Lost Planet: Extreme Condition:

Think 1980's.  The reason I suggest that, is that the 1980's saw the introduction of the “big boss battle” to arcade games.  This was done for one reason, and one reason only, to keep the kids pumping quarters into the machine for longer periods of time.  If the game had no “bosses” you could become very good at it and go for long periods of time without having to dump in another quarter.

Enter the boss, a huge opponent that fought like nothing else in the game, was much much harder to kill, and usually required a certain trick or technique to eliminate which would only be learned by dying over and over as the player attempted to figure out how to beat it, all the while dropping quarter after quarter into the game.

The essential problem is that the “big boss battle” has become ingrained in the minds of game designers (and some players as well) as something you're “supposed to have”.  And even though nobody is putting quarters in a slot to play, some designers are still coming up with bosses as if that is what players want.  To be fair, some players do enjoy that, but I am not one of them.  It's not because I can't beat the bosses–I can and do all the time–it's simply that I have no interest in doing so.  I want the game and the story to keep moving, and getting stuck on a giant creature that I have to fight for an hour as I figure out all the places to move and the magic spots where the creature has to be hit a zillion times for it to die is not my idea of fun.  To me, that's a chore, a pain in the ass I have to get through to get on to the next level where I can explore and have fun again.

Lost Planet might as well be called Boss Planet.  The entire game is essentially one lame boss battle after another, which is too bad.  The idea is interesting (humans fighting off alien insects on a frozen world where heat is a commodity), and the game has moments where it entertains (exploring caverns and fighting off hordes of insects), but in the end it focusses almost entirely on fighting the big boss, which bores the shit out of me.

On one level I started playing, and it took all of a minute to get to the boss.  I thought to myself, “already?”  The boss was a giant worm that lived under the ice and it took copious amounts of ammunition to destroy it.  Once it was slain I began to proceed across the ice field where I had fought it and another giant worm popped up.  Just like the last one, except that I had very little ammo left and no weapons where handy.  I died time and time again trying to defeat the second worm until I finally went online for a hint.  Here was the hint: you only have to fight the first worm, the others you just run past.

THIS was the trick the player was supposed to figure out?  You are SUPPOSED to fight these creatures until you get so bored and frustrated you just say “fuck it” and run away from them?  What sort of head-up-the-ass idea is that?  In total there are something like 5 giant worms, but unlike the first one, the others you can just “run away from”.  When you get to the other side of the field you explore for about 30 seconds and then find a new boss to fight.  A completely different (boring) battle where you fight this same enemy over and over until you figure it out, and then, the level is over.  Are you kidding me?  So you can sum up this level like so:

1 minute exploring, fighting hordes, a half hour fighting a giant worm and figuring out you have to run away from its brethren to move on, 30 more seconds exploring and fighting hordes, another 15 minutes figuring out how to defeat a chick in some battle armor.  Essentially the whole level is just two big boss battles.  This redefines boredom.  It would be as entertaining if you had to walk, real-time, for 45 minutes across a barren ice plain to get to the end of the level.

Your character depends on “Vital Suits” for much of the game.  This is basically like power-armor or a battle mech from mech assault.  A big walking robot you climb inside of and drive around.  As you wander you can find ammo and upgrades for your suit, as well as thermal energy.  But unfortunately, the game is pathetically episodic.  After defeating the big boss, instead of being allowed to wander about and gather up scattered weapons, upgrades, and ammo, the level is just over.  When the next level starts you may or may not have a vital suit, equipped with whatever the game chooses to give you.

I played this game through about 60% of the way and became too bored to finish it.  It didn't matter how hard the boss battles were.  I didn't want to fight them, it was just too boring.

I have to point out that Halo was one of the greatest games of all time and basically had no boss battles whatsoever.  There were portions of the game where the hordes themselves were so efficient or prolific that you needed to learn new tactics to defeat them, but not because the creatures acquired special powers.  As a result, what you had to learn was basically good battle tactics based on the lay of the land and what was available to you, not “where's the magic spot I have to shoot a million times to defeat this new giant creature I will never see again?”–i.e. what you learned had some applicable value later in the game.  Further, it was largely open ended.  A mission would not end until you chose to end it, and you could wander about forever and gather up goods.

