Follow TV Tropes

Following

High-Speed Battle

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ws_pursuit_force_1152x864_1.jpg

In video games, a High-Speed Battle typically results when the player and an enemy duke it out when rushing at high speeds, either via Super-Speed abilities, or by having one or both use the vehicle or some other means to propel themselves. Some possible iterations include:

  • The player chasing the boss, with the intent of stopping them for one reason or another.
  • The player being chased by the boss, with the intent of escaping.
  • The player and boss fighting while chased by an Advancing Wall of Doom in a kind of Interesting Situation Duel.

Not entirely restricted to action games, as many RPGs will have either sequences or mini-games based around a High-Speed Battle. Also frequently seen in movies. Advancing Boss of Doom, Chasing Your Tail, and Cat-and-Mouse Boss are slower-paced variations.


Examples:

  • Parasite Eve:
    • There's a boss battle in which you're on a speeding horse-and-carriage, with the boss floating above you shooting laser beams down onto you. Said carriage is very small, and it is very difficult to dodge the beams. Although the actual speed of the carriage doesn't look that fast, just wait until the FMV after the boss battle where it shows you how fast you were really going.
    • There's a scene where you leap off of a building to avoid an incoming jet that's about to smash into the rooftop and onto a scaffolding, which plummets to the ground at terminal velocity. Kill the enemies before you hit bottom (so Aya can use the brake), or die indeed.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, you're fighting several enemies and a boss whilst you're on a minecart escaping from the Magitek factory. Another is the fight against Phantom Train, where your characters are fighting a train's locomotive while running away from it, on the railroad tracks. Oh, and if that wasn't cool enough, Sabin can suplex it. While it's trying to run him down.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud hops on a motorcycle while his party jumps into a truck, as they attempt to escape the city of Midgar. This is the second version: Shrina security forces on motorcycles chase after the party in a mini-game, while Cloud slashes them with the Buster Sword. The damage taken by the party during this carries over into a boss fight immediately afterward.
  • The eighth Touhou game, Imperishable Night, has a stage in which the scrolling background speeds up immediately following the midboss fight, causing a rather unsettling change of tempo. If you can ignore the background (which at this point is glowing a frenzied red), all the danmaku is moving at its normal speed, while the background just gives it a feel of moving much faster. It works.
  • The entire game of Pursuit Force and its sequel, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, involves a cop for the eponymous police agency chasing down criminals and killing or arresting them. Rather unique in the implementation, however, as the cop can leap from one vehicle to another with ease while driving as speeds of (usually) at least 150 miles per hour.
  • In Mega Man Legends 2, you have to face off against the Bonnes AND Glyde who join forces to make an armoured battletrain, the Gemeinschaft, which you must destroy while shooting from atop of your own modified train.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Metal Gear Solid ends with Solid Snake escaping the Shadow Moses facility by Jeep, while shooting down pursuing enemies (and, eventually, Liquid Snake).
    • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots features a callback to this, only instead of a Jeep, Snake's piloting REX itself, and has to plow through an army of Gekkos to escape.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: There's a chase involving Snake and EVA escaping an exploding base with enemy soldiers and the Big Bad in the Shagohod in hot pursuit.
    • Yet another MGS4 chase is a callback to this one, with EVA, racing through a city on a motorcycle, with Snake covering her from the back seat, as they try to evade and escape Liquid's troops.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • The final battle between Sonic and Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 involves them racing on foot along a collapsing walkway.
    • The first boss of Sonic and Knuckles involves chasing Robotnik while dodging spiked ropes. Similarly, the second to last boss involves chasing Robotnik while at the same time trying to outrun the collapsing Death Egg.
    • Excluding the final boss (which is also arguably one of the easiest bosses in the game for exactly that reason), all of Sonic Advance 2's bosses are organized like this.
    • The battle with Metal Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog CD is a race.
    • The fights with the Egg Hawk, Egg Albatross, and Egg Emperor in Sonic Heroes are mild examples of this; the Egg Hawk and Egg Emperor will stop for roughly half a minute at certain points on the battle track to launch a stationary assault.
