Written By: Alex Shaw

Whilst at the MCM Expo in London under the Gamehounds banner, I spoke to Leo Tan; UK PR Manager for Capcom about Monster Hunter on the PSP. With me were my Digital Cowboys co-host Tony Atkins and from Superhappyfuntimeshow - Chris O Regan.

GH: Leo. We're very much Monster Hunter outsiders. We"ve heard about it on various podcasts and we’ve read about it, but we’re trying to get to the heart of what the game’s about. What do you think is the appeal is for the core fanbase?

CAPCOM: That’s a tough one. It’s such a huge game. There’s so much to do in it. It’s got an MMO style meta-game that spans for hundreds and hundreds of hours, only there’s no subscription. To get the most out of it you need to meet up with other people and play. If you have just one other person to play with it becomes this incredible, life-changing experience. If I had to summerise it, I’d say "Hit big monsters with big weapons.”

SHFTS: I’ll confess, I’ve been playing this since it first came out on the PS2 and I really like it on the PSP. The problem is getting people together.

CAPCOM: Funny you should say that. (He hands us a flyer) We’re opening a dedicated space in central London from the first of July to the first of September. It’s three stories, two minutes walk from Tottenham Court tube station, where you will be able to just come in, meet other Monster Hunter players and just play.

Check it out here

SHFTS: Agreed that multiplayer is very important but it’s also a solid single player game. Bit of a dungeon crawling loot-gatherer.

CAPCOM: I would kind of describe it like Phantasy Star Online. It’s a few maps and they change subtly along with the monsters and it’s a case of finding monsters and killing them, then getting better weapons to kill bigger ones. Good for Diablo players who like loot tables. But unlike PSO the combat isn’t just pressing X, X, X. I like Phantasy Star and the loot table stuff is brilliant but Monster Hunter is so technical, and this is maybe one of it’s problems, that there’s a lot of learning to do at the beginning. But it doesn’t get repetitive because there’s always new weapons and new skills to learn, armour to build and an insane amount of customisation. So even if you and I both played Long sword class we might develop our characters quite differently, specialising in healing or evading. The dynamic is always changing. It’s complex but worth the effort.

SHFTS: Is it online or local play?

CAPCOM: It’s local play. There are ways you can play online but we don’t support them.

GH: Moving swiftly on. It’s massive in Japan though, isn’t it?

CAPCOM: Three million units shipped over there last year. More than Wii Fit. It’s the biggest game out there and it’s on an older platform (PS2).

GH: If this was TGS, we’d have a massive line to get through to reach this game, what problems have you guys come up against trying to bring this to Europe and America?

CAPCOM: I think there’s a chicken and egg situation where you want to get players in, but for that you need players. Also there’s a general environmental difference; the weather’s not as good here (England. Tell me about it.) it’s not as safe on the streets, not as easy to meet up. It’s tough to get over the fact that it’s on PSP here. Not enough people use their handhelds in the UK. There are almost as many PSP’s out there as Xbox 360’s (3.2 million to 3.4) Too many units are just sitting at home in a drawer. People have this attitude like because it’s a portable console you must be travelling when you play it. I’ve spoken to people who say “Yeah I’ve got it and I like it, but I don’t travel very much.” And I think, nor do I, but I still play my PSP at home and at work. If you’ve got an amazing set up at home, brilliant, but a good game is a good game.

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Many thanks to Leo for the interview. We should have a discussion about fighting sticks sometime, because he loves him some Street Fighter. And NOW I want a PSP! If only Sony would release an updated model... hmm.

Pre-E3 Round Table

At the MCM Expo in London this week we were lucky enough to get into a lengthy discussion about E3 and what we're expecting from it with Chris O Regan (AKA Kropotkin) of Superhappyfuntimeshow, David Turner (AKA Elmo) and Michael Fox of Joypod. We go over lots of the core interest points including what the big three can do to impress us, and what we'd most like to see.

Back in the main show, we take a look at two music games of wildly varying quality. Guitar Hero: Metallica and Rock Revolution. We also have Random Game of the week and your letters, including an explosive retort from Sean O Brien about our treatment of the PS3 and conclusive proof that games CAN be art.

