My Favourite Boss Battles Part 1: The End (MGS3)

My Favourite Boss Battles

A good boss battle can be one of the most memorable things about a game. Many gamers recall the first moment when they reached the end of a level, where the music became more ominous and giant monsters or robots would come crashing down on us. The best boss battles are the ones that challenge us to recall and use all of the abilities that a game has taught us. They make an appropriate ‘summing-up’ exercise of everything a player has learned to that point. Others can be memorable for story reasons, spectacle, or for sheer difficulty.

Here I list some of my favourite boss battles in gaming, and why I found them so memorable.

The End - Metal Gear Solid 3

The fight against The End is perhaps one of the finest boss battles of all time. It challenges you in ways that you have been subtly learning about in one way or another through the whole game, and asks you to put your jungle stealth skills to the test.

In this battle, you can leave or return at any time to the area, whether to pick up supplies or because you are finding things too difficult and need a change of pace. Instead of being a straight-up fight, The End challenges you on exactly what you have been doing for the whole game; jungle stealth. It pits you against a powerful sniper enemy who remains cleverly-hidden through most of the fight, and challenges you to out-stealth and out-smart him. This battle takes the tropes and mechanisms that the game has been teaching you and turns it into boss form. It is MGS3 condensed into a single fight.

What makes this boss battle so memorable for me is the sheer variety of options at your disposal. To track down The End, you can equip heat-vision goggles to sniff out his signature, keep an eye on the horizon and spot the reflection of the sun’s rays on his sniper scope, or even let him spot you and quickly dodge, so you can gauge the bullet’s rough direction and get a line of sight. Other ways to beat The End are to circumvent the fight entirely, by either sniping him earlier in the game while he is sleeping and vulnerable, or by waiting a week (or manipulating the system clock) to let him die of old age.

If you are skilled enough, you can even get the drop on The End and hold him at gunpoint for some cool camouflage, one that is required for an achievement on the Xbox 360, if you are that way inclined.

The End is one of the most effective boss battles I have ever faced, and I will always remember how this game had me testing my jungle stealth to its limits to get one over on this excellent boss.