"MOSES! Where our fates were born. And where yours ENDS, SNAKE!"
-"This is the best boss ever, holy shit!"
— Max0r on Jetstream Sam
The awesome boss fights are one of the major selling points of the Metal Gear series, so unsurprisingly there are a lot of these.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
- Black Ninja may seem simplistic now, but he set the trend for the series's future bosses and established just how different this game would be from Metal Gear. Whereas that game's bosses were largely regular soldiers with fancy guns, Black Ninja is a teleporting, shuriken-tossing ninja with a challenging yet fair attack pattern. And defeating him reveals him to be far more than just another slightly-above-average grunt: he's Kyle Schneider, the Resistance leader from the previous game, having defected to Big Boss's side after NATO bombed Outer Heaven and left him for dead. His outlandish style and his interesting connection to the plot are the foundation of virtually every other boss on this list.
- Hmm... I see you like Metal Gear. Do not worry, Psycho Mantis is only here to Break the Fourth Wall. There is no need to switch controller ports.
- A Hind D gunship at the top of tower in the middle of a blizzard in the middle of a pitch black night. The power of the boss coupled with the mood of the environment makes it quite iconic.
- Later you fight Sniper Wolf in a Sniper Duel. At night. In the middle of a blizzard.
- The battle with Vulcan Raven in the freezer room. It's Bomberman on crack.
- Snake vs. REX. You've just witnessed the seemingly immortal Grey Fox get killed, you've watched the absolute Tear Jerker of a sequence where Snake can't bear to fire his Stinger missiles at Fox, and after it all, you just want to Kick. Some. Ass. This is taken up to eleven in the Gamecube remake Twin Snakes. Gray Fox pulls off his Dying Moment of Awesome with even greater style. Dodging machine-gun fire, blocking it with his katana before hurling it straight at REX's radome, charging the monster head-on (losing pieces of his Cool Mask in the process) and, for the sequence when he finally blows up the Radome, his cannon charging to life with a hesitant-but-rising frequency that embodies the wounded Gray Fox gathering all his resolve for one last volley. And finally, when Fox is dead, Snake picks up his katana, gazes along its blade as if remembering the whole of his friendship with Fox...and then whipping the sword around and slamming it into the ground like a gravestone before charging REX head-on.
- There's also the battle against Liquid Snake. It starts out as a timed fist-fight, and then later on you have to shoot Liquid while on a Jeep with Meryl (or Otacon, if Meryl died), as he follows on another Jeep while escaping Shadow Moses.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
- In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, you fight a Harrier — in other words, a fighter jet — piloted by Vamp and Solidus. Accompanying you in this battle are Snake and Otacon in a helicopter, making for an awesome 3 vs. 2 battle.
- The Fatman battle is very memorable as a fun and unique experience. Not only, in classic Metal Gear fashion, is the premise absurd, due to it being about chasing around a mad bomber on rollerskates as he plants explosives across the arena which you need to defuse under a time limit, but the catchy music and hammy boss quotes add to the fun tone of it all as well.
- Assuming one doesn’t use one of the many notorious ways to cheese the fight, Vamp’s first battle is awesome. Diving into water where you can’t hit him (much), only for him to pop out and start throwing his knives at you while bouncing around the arena, before then climbing higher up onto the railings above you where he starts spinning back and forth like a ballerina throwing barrages of those knives, Vamp is a master of deception requiring you to keep up with him across all levels of elevation in the arena. He even has the ability to pin your shadow to the floor and freeze you! Requiring some quick thinking about how one would remove their own shadow. All in all, his fight is a fun one that stands out even among the Metal Gear boss lineup.
- There's something about RAY, 'cause the fight against the RAY army is sufficiently great. You play as Raiden on foot with a Stinger launcher, fighting anywhere from three to twenty Metal Gear RAYs. All the while dodging bullets, homing missiles, and water-jets. It's one of the more difficult fights, but so satisfying.
- The sword fight with Solidus at the end of the game is also pretty good. The Substance version of the game has "External Gazer", which concludes with Snake fighting Solidus...with nothing but his fists!