    • All but one of the bosses in Sonic and the Secret Rings also work this way. King Arthur in Sonic and the Black Knight also does this... and he calls out Sonic for running away?
    • Pick any Eggman boss in Sonic Unleashed except for the Egg Dragoon, who is the only one fought as the Werehog. For the second variety, any time the Egg Interceptor makes an appearance in the PS360 version (the WiiS2 version uses a mix of the two).
    • In Sonic Colors, there's the fight with the Frigates Orcan and Skullian, as well as the final battle with the Nega-Wisp Armor.
    • The HD version of Sonic Generations turns Egg Dragoon and Silver into High Speed Battles, while the 3DS version does it with the Egg Emperor... Recent Sonic games like this trope a lot.
    • The final battle of Sonic Lost World (both versions) involves chasing down another Eggman mech, similar to the Colors example above.
    • Every battle fought as Modern Sonic in Sonic Forces, with the exception of Zavok, is one of those, with Sonic chasing the bosses along a bridge, through a city and through a version of Null Space.
  • Green's stage in Gunstar Heroes takes place while driving along a mine shaft in a strange insectoid vehicle.
  • The second boss in Wario Land: Shake It!! is one of these.
  • One of the stages in Super Smash Bros. Melee (and reappearing in Brawl) is set atop not-to-scale F-Zero cars mid-race. Just not letting the stage kill you is hard enough!
    • Brawl makes this stage hilarious for one reason: Sonic with a Bunny Hood can actually outrun the stage.
    • Wario-Man (Wario's super form) can also do this on his bike.
    • The Subspace Emissary in Brawl features a high speed battle atop Captain Falcon's Falcon Flyer while Meta Ridley is flying behind you trying to take you down. Your character(s) will constantly be pushed to the left by a wind effect throughout the battle. Did we mention that you have only two minutes to defeat Meta Ridley?
  • La-Mulana: The battle against the third area's boss, Ellmac, is a high-speed battle with Ellmac running after Lemeza as Lemeza rolls away from it on a mine-cart. Even the battle's music track is called "High-Speed Beast." There's also Bahamut (no, not that Bahamut), who you fight on a high-speed fish-powered boat, and Palenque, who is an Unexpected Shmup Boss who you fight in a corridor while dodging Deadly Walls.
  • Romancing SaGa 3 has a fight where three of your characters must ride atop a skull car in order to attack another skull car that has gone berserk.
  • This is the climactic end to Revenge of Meta-Knight, one of the games on Kirby Super Star. You hop onto your buddy Wheelie and race to the end of the ship you've been spending the whole game destroying, trying to get off before it crashes into the ocean, whilst Meta-Knight, who you just defeated, turns into... err...Meta-Bat and flies after you, shooting stuff at you to try and kill you. Oh yeah, and it's timed too.
  • Contra:
  • Police 911 series, being a spinoff to Lethal Enforcers, has all stages in this. You need to Take Cover! and return fire in a quick succession in a limited time to avoid getting hit by enemy gunfire. Also, all bosses, despite being Cat-and-Mouse Boss, runs at fast movements.
  • In Wild ARMs 3, they ramped up the movement via Horseback with very little difference to the regular gameplay, and Sandcraft battles that had a few difference in how to attack and such, but still the same basic gameplay.
    • Moving on horseback had the peculiar but nice effect that you could never be back attacked, or wind up entering the battle with only one character. It also sped up your characters' attack speed slightly, presumably because they themselves weren't running (being on horseback and all), whilst the enemies were.
      • It also made the spellcasting animation glitch a little — the last few frames loop. Still, the first time you realize that, yes, you can enter battle on horseback, it's awesome.
  • Thunder Force II's Stage 2-2 has you fly down a highway (with poles that you can crash into if you fly too low), and Stage 4-2 makes you speed through tight corridors.
    • Thunder Force III's Gorgon and Haides stages have, roughly halfway through each stage, a high-speed segment. In both cases, it's a chance to grab a particularly rare item (such as a shield or a 1-Up), which tends to stay stationary relative to the stage, giving you only a small fraction of a second to grab it.
    • Thunder Force IV's stage 1 boss is fought over a lake at high speed.
  • Call Of Duty 4 ends with you and your companions escaping a missile launch facility in trucks after destroying two missiles in mid-air, while being chased by an army, including an attack chopper.
    • Most if not all of the Call of Duty games feature at least one vehicle chase sequence. Modern Warfare 2 just might take the cake, though, with a high-speed snowmobile chase, a unarmed sprint through Rio, a truck chase in an airplane graveyard, and an insane motorboat chase.
  • A mission in Jedi Academy consists of you fighting off (or fleeing from, your choice) mercenaries on speeders.
  • Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has an; an extended gunfight taking place in the backs of a dozen speeding trucks — each one exploding as Nate jumps to the next!
