for Quake 4, there were multiple bosses in that game. All of them were cool to me because they just looked so darn awesome, with intricate art design that you just don't see in the bosses of most other games. See, for me, the impression a boss leaves on me is more dependent on how cool it looks, sounds, feels,and the boss fight itself. The character part is much less intrinsic to me. But I understand that other people feel differently, I suppose I feel that way partially because I grew up on older games that had bosses with little to no personality or character (Wolfenstein, Decent, others).

i agree. the bosses in both those games were imposing! i felt in awe of them! and it felt right that it took so much just to take them down. id does do a great job with the bosses. they always have...

Yea Big Daddies were fun. Fontaine was pretty freaking fun to kill to.

conceptwise my favourite boss has to be shodan. she has to be perfect villain. although there was no actual boss fight in the end, but she kept you terrorized throughout the game.

Shodan's Reveal *Spoiler Warning*

Crysis! The tank bot was awesome, but then that big ship that comes outta the water? awesome! Very complex, lengthy boss fight as well.

Then there are the quake and doom boss fights which are just plain badazz

TItan Quest
Neverwinter Nights 2
The Witcher
Gears of War... so far

Can I add in The KPA Helicopters form Crysis? I'm still less than 1/2 through the game, but taking one of these puppies down with the rocket launcher is S A T I S F Y I N G, to say the least.

I blew one up right near the First AA gun on Assault, the remaining bits of the heli came down and crushed a few korean soldiers. :)

Killing Frank in Fallout 2. I thought I'd never win against that lean, mean, green fighting machine.