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater gives us The Sorrow. He's an unusual boss, because he's already dead. He's another in a long tradition of Hopeless Boss Fights- you can only win by trudging past the ghosts of everyone you've killed. He also has some of the best dialogue in the game before the fight.The Sorrow: The living... may not hear them. Their voices... may fall upon deaf ears. But Make. No. Mistake. The dead... are NOT silent. Now you will know the sorrow of those whose lives you have ended.
- Made more awesome by the ghosts. If you kill a guy with a nut-shot, he'll grasp his crotch and yell "I'm useless!" The prize for the most creative ghost goes to the one where you kill a sentry on a mountain, let a bird eat him, kill the bird, and eat it, the ghost appears with the bird on his shoulder crying "You ate me!"
- The End stands out. The End is a sniper around 100 years old, and is more or less capable of manipulating the natural environment. This, combined with the fact that he is the only boss to never kill Snake, makes him a tough but somewhat forgiving challenge. You can literally spend hours crawling on your stomach scanning the combat area, that spreads over three large open maps, with your gadgets to pinpoint his position before getting shot and he runs away to a new hiding spot. The End has some extremely crafty AI, too. You can use the Directional Microphone to learn that he's hiding in the next map, by listening for his breathing. Then, when you enter the next area, you find that he was waiting for you right in the transitional area, and he smacks you down with a flash-bang. Or you find his sniping point, but can't reach it from the same map. So you go to the next area, re-enter from a point where you can reach his perch, and find that he isn't there anymore. Instead, he's at a completely different perch, and has his scope trained on his old spot, so even if you have 100% camo, he can still completely sucker you.
- The battle with The Fury inside the tunnel in the mountain. The atmosphere during this fight really adds to it, as does the music.
- Fighting against The Boss is the highlight of the game. You are both standing in an open field of white flowers, with the boss not only being blond and pale skinned, but also wearing her iconic white combat suit. Being able to CQC her like she did Snake is amazing. She tells you you have 10 minutes to kill her before bombers will blast the whole place to ash and about 5 minutes into the fight, an instrumental version of the theme song, which you have heard several times during the game, starts playing. And it is clear that when the last note plays, it's all over. Unfortunately, the game makes you pull the trigger on the Boss to finish her off.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
- The Metal Gear RAY battle. Bonus points for quite possibly being the only time in the entire series where you get to pilot one of the titular Metal Gears. Even more awesome when you know you are fighting the Metal Gear DESIGNED to obliterate Metal Gear REX, AKA the very one you almost destroyed in the first game and you are piloting now.
- Another candidate for the greatest boss battle in the entire series must be the final battle between Snake and Liquid Ocelot. It's not very unusual or spectacular, but uses the health bars, fighting styles, theme music, and even camera angles from all four games, to take you one more time through the entire series before it finally comes to an end.
- Laughing Octopus has perfect camouflage abilities and you fight her inside a small hut, where she can hide in any place and disguise herself as anything, becoming part of the walls or the furniture, but always leaving some tiny traces by which you can spot her if you look carefully enough. She even has her own cardboard box.
- Although MGS4 is a single player game, when Raiden comes to Snake's rescue when he has to fight both Vamp and the Gekkos, the game gets into split screen mode to show both fights next to each other. While you don't have any time to watch what's happening on Raiden's side, it's still an amazing effect and really feels like Back-to-Back Badasses. Made even better by the music
. - Crying Wolf. Imagine a mixture of the battle-in-the-snow with Sniper Wolf (you face the new Wolf in the same area of Shadow Moses as the old Wolf, no less), mixed with the tense camo-and-stealth-heavy face-off against The End. This fight puts your skills to the test as you use the blizzard to avoid detection from Wolf and her FROG troopers, while still trying to keep upwind of Wolf so she can't sniff you out. The only bad thing about the fight was that it was over too soon.