To round off this bumper show we interview (along with Krop) Mike Oldman; community manager for Eidos who was at the MCM, showing off a demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which was, as we said, the best thing at the MCM.

Joypod is a games-focused radio show that you can (and should ) tune into every week on Play Talk Radio http://playradiouk.com/ They record live with different topics every week and take calls from their extended community and listeners. You can catch their shows in podcast form on iTunes as well. Check out their site here http://thisisjoypod.com/

Chris is a good friend of the show already and is lucky enough to be winging his way to E3 as you hear this (If you're listening over the weekend). His show, which he records with Hendrix and Bloodshot Robot is broadcast on All Games Radio http://www.allgames.com/radio/shfts/ can be found here: http://www.shfts.com/ for your weekly dose of often hilarious, oddball comedy from three guys who know rather a lot about video games.

Thanks for the show guys, it was great meeting you at last. It's also worth noting that we recorded the MCM round table part of the show before we interviewed Mike from Eidos and Leo from Capcom. We would have been a bit more enthusiastic if you'd caught us afterwards.

The following interview was conducted at London’s MCM Expo Saturday May 23, 2009. It relates to this article, covering the hands-on demo. http://www.platformnation.com/2009/05/23/batman-arkham-asylum-demo-hands-on/

On hand were myself and Tony Atkins reporting for Gamehounds and Chris O Regan of All Games Radio’s Superhappyfuntimeshow. We spoke to Mike Oldman, Community Manager for Eidos Game Studios, about the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo.

GH: This is basically the most interesting thing we’ve seen all day. Why has Batman: Arkham Asylum been held back for release?

Eidos: We didn’t have a solid announcement regarding release date. It’s just a case of making sure it’s the best game possible. There’s nothing wrong with the game, and it’s nothing to do with Square [Enix, who recently acquired Eidos]. We’re looking at a late summer release, but the movement on this has been minimal.

SHFTS: It’s a good time to release, I think Bioshock was out around that time two years ago.

Eidos: Yeah you get that summer lull where games don’t generally come out. I think we’re in the middle of one right now.

SHFTS: Can you tell us what we’ve been playing here? It seems like a good, but quite short demo.

Eidos: This doesn’t show everything in the game by any means. It’s literally just a combat arena. It’s one of the separate modes that run alongside the story. It’s like a survival mode. You’ve got wave after wave of enemies you have to beat and get a high score and there will be leader-boards as well. They won’t just cover combat, there’s a range of modes like invisible predator and it’s basically a series of set challenges. All the skills you learn in the single-player game are transferable into this. The combat changes quite a lot once you’ve gone through the game.

GH: So it’s a progressive combat system and you’ll be learning new skills.

Eidos: That’s correct. I think there’s about twenty takedowns for Batman in the game so what you’re seeing here is just a bit of it. We also just announced the playing as the Joker content for PS3 only. There will be challenge rooms just for the Joker.

GH: I’m assuming we can’t ask if there will be any 360 exclusive content, maybe Killer Croc?

Eidos: (Smiles) No announcement at this point is the official word.

GH: There’s a twinkle in your eye.

Eidos: Wait and see.

SHFTS: One of the things I’ve found when I was playing the demo is that there seems to be a lot of automation in the moves. Like you only have to press a few buttons and he launches into a combo. How does that work? Is it like Assassin’s Creed?

Eidos: It really depends on who you watch playing. The skill of the player really does change the combat quite a bit. I’ve watched people playing today and you get some people only punching repeatedly and it always looks the same. But really it’s designed to be a sort of Tony Hawk style combo system. Once you’re getting seventeen-hit combos on the go it really changes the gameplay completely.

GH: So it’s not so much about the danger of actually dying as it is juggling combos.

Eidos: You have to think forwards as to which guy Batman goes for next so that he can go through a combo. You’re seeing basic thugs here, but later on you get guys with weapons which you have to deal with differently. You can’t punch a knife guy in the face, you have to stun him first. Guns become a big issue too.

GH: So you have to be tactical about who you take out first.

