Mooks but No Bosses: Difference between revisions

Nowadays, the vast majority of video games, even when not pure action games, include fighting enemies on the way. There may be [[Mooks|a lot]] [[Goddamn Bats|of weak ones]] or [[Demonic Spiders|a few]] [[Boss in Mook Clothing|tough ones]], they may be [[What Measure Is a Mook?|humans]] or [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|monsters]], you may kill them half-heartedly or [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|with great enjoyment]] but they will be on your path to prevent you from [[Saving the World]], rescuing the [[Damsel in Distress]], [[Quest for Identity|finding your lost memories]] or [[Devil May Cry|eating your pizza]]. And at some points, you will have to fight [[Boss Fight|big enemies, much more fearsome and dangerous than the others]] ([[Anticlimax Boss|or not…]]) with an appropriate tension buildup.

 

 

* The fighting, even if present is actually secondary to the action and the developers want to focus the intensity on other aspects, like the general atmosphere or the [[HSQ]] of the scenario.

* The climactic battle(s) will be [[The War Sequence|against an army of mooks instead of a single boss]], placing the player against seemingly impossible odds to create tension.

 

 

 

The extreme end of [[Hard Levels Easy Bosses]].

* In ''[[Legacy of Kain|Soul Reaver 2]]'', a good part of the game is slaughtering the soldiers and demons who want you dead, but curiously, there is no Boss. The Sarafan counterparts or Raziel's "brothers" at the end ''seem'' like they will be bosses but they turn out being [[Elite Mooks|like normal mooks, just tougher]], and the [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower|Soul Reaver]] prevents you from dying anyway. The real [[Oh Crap]] moment comes ''after'' this battle.

* In the ''[[Batman Begins]]'' game, you fight Victor Zsasz, the Scarecrow and {{spoiler|Henri Ducard}}, but they fight in exactly the same way as the [[Mooks]], right down to the way they're taken down.

* In [[Uncharted]] 3, the closest thing to boss fights in this game are basic fistfights against a guy who has a bit more HP than usual.

* In ''[[Tomb Raider]] III'', every single artifact you come across is guarded by a boss character who uses the powers of the artifact to kill you. However, the Element 115 artifact in the Nevada level is only guarded by regular mooks and has no one trying to use the said artifact to kill you. Since the levels by region can be played in any order you want, some players may feel a bit cheated that the artifact isn't guarded by an epic boss.

== Platformers ==

 

* The first two [[Oddworld]] games involve killing a lot of guards in usually [[Cruel and Unusual Death|gruesome]] [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|ways]], but since Abe has no weapon nor actual fighting skills there is nothing in the games that looks like a Boss (well there are [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|"bosses"]] but not in the video game sense).

* The [[Platform Hell]] ''[[Rick Dangerous]]''.

* The second episode (game) of ''[[Cosmos Cosmic Adventure]]'' doesn't have any bosses at all, and the first and third only have a [[Final Boss]] (the same in both cases).

* ''[[Eversion (Sugar Wiki)|Eversion]]'' has no bosses, {{spoiler|but it makes up for that with [[Eversion (Darth Wiki)|its more famous attributes.]]}}

 

== Roguelikes ==

* In ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'', the closest thing there is to a [[Boss Fight]] is {{spoiler|Edgar Ross in the epilogue}} but it's played like a normal duel (except you don't have the option of sparing his life). As for John's old companions, two are summary executions and the last throws himself from a cliff.

* [[Spore]]: the closest thing is has are Grox and even then they act more like [[Elite Mooks]].

 

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[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]