- Another one of the game's many cases of weaponized nostalgia happens with Screaming Mantis. The fight is built to play on Snake's (and the player's) memories of the Psycho Mantis fight. From walking into the room to find Meryl lying hurt on the ground to the realization that switching controller ports isn't going to work this time, and there aren't any busts either. Oh, and Mantis also has ability to possess the dead FROGs. You finally have to beat her by stealing one of her Psycho Mantis dolls and using it to turn her own powers on her. What comes after the boss is what really sells it. Turns out Psycho Mantis, even from beyond the grave, is the real puppetmaster, as he's possessing Screaming Mantis (and, by extension, is the leader of the B&B Corps). He promptly gets up to his old tricks, as he attempts to read your save data, only to find that the PS3 has no memory card for him to look at. He then attempts to move your controller again, which will have one of two results. If you're using a Sixasis with no vibration, he'll be disappointed. If you're using a DualShock 3, he'll get one last laugh in as he screams "Vibration is back, baby!" In the end though, The Sorrow pops in to give his old enemy's son a hand as he drags Mantis back to the afterlife. It's a combination Moment of Awesome, Funny Moment, and Heartwarming Moment that's hard to forget.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
- The second battle against Peace Walker/Basilisk in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is extremely intense and very much awesome, even though it can be a long-haul on single player. The exhilaration and intensity peaks when it readies its nuke for launch, which will end in a game over if you don't stop it, accompanied by Kaz sounding genuinely panicked as he urges you to prevent the launch via your radio. Few moments are as pulse poundingly exhilarating to a gamer as that moment where the timer reached the single digits, and on their last shot they manage to stop the launch sequence for another few precious moments.. The subsequent internal destruction of The Boss AI pod as you constantly hear her voice talking to you counts as well.
- Also from Peace Walker, we have the final battle against Paz and Metal Gear ZEKE. The fact that Nana Mizuki's Koi no Youkushi-ryoku is playing in the background turns the fight against a Metal Gear, something that is already awesome in its own right, in a heated, epic showdown you know you Simply. Cannot. Lose.
- Peace Walker also has The Cocoon AI weapon which is enormous. It is basically a building made out of guns. Eventually you have to climb all the way to the top of it.
- The secret Monster Hunter missions have you take on Rathalos, king of the skies; Tigrex, the king of beasts; and Gear Rex, a draconic take on the iconic Metal Gear Rex. Instead of swords, lances, and bows, you take on dragons with guns.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Pretty much every single boss fight in Revengeance is one of these to some degree, but a few are iconic.
- The first boss, Metal Gear RAY. It's constantly firing missiles at you (which can be destroyed before they explode). Instead of its high-pressure water cannon from MGS2, it has a Plasma Cannon. Parrying its attacks and damaging its feet allows you to slice off its armor, and the first part of the battle ends with Raiden parrying its right blade, grab said blade and use it to throw RAY into the air, before jumping up and running along that blade, slicing it off as you. The second part of the battle is mostly the same, but in a more confined area with Raiden elevated to RAY's face. You can slice off its head armor and guns, then it launches a salvo of missiles at you which Raiden proceeds to jump across so that he can slice off RAY's remaining blade. Even after that, it's not over, as now, you have to run down the side of a building, avoiding gunfire, missiles, and the Plasma Cannon, so that Raiden can stab his blade through the head of RAY and slice it in half length-wise! And this is only the first boss! And the music that's playing as you completely wreck RAY's shit is the icing on the cake.
- Although relatively casual due to the Dwarf Gekkos' nanopaste, Mistral offers an entertaining fight as the first Winds of Destruction. As the fight continues, the two fighters start moving to other areas, and end duking it out surrounded by fire.
- Monsoon, who definitely tests your knowledge of parrying. Set amidst a rainstorm, in a one on one duel, he leaps back and forth, giving you only a moment to react. He spends half the fight being entirely immune to your attacks by simply breaking apart around your swings, meaning you have to figure out how to get past that obstacle. He throws massive pieces of debris that you slice to pieces before they hit you. You really need to know the game by then, and when you do parry his various attacks, you really do feel like a badass for being able to get through all his defenses. He also gets one of the most metal songs for a theme song, really driving up the adrenaline. If you were brutal against Monsoon, he literally begs you to stop attacking.