Eidos: Absolutely. One of the things we’ve been saying since day one is that Batman is not a superhero, he’s a guy in a suit with some nice gadgets. He’s a badass, yeah, but if you’re going to fire a bullet at him it’s going to do some damage. So the second someone gets a gun you need to take them down immediately.

GH: I was watching earlier and you actually go into a skeleton mode while fighting…

Eidos: Yes. That’s the invisible predator mode. It’s in every element of the game but it’s not specifically for combat. It’s used for the investigative and detective elements. The majority of the game as it plays out, you do not want to get spotted by enemies and you want to scare them. There’s a dynamic fear system throughout the game where if something happens to one of them in a shady area, they won’t go back to it. Predator mode allows you to see through walls, asses the enemies’ reactions, heart rates, see how they’re doing. You can mess with them.

GH: How easy is it to hide from enemies? I’m thinking of Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid here.

Eidos. Basically if they can see you they’ll come after you. They won’t forget you either. Environment plays a large part in things and it’s not too hard to get away with your grappling hook. His gadgets play a pretty big hand in that. Especially the batarang, which doesn’t get a look in on the demo.

GH: Purely as a gamer, promotion aside, what’s your favourite part of this game?

Eidos: My favourite part of the game, I can’t talk about.

GH and SHFTS: (Cries of disappointment)

Eidos: That’s sickening to say, I know but it is to be kept quiet. Aside from that is combat. The combat is quite excellent. You can interrupt anything at any point. The animation’s not locked, you can throw or counter at any point. Once you get a feel for that it really changes the way you play. And it’s brutal.

SHFTS: It’s dark, but it’s Batman.

Eidos: Yeah, but it surprised even me. You see a few sequences and hear the odd bit of dialogue and you think, he’s messed up. And Arkham’s not a nice place to be.

GH: We’re looking forward to it. A good superhero game, you don’t get that very often do you?

SHFTS: Superman 64?

GH: Mike, it’s been fantastic, thank you very much.

Eidos: It’s been a pleasure.

Written By: Alex Shaw

I was lucky enough to get to play a demo for this much anticipated game this weekend at the London MCM Expo. I was there under the Gamehounds banner and got a great little interview with Eidos community manager; Mike Oldman, which I'll be transcribing for P.N. in the next few days.

The demo was a series of survival matches against rooms full of thugs. There was none of the swinging around and promised predatory gameplay, but considering how many people were jostling to have a go, that was actually a good thing. This was purely a quick session so we could see the graphics, textures and movement up close and get to grips with some of Batman's basic moves. Fighting is so fluid and responsive in this game, it feels a little like Assassin's Creed in terms of making you look cool with minimal button-mashing. I'm assured that while this will ease you in on early sections, the later denizens of Arkham will require more tactics, so it won't be a case of being held by the hand.

Batman's cape swishes about him with the eye-catching grace of Nariko's hair in Heavenly Sword. In fact, it's the best cape I can recall in a game. The Dark Knight moves somewhat similar to the recent Christopher Nolan movie incarnation, with short, sharp, economical blows, rather than the sweeping movements of the Animated series. Fans of the Hush storyline will appreciate how technical he is as a fighter and it feels like he's making split-second combat decisions rather than just mashing punches together. Textures glisten with that Unreal sheen and the character models, body structure and sound effects pack the same meaty punch as Gears of War and similar gritty, physical games from that engine's family.

I, personally have been looking forward to this for a long time. Aside from the SNES version that made an excellent platform beat-em-up of the Animated series license, this is a classic comic-book and movie character who has never had a decent, contemporary incarnation in a video game. Now it looks like this may be that long-overdue menacing, adult representation he deserves. Playing the demo only made me thirst for more.

Questions for Cooper Hawkes.

We're very proud to have on this week - David LaMont of Gamehounds; AKA Cooper Hawkes.

We pick his brain on various topics, including Gamestop, Wii Music, The rumored Microsoft motion controller and Battlestar Galactica. We also ask him our customary eight questions.

It's a really relaxed show this week. Much heavier into chat than news. It gets even filthier than usual so the faint-hearted have been warned. It's also been one of our favourite episodes. We go way off-topic, but when the conversation is this sparky, it makes for a nice diversion.

