Mr. Freeze from Arkham City is one of, if not the most well executed boss battle of all time. Again, before you twist my bat-nipples and brand me an idiot, allow me the chance to tell you why.
The whole idea of the Arkham games is that you slowly gain some really cool gadgets, weapons, and techniques, and that arsenal allows you to play the game how you want. Do you want to go through the game like Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and just mess everyone up, or do you want to go through the game more like the quiet, twisted superhero who works in the darkness and works off of fear, like Nolan’s Batman? That was completely up to you as the player, and for that reason, it was a very different game for different people.
What is so perfect about the Mr. Freeze boss fight is that it pretty much said to the player: there are VARIOUS ways you can take out Freeze, and whichever ones you like the most are the ones that you can choose. That being said, it also let the player know that if they had been button mashing and getting lucky up to that point, that would no longer work. You needed to have mastered these techniques to pull them off, and if you knew them all, it was like some sort of blank canvas that you could paint any way you wanted.
It was such an awesomely fun moment that I played through the segment multiple times, in multiple different ways, just to see what it was like. I mean, you could really do ANYTHING in that boss fight, from pulling freeze through a window to zip lining in from the fog and kicking him in the face. Though the entirety of both Arkham games really do show you what it would feel like to be a real-life Batman, no scene in either game captures that sensation better than the boss fight with Mr. Freeze in Arkham City.
Is it the BEST boss battle of this gaming generation? It might not be the best, but I can admit that it’s pretty damn close.
Feel free to take to the comments and let me know what bosses I forgot that you will never forget. Also, the only reason there are no GOW 3 bosses on this list is because I don’t have a PS3. If you want to send me one, I will add the Titan boss fight to the list.
By the way, send that PS3 here. Thanks, kids.