- Jetstream Sam, this time being a rematch with your arch nemesis. A sword on sword duel with no complications. Just you and your reaction time against a powerful cyborg swordsman with several fast attacks, and again, a really metal soundtrack.
- You thought the Metal Gear RAY battle was awesome? Just wait until you go toe-to-toe with Metal Gear Excelsus, a Humongous Mecha the size of a city block, armed with massive HF Blades and plasma cannons! After slicing off its front legs, Raiden proceeds to throw the boss over his shoulder, rips off one of its blade (which are as long as Metal Gear RAY was tall), then uses that blade to parry Excelsus' other blade before cutting it to pieces! And the boss' theme...
- Steven Armstrong, a multi stage boss where you spend several sequences helplessly wailing away without being able to cause any damage before Bladewolf throws you Sam's sword, evening the fight. Meanwhile, the boss throws huge pieces of debris while you only have a moment to precisely slice in two, rewarding you with slamming your blade in the boss' face and sending him flying into a wall. You also get to be involved in a punch out that ends in an epic right hook around the boss' arm. Finally, in the most appropriate way to end the fight, you perform multiple precise Blade Mode slashes on the armor around his heart before you perform the same move you've been doing all throughout the game and tear out his heart. To top it all off, his theme is one of the finest boss themes in gaming.
- From the Bladewolf DLC, we have Khamsin, a crazy American ex-soldier in a mech suit with a rocket powered chainsaw-axe. He has a lot of cool-looking attacks, he can move faster then you'd think given his size, there's a stealth section, and his finisher (cutting apart his mech, ripping him out and carving him up in mid-air) is satisfying to do and awesome to watch. To top it off, his boss theme is the previously unused but blood-pumping "Hot Wind Blowing".
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
- If you don't mind the Parasite Unit, then their boss fights are this. Fighting four zombie-like soldiers every few missions, without the benefit of Pequod helping you, using only what you brought on the field. Countering their melee attacks result in jamming their machete's back into their bodies, with a different counter for each attack they have. Coupled with the soldiers that are usually around, and you have a zombie boss fight.
- Sahelanthropus, perhaps the greatest Metal Gear of all. Both of the two times it's encountered, you begin in the open world map, at its feet. The looming scale of this monstrosity compared to Snake sets in...and then it roars.
- While most of the fights aren't as spectacular as the rest of the franchise, special mention has to go to the obligatory battle with the Metal Gear of this franchise, Metal Gear Gander. This boss fight is split up into two stages, and each stage is relatively awesome.
- The first stage has Snake running beneath Gander as it lumbers towards you. Gander will try to step on you, or will burn you with its built in flamethrower should you get too close. Because of course it has a flamethrower. The only way to stop Gander is to either plant C4 where it will step down, or use land mines. Eventually, Gander will crumble from the proverbial hotfoot...
- ...but it's not over yet. Now you have to deal with the defenses on the top of Gander. Snake has to dodge auto-fire turrets, spread-shot turrets, anti-air missile launchers (that somehow work inside a confined freight elevator), and even aerial drones. Unlike most Metal Gears, this one does not have a single weak point, so instead you will have to chip away at each of the weapons systems. Oh, and the flamethrower isn't out of commission either, so the fight ends with Snake chucking grenades into the mouth of a flamethrower that is currently turning the battlefield into nothing but flaming rubble.
- And just when you think that's over, Black Arts Viper comes out of nowhere to challenge you to one last fight to the death. You see, not only does he want to kill Snake, but Gander has one last trick. A Satellite Uplink that will set off seven nuclear-armed satellites in orbit, basically wrecking the planet. And you have 90 seconds to kill Viper and turn off the system before it activates.
- Viper himself will spam Flashbang grenades in a deperate attempt to run down the clock - which means it becomes a demented game of hide and seek with the world on the line... unless Viper decides to hit you with his shockwave attack as you see him, throwing you across the room.
- Oh, and did we mention this is all happening on the Game Boy Color?