On a side note; BSG and Firefly fans should check out Quantum Mechanix. I recently bought a pair of Apollo Dog Tags from them and they adjusted their shipping costs to the UK just for me. Very helpful purveyors of high quality replicas and sci-fi parephanalia. Fancy a dinosaur T-Shirt with "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" on it? Then they're your guys.

And many thanks to Blake Bohmann who helped us get some of the rare and weird gaming music for this week's show.

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is the question whose answer is very much in danger of disappearing up it's own arse. I had to tackle it in a recent podcast and my co-host Tony and our guest Daniel Floyd had to be very much to-the-point. Firstly you have to define art, then discuss which games fit into that category. Cooper Hawkes of Gamehounds maintains that "To me, art is imagination brought to life, and ANY game you play is that.” My counter-argument is the deluge of entirely financially-motivated movies out there. To me at least; Saw V is not art, Epic Movie is not art and the complete works of Pauly Shore are definitely not art. Hawkes and I are going to argue that one out later but in the meantime we defined it on the show as “Anything that"s been created with the intention of provoking emotion taking precedence over financial gain.”

Now by that definition Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Flower, Braid all qualify. Aside from being achingly beautiful at times they tell a story that evokes emotion. They don’t have to; they could just have been standard adventure fodder. Braid could easily have been just as good on a technical level without any poetic references or back-story, purely based on its mechanics. In fact I know a few people who would have preferred it that way. The reason it qualifies as art by this definition is that Jonathon Blow chose to paint a different picture with it. He chose to tell a deeper story. Littlebigplanet as I have said is absolutely a gigantic art project started by Media Molecule and added to by thousands of players the world over, continuously recreating a collage of gaming experiences, some good, some bad and a few fantastic. It uses platforming mechanics as an end product but the tools the creators use are the components of the levels themselves. It’s quite possible to tell an emotional story using the LBP engine and not one of its contributors outside of the Guilford-based developer stands to make a penny of profit for the time and effort they put in. I know nothing about high art, I’ll freely admit that, but I do know that not all modern-day artists are that selfless.

Roger Ebert has stated in the past that games will never be on a par with films artistically speaking because there is a degree of interactivity that takes away authorial control, but I see this as a gross oversimplification. It doesn’t apply to all games, but some that can be argued to have more artistic merit are going to tell a story no matter what you do. The author always has ultimate control of where you’re going. Sure I could play a game erratically, keep doing the same thing again and again, stop halfway through, skip all the cut-scenes and shut my eyes for the ending but I could also stand in the Louvre and stare at just the bottom-right hand corner of the Mona Lisa, thus taking away all control from Da Vinci in communicating what that painting represents. In either case I’d be being a dick. And Ebert, thanks to the fast-forward and eject buttons we’ve had for the past thirty years, we can do that with films now too.

The conclusion we reached on the podcast was totally unexpected. Even though we could argue the point until the cows come home, it’s based on our personal definition of what makes something art. Daniel Floyd surmised that maybe he didn’t want games to be art. They’re fun, and most art isn’t (to him anyway) and more importantly isn’t it just our own insecurities about what we’re passionately into that made us ask that question in the first place? We want games to be taken seriously so that when we say “Hey, Dad, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with my adult life; I’m going to write about Sonic the Hedgehog.” Our fathers will nod their heads appreciatively because they understand how important games are. We want them to be accepted as a valid, adult pursuit and when it comes down to it, art will never be considered to be just for kids.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Yes, we're a gaming site, but what the hell, most of us have an opinion about this film, even if it's hate. I never much cared for Star Trek. Being raised on Star Wars I always felt that Picard and company lacked in excitement and action, being more interested in politics and diplomacy. However, my wife made sure I watched the first seven Star Trek movies recently to get to know the original crew. They range from Great (Wrath of Khan) to embarrassingly crappy (Final Frontier), but crucially I got a bead on the characters. Other shows, films and games set me up to get into this universe. The cream of recent Sci-F; namely Firefly/Serenity, Battlestar Galactica and Mass Effect. All painted vivid universes with living, breathing people and an emphasis on drama, characterization and action.