  • Riding Duels (Turbo Duels in the dub) in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds are this as applied to Duel Monsters. Or to put it another way... CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!
  • The Just Cause games feature these as a regular occurrence, giving the player the ability to climb about on vehicles and leap on to other ones. And that's to say nothing of the havoc you can wreak with your grappling hook...
  • The bike levels in Musashi Samurai Legend.
  • James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing: The Pontchartrain Bridge. To wit: You've just destroyed Yayakov's nanobot facility out in the bayou. You notice Jaws hop into a nanobot-filled tanker truck and head out on the freeway (the Bridge) in a last-ditch attempt to carry out Diavolo's plans. What do you do? You hop onto your Q-Bike and give chase, avoiding civilian cars and henchmen in cars and on bikes. All of this in excess of 200 mph.
  • Most of the Gradius games contain a "high speed" stage where the screen scrolls twice as fast as normal.
  • Stage 3 of Dogyuun is pretty much this trope for the most part. The music for the stage is even called "High Speed Queen".
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: One approach to the boss battle with Goht is having Link to don the Goron mask and pursue him, by rolling into him at high speed. Goht's running speed increases as he takes damage, so does the speed of his attacks, and the number of obstacles that litter the cavern. The alternative of simply waiting on the side and shooting him with arrows whenever he nears is extremely boring by comparison, but easier.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The second half of the battle with Stallord plays out akin to an on-rails pursuit. Link has to chase him, by using the Spinner to ride the rails lining the arena and the central column. Stallord's speed increases as he takes damage, along with the number of spikes, forcing Link to jump between rails, to avoid them.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Riku's first encounter with the Commantis in The Grid takes place while he's riding a light cycle and alternates between him chasing it and it chasing him, using the cycle's guns or light ribbons to damage it respectively.
  • Action 52: Micro Mike.
  • The Turbo Tunnel and Clinger Winger levels in Battle Toads. Both are Scrappy Levels, and the latter is unwinnable with two players.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising:
    • The Air Battle in Chapter 14 has Thanatos and Phosphora transformed into a glowing dragon and lightning bolt respectively duking it out for the first half or so before Phosphora takes Thanatos out. Pit can't actually take pot-shots at them, however.
    • The fight against the Chariot Master has each of you riding one of the unicorns around the racetrack.
  • Justice League Heroes: The Flash has an unusual variation on the trope; Flash and his Arch-Enemy, Zoom, have a high speed battle on foot. The first part of the boss fight consists of running on water at high speeds with both combatants attempting to loop back around and strike the other from behind.
  • Freedom Planet: Two boss battles (none of them the final one, though), have battles likes these styled after those of Sonic Advance 2. The first is against General Serpentine's Robo-Panther, and the second is a final match against Syntax with an added laser Advancing Wall of Doom.
  • The very first segment of gameplay in Astral Chain has the Player Character riding their police motorcycle through a tunnel to get to the scene of an emergency, only for enemies to show up, requiring them to use their bike's mounted machinegun and later their rapid-fire pistol to take them out.
  • No Straight Roads features the boss battle against the megastar group 1010 on top of a battleship, which is immediately preceded by a level that involves jumping on flying cars.
  • In Transformers: Devastation, the first phase of Blitzwing's fight involves the Autobots fighting him while driving across the bridge in their vehicle modes while Blitzwing switches between his jet and tank modes over the course of battle.
  • The third stage of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan features the Turtles fighting Foot soldiers atop a series of moving vehicles driving along the highway in pursuit of the car that April is in.
  • ULTRAKILL has one in level 4-4. After forcing V2 to attempt to retreat again, V1 gives chase out of the hole in the wall, leading to a gunfight while the two slide down the side of a pyramid at the typically ridiculous speed of everything else in the game. To give an idea of how fast they are going, when V2 loses control on defeat and slams headfirst into the ground at the bottom of the pyramid there is barely anything left but a large stain and an arm.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Robopanther

In the end of Fortune Night, Lilac and her friends face Serpentine riding on the Robopanther, a huge panther-like mecha, in a high-speed, fast-paced, side-scrolling battle.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (7 votes)

Example of:

Main / HighSpeedBattle

Media sources:

Report