CAPCOM has been making boss battle games for years, and these guys seriously need to find a new idea.

Dead Rising:

Also from CAPCOM, Dead Rising suffers from some of the same mistakes as Lost Planet, and some whole new ones.  Here's a new idea, you are trapped in a shopping mall infested with the living dead.  Wow, what a revolutionary idea… a veritable Dawn of the Dead setting with a Dawn of the Dead storyline where the zombies are just like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead.  The game actually includes a disclaimer that any similarity between it and Dawn of the Dead is purely coincidental… my ass.

That said, once you get in the mall you will find killing the zombies interesting for about 5 minutes.  After the 5 minutes, you might as well take the game out and put it away.  It will never get any better.  Every now and then you will come across a new way to kill the zombies, but since they are largely just lurching bags of skin and bones, it's not exactly challenging.  The variety of ways in which to mutilate the animate corpses loses its novelty quickly.  Further, the supply of zombies is limitless and they appear out of thin air.  Clear out a section of hall, wander away, and then come back, and the zombies you defeated are gone and the hall is full of zombies again.  In this way, the game suffers from the same problem that Destroy All Humans did… insanely repetitive gameplay.  Note to game designers everywhere, I can't believe I have to tell you this but, mindless repetition is not entertaining, it's effing boring.

Once the novelty wears off, the game simply devolves into a series of episodes, and in most cases these are “go find the live humans, and escort them to safety”.  The live humans are pathetically hopeless, and will basically stand around and let themselves be eaten, and often won't follow you when they should.  And this is entertaining, how?  Add to this an enforced time limit on missions and on the game (yes I'm not kidding) and it makes for yet another “chore posing as entertainment”.  I mean jesus, how do you make fighting for your life against an army of the undead boring?  Hire CAPCOM, apparently.

As if this weren't bad enough, you carry what amounts to a cellphone and you constantly receive phone calls on it from the mall's janitor, who tells you what missions are available.  If you don't answer he will call incessantly.  If you do answer you get a few seconds of reprieve before he starts calling again.  Nothing like fighting a horde of zombies while your phone is ringing.

CAPCOM being CAPCOM, this game also has its share of boss battles, but the bosses… are humans?  They aren't zombies, they're just bad guys, and they are ridiculous.  I fought one guy who was not wearing any sort of body armor and was not one of the undead.  The fight took like 20 minutes and I put dozens of bullets into his abdomen with a pistol.  And then he escaped by running away and climbing a rope.  WTF?

Beyond the issues of boring or poorly thought out gameplay, this game has severe technical flaws which detract from the enjoyment even more.  Saving is thankfully, not checkpoint-based, but is area-based, which is even worse.  You have to be in a specific location to save–a bathroom.  And the bathrooms are not easy to find in the mall (just like in real life).  As a result you have to wander, sometimes for several minutes or more, fighting zombies all the way, when you need to save and quit.  That's just fucking stupid.  Instead of making the save points be clearly marked locations right in the main hallways, they are tucked away and hard to find.  Stupid beyond stupid.

And here is the stupidest thing of all.  You can't play this game without a high definition television.  Note that it doesn't say this ANYWHERE on the game packaging or materials.  In order to know what you are doing you have to be able to read text which appears in such a small font it is essentially a blurry smudge on anything but a high definition TV.  You therefore cannot follow instructions, complete missions, or receive other important game information.  It is insanely stupid beyond belief in that there is a ton of room onscreen, and this problem could be easily solved simply by making the text bigger.  The first time I played the game I was using my upstairs TV which is not high-def and it was hopeless–I could not read the mission instructions.  Later, after getting my HDTV repaired, I tried the game again and was able to read the instructions finally, but this did not make the game any more fun to play.

So there you have it, the germ of a good idea ruined by game designers who frankly, should get out of the entertainment industry.