So seeing the new JJ Abrams redux was actually pretty fantastic for me. Star Trek 09 has everything I could possibly want. It restarts the universe (No spoilers but once you've seen it there's some really clever stuff going on regarding the new storyline.) and presents you with new actors filling the quirky roles of all the old characters, injecting them with youthful energy. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as Kirk and Spock are absolutely magnetic, capturing the twinkle of Shatners eye, his swagger and arrogance and Nimoy's focused, calm and unwavering demeanor. They are stars in the making. There's pacey action and oddball comedy, all conducted convincingly in a shiny new version of the old world. It feels like a full cinematic experience as well, as opposed to the featurelength TV shows that the later movies often felt like. The camera soars past a gigantic Enterprise that's never felt more tangible and real. It's also got a lot of heart, with several moments being actually pretty moving.

Abrams has a talent, displayed in Lost, M:I-3 and Cloverfield of blending the realistic with the exciting and breathing new life into tired old genre's (Twilight Zone-style mysteries, spy thrillers and monster movies). He's the perfect director to bring this to 2009's addiences, both old hands and new blood will find something to love. It's definitely arguable that this film is not as faithful to the old shows as it could have been, it's heavily action based and reeks of setup with it's view to many sequels, but none of this mattered to me as everyone involved handled the main game so well. A genuine experience. Best film of the year so far.

Rating: 10/10

Can Games be Art?

We welcome back Daniel Floyd to the show (last seen in #101 when we talked about sex in games). He was the first man we thought of when it came time to wrangle the slippery eel of rooting out why video games have yet to be considered as art and what might help them to be accepted. The toughest part was making sure we didn't disappear up our own arses, but our conclusions were actually pretty surprising.

We also discuss Star Trek, the whole trilogy of Fallout 3 DLC, the recent Gamehounds playdate, Wanted: Weapons of Fate, Wii Sports Party, plus the latest news, your emails and our random game of the week.

The music at the end credits was composed by Daniel himself as a reworking of a classic piece of game scoring.

A special thanks to my sister Lucy Shaw (BA Hons - History of Art) for some extra research and consulting for this show.

The fourth Digital Cowboys Game Night is this Sunday 17/05/09 at 8pm BST/3pm EST. Remember to send your gaming pet hates for next week's show to digitalcowboys@googlemail.com and Tony would like some more folks for our FIFA 09 league so send Ghost World a messsage on Xbox Live.

I was recently asked this by listener, Sean O' Brien, after Wanted: Weapons of Fate weighed in at four hours, which at $60 retail is $15 an hour (I can find you girls cheaper than that). In contrast I picked up Mass Effect for considerably less and get lost for fifty or so hours. It doesn't seem fair to judge two different games on quantity of playable hours, it"s quality that counts in the end, right? So another win for Mass Effect there too. It’s an issue that expands into many more, concerning value, gaming style and the longevity of multiplayer, but let’s focus on the core question.

You have to factor in many things when weighing up the perfect length. Firstly genre; a fifty hour single-player action game would never get finished, an eight hour RPG would leave people feeling cheated. Secondly, variety; if you’re doing the same thing over and over for twelve hours, you will definitely get tired of it by the final quarter. No amount of jazzy cut-scenes could prevent a repetitive stop-and-pop from leaving you with a dull feeling in your gut whenever you think about playing the game again. Thirdly, context; if you’re trying to beat the game over a weekend, you’ll stay on top of the difficulty curve but you might get exhausted with it by the end. Space it out over six months and you’ll keep having to re-learn the controls and mechanics and wandering around not knowing where you should be (Final Fantasy XII, I’m looking at you). It’s easy to just say that it depends on the game, but Drake’s Fortune would have been more digestible minus the last hour or so of frantic blasting.

A great deal of the problem lies in the development process. When designing a game and estimating time of play, it is incredibly difficult to balance out players who will try to finish quickly or slowly. There are months of meetings, scripting and storyboarding sessions, months more of engine building, texture mapping, voice recording and motion capture. Hard effort goes into every iota of design in the production and the deadlines always loom on the horizon. By the time it gets to the play-testing stage, any reports that the final sections are tedious or frustrating come after months of expensive production. What are the developers meant to do, simply scissor them out in a rush to the finale? 

