Enemy Encounters Halloween Special 2011

Continuing the tradition begun last year, let’s focus on some of the best (and worst) examples of the supernatural foes I’ve dealt with in games.  Spoilers are aplenty, so beware!

Atrocious Enemy Encounters – Guardians (Dead Space) and Final Boss (Metroid Zero Mission)

There be some spoilerin’ in this here post, so beware me hardies.  Aye, it be Talk like a Pirate Day, and here’s where be my attempts at doin’ it.

Awesome Enemy Encounters – Cougars (Red Dead Redemption) and Mother Brain (Super Metroid)

There be some spoilerin’ in this here post, so beware me hardies.

Atrocious Enemy Encounters – Inferno and Imps

Lame Boss that Sucks – Inferno (Soul Calibur, Arcade/Dreamcast, Namco)

Ah, welcome to non-creative boss design 101, where you rip off the cliched “fire-covered dude” stereotype that had already seen its fair share of fighting reps (Cinder from Killer Instinct, for example…although he at least is somewhat cool).  Inferno is so boring to stare at compared to any other character in Soul Calibur it’s sort of amazing Namco kept it in (and made him a boss AGAIN in Soul Calibur II!).  Edge Master would have been a cooler boss.  But beyond his “hey, I’m on fire” blandness, he strikes out regarding his moveset, too.  He apes the other character’s techniques and weapons, with a couple of choice Inferno-specific moves that you’ll rarely see.  If that doesn’t smack of mediocre game design, I don’t know what does.  He’s a placeholder who got to fight, in my opinion.  In short, he’s dull, uninspiring and unimaginative, and is the only major sore on an otherwise excellent fighter.

PS – Grace says that from a distance Inferno looks like a chicken here, and that’s more creative than anything Namco put into his design. :p

Vile Enemy from Hell – Imps (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, PC/PS3/Xbox 360, Bethesda)

So, those nasty cliff racers are gone, but Bethesda decided to put in these cackling, annoying and pesky imps in their place.  They’re not quite as aggravating as their Morrowind counterparts, but they do give headaches, especially in packs.  They sling magic spells from afar, and oftentimes retreat away if you engage them, making them doubly difficult to slay.  They do NOT shut up, making some god-awful racket in the midst of trying to strike them.  And unlike cliff racers, their HP does go up a little when you’re leveling up due to Oblivion’s level upgrades to everything, so they don’t really become any easier to deal with.  They will eventually disappear thanks to that leveling, but they are most definitely a blight in the early goings.

Awesome Enemy Encounters – Edgar Ross and Phanto

Warning – Spoilers aplenty await for Red Dead Redemption – it’s a brilliant narrative, so I advise holding off reading this until you’ve played the game.

Atrocious Enemy Encounters – Monster Steve and Flea Men

CHEAP BOSS THAT SUCKS – Monster Steve ( Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Dreamcast, Capcom)

Steve Burnside was the kind of character you kind of secretly hoped would deceive Claire so that you could kill him.  He was whiny, looked far too prissy to be pulling off the kick-ass feats he was accomplishing, created a weird love relationship with Claire that was creepy, and made any scene involving him unpleasant.  The ultimate annoying sidekick character.

Well, Capcom did tease you a chance to undo the damage they had wrought upon Claire’s half of the game, in that Steve gets himself captured by Alexia Ashford and becomes the unwilling test subject for the T-Veronica virus.  After another agonizing cutscene where Steve whines, he eventually mutates into the monstrous form you see above. Do you get any sort of opportunity to subdue him?  Nope.  You do get the ever-so-fun option of dying (by letting Steve cleave you in twine with his ax) or attempting to run away from Steve, who barrages you all the while.  You get to run towards the camera, and the encounter is just crappy.  There’s no satisfaction in the sequence whatsoever.  And Claire can’t really outrun Steve, so you’ll probably die a couple of times (or at least get hit and have to heal due to Claire’s limping animation slowing her down further) trying to make it past this part.  Pray you can dodge his attacks with the RE tank controls – it’s all you can do.

So, if you manage to make it to the end, another movie will roll.  One of Alexia’s tentacles attacks Claire, but Steve’s “OMG I LUV YOUS CLAIRES” narrative device kicks back in and he gets the clarity of mind to slash at the tentacle, which in turn just rips him a new one.  Magically the virus dissipates and Steve is reverted back to the pretty-boy we were all dying to revisit, and in an ironic twist, admits to Claire the obvious “I Love You, Claire” statement…and then dies.  Yep.  And Claire sucks that drivel up like a sponge and carries it with her through the rest of the game.  Luckily, she has seemingly washed away the taint of Steve Burnside following this game, but it doesn’t quite erase it out of my memory.  Bad, bad boss fight.

