Gaming woes and joys

[bookzombie]

If I, as someone who game to computer gaming as an old man in his thirties rather than the having the programmed reactions of someone who started in their youth, have one hate about computer games in general it is this:

The boss fight.

Now, I understand the desire to punctuate the games with milestones to measure progress, but why does pretty much every adventure/RPG/shooter/platformer insist on having these stupidly difficult boss fights. It often turns what was an enjoyable experience into a nightmare.

Take Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. I have been thoroughly enjoying the PoP game series and, barring a couple of points where I kept making silly mistakes and one early 'boss' fight that had a slightly confusing 'solution' this one has been great fun. But now I am on the (I think) final 'boss fight'. And it has the same structure as all of them. A red bar with health of the bad guy and a first stage fight which usually knocks it down by a quarter, then a second stage which (I guess if I ever get through it) will knock it down by another quarter, and so on. But if your character gets killed you have to go right back to the beginning of the fight again. And it just is not fun (and, by the way, this is on the 'easy' difficulty setting). So now a game that I really enjoyed is being spoiled. I don't want to abandon it but my patience is getting a bit low! Whine, whine, moan, moan!

The serious point is that in the years that computer games have been around, there are few examples where they have tried a different way of progressing through the game. Are designers really that unimaginative?

On a more positive note, pennski bought me Guitar Hero for Christmas, which is great fun. Okay, it is basically a 'pattern matching' game but getting a 97 note run on Killer Queen gives a nice warm glow. A pleasant way to pass the odd hour.

Looking forward, Final Fantasy XII comes out over here at the end of February. I've read the first magazine review (which is very positive) and watched the trailer. It looks like it will match one of my great gaming experiences, Final Fantasy X: entertaining, involving, long, and so very, very, pretty!