Wanted is a short, stylish game that is nonetheless frustrating and formulaic. It manages to outstay its welcome by precisely one level; the last one, which after eight previous missions of Gears/Uncharted/Dark Sector/50 Cent-style blasting action that we’ve all done before, presents you with alley after alley of stupid, bullet-absorbing thugs. It might be a good rental but only if you’re not tired of treading that well-worn path. As a retail game it’s hard to recommend. The sting of it is that four more levels would have taken it into the realms of galling tedium. By the middle of the game you’ve learned all the mechanics and you’re just rinse/repeating so Swedish developers, Grin, were already in a no-win situation. Ultimately it’s a licensed game and while the investment means it may sell more than a new IP, it also constrains. Wanted may have been better as a downloadable game along the lines of Watchmen, along with the lower price point.

The simplest answer to the perfect length of a game is; if you are beginning to get cheesed off with the game and just want it to be over, it’s too long. If you finish and feel like the developers could have given you more, it’s too short. The sweet spot is an exhilarating final section/race/puzzle and satisfying end sequence bringing you back to the title screen and hovering over "New Game” even though it’s 1am. You can get by on four hours sleep, right?

Spring Cleaning.

After many busy weeks and with many more ahead of us we took a breather this episode, kicked back and addressed some outstanding issues.

Firstly there's news about 3D Realms finally closing its doors. We get a mention on Giant Bomb and then restore a twenty minute section from last weeks show, discussing the run-up to E3 and future console generations with Commander Tim.

The main body of the show is answering our listeners mail, most of which pose really interesting questions. We round off with random game of the week and a review of Dawn of War II by James "Mijmeister" Perkins.

This weeks fantastic image was put together by Commander Tim. I believe it's our first fan art.

If you live in the USA (or the UK and don't mind not sleeping), be sure to catch us with Gamehounds on a COD4 Xbox Live event, Sunday May 10th 8pm-10pm EST. Our gamer tags are Ghost World and Alex D Cowboy. Make sure you include a message saying you're a listener of the show if you want to stay on our friends list.

Commander Tim and The Sega Dreamcast.

Tim Wilsie from GameHounds lends his expertise on the console that signified the end of an era for Sega. Tons of other subjects are touched upon, often with explosive results, including our polarised opinions on Halo 3. Tim is an awesome guest host and likely to be back soon to discuss other ancient consoles and games.

You can find GameHounds here: http://www.gamehounds.net/

Also Tim's website: http://www.commandertim.com/

Our video podcast on the Dreamcast is on YouTube and serves as a fine primer for this episode: http://digitalcowboys.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=469497

And finally Phoenix 3, Tim's worst gaming experience ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrx9mXbvzbY

Written By: Alex Shaw

Last November I, like many PS3 owners, finally got my hands on LittleBigPlanet. It surfed in on a wave of hype and outstanding critical acclaim. Create and publish your own levels, experience content produced by gamers the world over. To begin with it was just as shiny, inventive and accessible as I'd been led to believe. Then as the days went on and the mechanics began to grate a little, I joined the throngs of complainers lamenting the floaty platforming, unexpectedly steep difficulty curve and twitchy online interface. Half the user-created levels were just trophy runs and prize giveaways, the other half were taken off the servers for copyright infringement. Due to an insanely busy Christmas gaming schedule I put it down for a few months.

I went back last weekend to re-assess. While many of the above problems are still present I finally realised what was wrong with my perception. I was judging this as a platformer. A total redux of what we thought that genre was, true, but a platformer like Mario and Sonic nonetheless.

It"s not.

LittleBigPlanet is a grand art project begun by Media Molecule in November 2008 and added to by thousands of artists both talented and talentless. It’s an exploration of what gamers can do creatively with a console; a machine usually unsuited to this task. And it simply takes the form of a platform game.