VILE ENEMY FROM HELL – Flea Men (Castlevania, NES, Konami)

Yes, I can hear you now – but Wildcat, you put Medusa Heads as an Awesome enemy, and aren’t they as pesky as Flea Men?

No way in hell.  Medusa Heads move in predictable patterns.  They go down in one hit.  And despite their tendency to appear in perilous areas surrounded in spikes and pits, they’re manageable.

Flea Men, however, are hoppy, irrational, random bastards who are a pain in the ass to try to engage.  Your whip often misses these guys, and even if you get lucky enough to connect, they take more than one strike to finish off.  Their bouncing is truly the nightmare inducing movements that haunt NES gamers in their worst dreams, and they went and made him a co-boss with Frankenstein.  Like the standard variant wasn’t bad enough – let’s give him a life bar!  Jesus.  The later games continue to feature Mr. Hoppity, but his low HP makes him much more bearable (and thanks to the higher variety in weaponry, much easier to hit).  But I’ll always loathe his debut.

Awesome Enemy Encounters – Hitl…I mean, Master-D and Big Boss Bass

BOSS BATTLE GREATS – Master-D (NES, Bionic Commando, Capcom)

Localization can be fun sometimes.  Especially when you’re supposed to censor objectionable content…but you don’t and somehow magically get away with it.  Case in point – Hitler popping up in Bionic Commando (as Master-D, mind, but it’s OBVIOUSLY Hitler).  Now, as a boss itself, Hitler is pretty tame.  He has his melodramatic (and profane) moment of reviving, kills Gen. Killt, and then attempts to ride off in the Albatross, only to meet a gruesome (quite) end by having a rocket explode his face.  This happens within like ten minutes.  However, to NES players this stunning revelation and gory demise was quite poignant.  Radd Spenser had swung, shot and hacked his way through tons of BADD headquarters to stop the resurrection of Hitler?  That’s badd (sorry) ass to the max.  And you stop him by RPG’ing his head into a bloody display of pixelation unrivaled on the console?  He may be a brief pitstop on the overall scheme of the game, but damn, if it wasn’t memorable or satisfying witnessing such brazen ignoring of the strict rules Nintendo laid in place in those days.

ENEMY LEGEND – Big Boss Bass (NES, Super Mario Bros. 3, Nintendo)

If you’ve gotten to Water Land in Mario 3, you ought to recognize and fear this large Cheep-Cheep of insta-death.  That’s right – Big Boss Bass will eat Mario or Luigi, no matter how powered up they are (save Starman’s mighty influence, of course), and it’s an instant life loss.  And the nasty fish shows up on stages where you don’t want to see its ugly mug – stages with rising water and perilous platforming.  Realizing that there’s such a ravenous enemy in this game made me more tense and terrified, and that’s more than enough to call Big Boss Bass a true icon in foe creation.

Awesome Enemy Encounters – Sniper Wolf and Freezies

BOSS BATTLE GREATS – Sniper Wolf (Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes)

Sniper Wolf was quick to leave her mark in player’s minds – capping Meryl’s kneecaps and arms in a hideous display of gore, leaving her crippled and bleeding profusely.  After finding a weapon capable of combating the threat, Solid Snake is caught offguard and has no choice but to surrender himself, which led to one of the more intriguing conversations in the game with Wolf commenting that she would not think of anything else but him until she killed him…powerful words.  After escaping his imprisonment, he obtains Wolf’s handkerchief from Otacon (who loves her), which, if used, allows Snake to get past Wolf’s pack of (actual) wolves without having to subdue them.  The boss fight between Wolf and Snake takes place in a massive field laced with snow, rocks and trees, with the two trying to out-snipe each other.  Very tense stuff, and her final death throes were among the most poignant of the Foxhound mercs Snake had to engage.  Beyond Psycho Mantis and his bizarre mind games, I think Sniper Wolf was the greatest encounter in the game.  She had a fascinating design and made a definite mark on me as I played through Metal Gear Solid.  An all-time great, no question.

ENEMY LEGEND – Freezie/Slipice (Mario Bros.)

