Sunday, October 23, 2016

My Childhood Game and Its Bosses

When I played video games as a child, I wasn't exposed to games that other people my age played such as Ocarina of Time or Final Fantasy VII. I played a less popular game called Jak and Daxter by Naughty Dog which came out in 2001. Naughty dog who made other games such as the Uncharted Series. Today I want to talk about reasons I love this game and the intelligent design of their bosses.

Jak and Daxter is set in a fantasy style world where the world is filled with the natural power of "Eco". There are five different types of eco in this game with different properties and effects. Green eco is the energy of life, finding green eco restores health. Blue eco is the energy of motion, picking this up grants increased speed and can power machinery if the player is close enough. Yellow eco gives the player the ability to shoot fire balls at their enemies, and red eco gives more strength for harder hits and to move massive objects. Dark and light eco are more mysterious in this game as dark eco presents itself as a bad thing and kills the player if it is contacted, light eco was only introduced in the last part of the game which gave the player the main character the power to destroy a precursor robot in one hit.

This world is plagued by monsters called lurkers, these are the main enemy grunts which come in many forms. Even the bosses are these twisted creatures that are made of dark eco. I will use the boss from the second area, Klaww as an example for the nice use of patterns and combat.

Klaww: Jak and Daxter
Klaww is a lurker with bionic modifications, and in his boss battle he resides in a vat of lava. First, you must avoid his blaster bolts by jumping from these three platforms or risk the insta-kill of the lava. After you evade him a bridge will appear, you must get to the other side of this bridge while missing giant boulders Klaww throws at you. after you get there, pick up the yellow eco and fire at him before his new boulder can be made, if done correctly the boulder will drop right on his head. But after it bounces from his head it will fall on the bridge and roll over it so you need to run across and get back to the other platforms before you get squished. Now back where you started, you have to do that process all over again with more shots thrown at you and less of a bridge each time.

After doing this successfully three times you finally beat Klaww and you can move on. But I love this boss for its challenge, there aren't many bosses in this game but each one was done well with their own separate challenge. I truly think this is a good boss even if he isn't as popular as Sephiroth or Ganondorf. Klaww holds a special place in my heart as a challenge to the younger me, thank you for reading. Let me know your childhood bosses that you loved as a kid in the comments below.

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