It’s still annoying, floaty and full of shabby, prize-littered levels whose inept designers are begging for approval, but crucially the reviewers who gave it tens on pure speculation that there would be excellent content were absolutely right. A little digging and patience turns up levels of extraordinary complexity, beauty and fun. Everyone can find something to love about this game. You may be muttering "Welcome to last year’s opinions,” but, you see, I had to let the hype die down, the deeper content be published and the new purchase price drop to such a tragic low that this became the brilliant underdog it was always meant to be. LBP, I misjudged you and I apologise.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Capcom recently released the "Championship Mode” expansion pack for Street Fighter IV, free on Xbox Live and PSN. This gives players a replay mode, a new points system and a much needed enhanced tournament matching system. However it doesn't patch the fact that Seth is the cheapest boss of this console generation. Let"s take a look back on some of the biggest cheating scumbags to ever bar us as gamers from those end sequences.

10. Raven Lord (Heavenly Sword). The kind of boss you have to hit ten times for every one time he hits you. Plus he can fly. You’ll have been wanting to clobber him for the duration of the game and the fact that he makes it so hard nearly dulls the sharp ending of this overlooked PS3 classic.

9. Graven (Conan). It’s the repetition that kills this game’s enjoyment factor. You have to jump through hoops and perform identical, perfectly timed attacks repeatedly or he regenerates health and you start all over again. After six phases of doing the same thing you begin praying to Crom that Conan will simply grow a pair, forsake the quick time events and just cut this bastard’s head off.

8. Darth Vader - Final Battle (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed). Vader should not be easy to beat, granted, but when he effortlessly parries every one of your attacks except a specific three-button combination that he seems particularly weak to, it forces you to turn what could have been THE grand duel into a series of Vader beat-downs, which he is fumblingly unable to counter.

7. General Raam (Gears of War). Hiding behind a huge gun and merrily absorbing your bullets into his head, Raam is one of those essentially invincible guys, until you reach the prescribed quota for shots in the face, at which point he dies. It makes no sense. Infuriatingly difficult, especially on Insane.

6. Navarro (Drake’s Fortune). Run a gauntlet of grunts and get nothing but perfect headshots, all the while being cut to pieces if you break cover. Follow up with a ridiculous quick time event. The game itself is worth so much more than this laborious war of attrition.

5. Solidus (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty) At last you get a katana, and that blond whiner finally starts seeming like he might have some hidden grit to his character. Then Solidus whips out his own blade and lays into you so ferociously it reduces the fight to long periods of blocking with occasional frantic attacks. It’s all the more insulting considering how visceral the Snake-on-Snake fight was at the end of MGS1.You were right to hate Raiden.

4. M-Bison (Street Fighter II Turbo) Bison takes one look at you and begins a shuttle-run of Psycho-Crushers back and forth across the screen. If you ever get a decent kick in, you get thrown like a Don King prize-fight. He’s a legendarily cheap boss, but he’s not as cheap as…

3. Seth (Street Fighter IV) If you thought Bison was unfair, Seth will calmly counter every attack with one of his amazing repertoire of three moves; the instant hundred-foot kick, the teleport/bitch-slap and the suck-you-into-my-belt, which takes such little regard of physics it’s beyond insulting.

2. Abyss (Marvel VS. Capcom 2) If you never played MvC2, look forward to a summer of screaming at this evil green fuckwit. He has three forms: firstly, a twelve foot-tall armoured horn-beast; secondly, a green naked man with a gun who laughs chirpily as you get blasted; and a third that fills most of the screen with teeth and lava. All of these “moves” are spammed constantly until you die, which you will, over and over.

1. Jinpachi (Tekken 5) Saving the worst for last. Remember fighting Heihachi at the end of Tekken? He was fast and strong, with swift, brutal counters, but he was fair. This mutated version has a cannon in his chest and if you stop attacking him for more than half a second he’ll happily blast you with it, dealing about 80% damage, at which point it just takes one more cheap shot to finish you off. Evil incarnate; thy name is Jinpachi.

The problem with all of these bosses is that they force you to fight in one particular way. Their limited but overpowered attacks leave you resorting to the one or two tactics that cause them even a little damage. But by the time you’ve figured out what these are, you’ve been killed a dozen times and your joy in the game is ebbing. Hands up who’d play more single-player Street Fighter IV if the final boss was Bison, not Seth. The best bosses, (which I might write another article on) are memorable for the way they kill you once or twice, fair and square, and then once you spot their weakness, go down gracefully and leave you remembering how enjoyable the whole game was. More like them, please.