Have I ever complained about boss fights before? Spoiler alert: Yes I have, multiple times, in these very pages.
Is that going to keep me from doing it again? Not a chance, pal.
Because listen, it bears repeating: Boss fights are bullshit—tedious holdovers from the arcade era designed to separate stupid kids (like me) from their hard-earned quarters with maximum efficiency.
Yet they’ve stuck with us over the years, like a particularly stubborn clot of old gum and dogshit on the bottom of a shoe, and worse they’ve somehow mutated into a sort of digital dick-measuring contest for a great many gamers, flaunted like some masochistic badge of honor: I spent seven hours battling Lord Thunderdingus with a banana before I was able to get on with the game!
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But they are not! They are bullshit! A pointless blocker of progress, the button-mashing equivalent of a maze in an adventure game—a tiresome chore serving no purpose but to pad out the clock. Were you enjoying your game? Too bad, sucker! Because now you get to deal with this idiotic wall of frustration for a half-hour or so—maybe longer, maybe a lot longer!—before you’re allowed back to your actual game!
And I ask why. Why? Why am I doing this? It’s not fun, it’s not coherent, it’s only there because boss fights have always been there so boss fights must always be there, and so here I am stuck with this dumb, no-fun bullshit until I either get lucky, find a cheat or a cheese, or just quit and play something else—and you better believe that third option will be taken if the first two don’t work out right quick. Life’s too short and I got better things to do, which when it comes to boss fights is pretty much anything that’s not a boss fight.
You might fairly point out that I absolutely loved Elden Ring, a game that is essentially a big box o’ boss fights, which makes my professed hatred of the things seem a little, well, insincere. But the reality is that I loved ER because I played a character built specifically to delete those assholes with near-zero effort. As the man said, I’m not here to fight, I’m here to kill, and you better believe I did—I vaporized every one of those sons of bitches and I loved every second of it. Payback time! Who’s the boss now, dickheads?
But it’s the exception that proves the rule, isn’t it? And that rule is simple, clear, and indisputable: Boss fights are bullshit. Man, I hate ’em.
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