The Dead Rising Franchise is well known for being a challenge to master even at the highest level; and the psychopath bosses are one of the main factors to that difficulty. But these are the ones that truly make the games frustrating to beat.
Dead Rising:
- The first game gives us the three escaped convicts in the jeep with a mounted machine gun. Insanely fast in their jeep, with the machine gun for long-distance attacks and a bat for close-up damage if they don't decide to just run you over. Add onto that the first time you meet them, you've got to rescue their target while helping at least one helpless woman at night, you'll be thrown into fits of rage any time you hear the opening lines of their battle song. note Oh and to make it all the more worse? They respawn each night until Case 8-1.
- Cletus is brutal: his shotgun has a kick, and by the time you get back to your feet, he blasts you down again. If you try to fire back, he tends to be quicker to the draw unless you have great marksmanship skills. And if you try to hop the counter, he simply tosses you back over. Given that his store has little cover, this is one of the most frustrating bosses of the game.note
- Adam the clown is a HUGE pain in the ass; his chainsaw deals a ridiculous amount of damage, making melee attacks dangerous, he often blocks bullets and is fast to boot. His balloon attack is when he's most vulnerable, as shooting his balloon before he finishes blowing it up will temporarily stun him. Taking the Heavy Machine Gun from the Convicts and baiting this attack will let you shred him in seconds if your aim is decent.
- Kent is nothing more than an annoyance from the moment he first appears, but his boss fight is notable for the amount of stress it can put a player under. The boss fight itself is not hard, but if Frank is even one minute late, he loses all his weapons and becomes chained to the fountain for the entire fight. His jump kick is usually not a high damaging attack, but if it bounces you into a wall and back it can knock off almost half of your health in one hit because of a glitch with the hit box. Additionally, to compound the time problems that can result in the previously mentioned disabilities, Kindell’s betrayal and Carlito’s bombs are active during this time.
- True Eye cult leader Sean Keanen is also a real pain to take down. Despite being in his sixties, he moves very fast, and his sword dishes out a ton of damage, and he has a nasty sliding kick which can close the distance if you somehow got far away from him.
- Brock Mason, the final boss, stands out even amongst the competition, as he has a near-unescapable one-hit-kill grab, blocks nearly everything, and you have to fight him bare-handed. Making matters worse, if you lose to him, you have to fight a rail-shooter bossfight against a tank to get back to him. There's a way to exploit his AI to make the fight easy (he can't block when he jumps down from the turret, and hops back on the turret if you hit him with a jumpkick) but without that knowledge — or if you don't want to exploit a bug — he's insanely tough to beat.
Dead Rising 2:
Dead Rising 2 features boss battles just as infuriating as its predecessor. Really, take your pick. All of them suck if your experience level isn't high enough. The ones among the worst are listed below.- Randy Tugman, aside from being a thoroughly unpleasant individual, he's an obese man in a gimp mask who can run incredibly fast, and has a giant, pink chainsaw with ridiculously oversized range of attack, trying to defeat him with anything less than knife-gloves is practically suicide. He's also a Lightning Bruiser; his attacks do a lot of damage and will send Chuck flying bum-over-teakettle over the chapel pews. Even two players with laser swords could have trouble taking this guy down.
- Chef Antoine, who can block machine gun bullets with a fry pan. He's also a Cheating Bastard with some serious Hitbox Dissonance, can choke Chuck with an apple (an attack that deals surprisingly high damage), and periodically heals himself (this is actually his weakness, so slash him with the knife gloves while he's eating!). The only saving grace is that he's quite slow, so you can just run around until he decides to eat, then get some hits in, and having a few gun-toting survivors also helps.
- According to the devs of Off the Record, they actually toned down his difficulty for this release.
- The Militiamen are Paranoia Fuel incarnate. There are multiple of them to contend with, they all use high power sniper rifles that take MASSIVE chunks out of your health, and all of them are perched up in elevated positions that aren't the easiest places to get to. Every second you spend outside carries the risk of being killed in as little as 2 shots, making their spawn time a truly harrowing experience.
- The Twins. These lovely ladies take particular delight in mocking you every chance they get, and, despite wearing high heels, run incredibly fast. And they're equipped with katanas. Have fun! Making it worse is that most of the nearby healing items are alcohol and as such using too many without the right magazine on-hand will make the player character physically sick. And they're one of the few bosses that you actually need to defeat to beat the game. Thankfully, despite being a Dual Boss, you only need to kill one to win the battle.
- Seymour Redding is pain incarnate if you're not prepared, he's fast, his revolver is incredibly accurate and can also shoot ranged weapons out of your hands, his lasso has a ridiculously long range that can easily grab you from a high ledge, and takes a while to break out of. Easiest way to beat him is with flamethrower, as it will continously stun him and drain at least half of his health.
- Raymond Sullivan. This boss is INFURIATING if you don't know what to do. Guns are all but useless against him, his hand to hand combat skills will kill you in no time flat (not least of all because his uppercut (for some reason) randomly causes HP to One). In addition, any melee weapons you have will get knocked away if you try and use them against them (except the knife-gloves and tenderizer), and you fight him on a very tiny platform, from which it's easy to fall off into a sea of zombies, and which is also high enough to cause fall damage if you fall off (and if you were hit with the HP to One Uppercut...) There's only one path up to the platform as well, and the boss will camp it and attack you as you climb up if he can. If you're not on the platform, he'll shoot at you with a powerful gun and throw flares to call in air strikes, the latter of which can easily go unnoticed until the passing airplane blows the floor out from under you. And that's literal, the airstrikes leave holes in the floor of the arena that you can fall into the room below (which has an even bigger crowd of zombies then the main arena, mind you) and have to find the stairs.note
- Tyrone "TK" King. He has an excess of health, a difficult to dodge grapple attack that deals huge damage if you don't do the QTE in time (though he is left vulnerable if you manage to break free from the grapple), has a submachine gun which he'll use if you try and climb on the ledges, and if you go into the side areas, he'll activate fireworks which can be tough to avoid and will damage you and cause you to drop your current weapon. You also have Katie and Stacey to worry about, as you have to periodically turn a crank to keep them from dying. But that's not the worst part: the worst part is that all your equipment is taken from you before you begin the fight and there are only melee weapons in the arena, the best one being the cement saw, which will do good damage, but you'll rarely get enough time to rev it up and use it. note