An odd choice (I’m becoming known for those), but as I was pondering what ice enemy I was most impressed by over my long gaming career, the Freezie kept crawling into my thoughts.  It’s a simple, yet game-changing foe, who serves as more a stage obstacle than an actual threat, but in a game where precise timing is a necessity, Freezie adds much to the overall experience.  He does what his name suggests – freezes the platform it’s on.  This makes Mario and Luigi’s traction take a nosedive, and timing your leaps to flip over other enemies is now that much harder to accomplish.  However, it’s not damning – the game is still winnable, and Freezie can also be hit from underneath to shatter it before it becomes a thorn in your side.  The novelty of having a piece of the stage suddenly turn to ice made a mark on my youth, I guess, as I seem to have fond memories of encountering this early enemy.  Go figure.

Atrocious Enemy Encounters – Chill Bully (Super Mario 64) and Spider (Ducktales)

Cheap Boss that Sucks – Chill Bully (Super Mario 64, N64)

Bullies were first introduced in Super Mario 64, and their debut in Lethal Lava Land wasn’t too bad.  The pushing match reminded me some of sumo wrestling.  However, Nintendo pulled a double-dip and resorted to reusing a Boss Bully in an ice level, and there’s some problems with his second appearance.  One, slipping on ice makes the once-jolly shoving much more against the player, as they will slide far more than the Bully does.  It makes it harder to combo him closer to the edge.  Second, because of the frozen water underneath the ring, he’ll bounce high into the air, often getting trapped banging his head on the arena above, prolonging the rematch (with plenty of loud shouts, too).  Compared to the rest of the level, this encounter is stale and frustrating, making it one of the least enjoyable parts of the game for me.

Vile Enemy from Hell – Spider (Ducktales, NES)

These sporadic arachnids have infuriated me for years – they were one of the first enemies that I truly did not like seeing.  They seem to have a pattern, but it’s very jittery and difficult to time.  They also tend to make their homes over pits, making the platforming much more of a chore than it needed to be.  While they do appear in the Amazon as well as the Himalayas, the slippery, snow-covered mountains make these enemies far more irritating.  Scrooge’s pogo cane is much more of a problem here thanks to sinking in the snow, and the reduced traction makes it far easier to inadvertently bump into these assholes.  Not a whole lot of fun.

Skedar King (Perfect Dark) and Blue Drop (Secret of Mana) – Atrocious Enemy Encounters

Cheap Boss that Sucks – Skedar King (Perfect Dark, N64)

It took some brain rattling, but spotting a clip of how to take down the final alien foe in Rare’s otherwise entertaining Perfect Dark reminded me how much I felt betrayed and disappointed in the game’s climax.  Unlike all of the other battles in the game, you’ll not only be unloading your clips into the giant Skedar leader to defeat him – you’ll need to weaken him some, and after he kneels down, you’ll have to refocus your shots onto the shielded points above him (dead center of the screen) in order to impale him with one of the spikes, which equals victory for you.  However, the game poorly directed you towards that particular objective, forcing an agonizing amount of game time pondering why I couldn’t kill the damn alien, and then I ran out of ammo, which is a problem.  After the always-wonderful replaying of the stage to get back to the showdown, I was clued off by the strategy guide that I had to do some obtuse target shooting in order to win, which I felt was a rather unsatisfying way of dealing with this bastard who had led so much carnage and malice upon Joanna and her allies in the game’s plot.  I can hear some people saying, that screen seems to indicate that the statue is shielded, which shows that it can be shot.  Well, maybe so, but since the shield is yellow, and the walls are about the same shade of yellow, and I have been shooting Skedar left and right with bullets, not with stone obelisks, plus the game’s never asked you to use the environment as a weapon before this point, and the best hint Elvis gives you is what you see on the screen…feh.  I’ve never replayed this stage since.

Vile Enemy from Hell –Blue Drop (Secret of Mana, SNES)

These foes are the definition of atrocious enemy designs.  They are hard to hit, dodging many of your attacks with relative ease.  They have high HP, so they take forever to take down.  But the ultimate kicker of why these slime variants are so awful is that they can duplicate themselves.  Many times.  That is massive suckage.  Seeing a blue drop pop up in this game is a moral-shattering event, and you’ll either bypass these by running from them or spend minutes praying you’ll kill them before they split into two (which is all too rare, alas).  The only benefit these assholes have is decent experience (that does not translate into good times for the player-kind of experience).  Hate these things with a passion.