Boss Battle BOOM!

Here's part three of this mini series! This time, no more gimmickal boss stereotypes, no more projecting, I will simply show you six of my favorite boss battles of recent memory:

 Jasper Batt Jr

1 

As the final boss of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Jasper has a laughable and over the top reason for acting revenge; Travis managed to kill of his father and 2 brothers, who were the other shareholders of the pizza company owning Santa Destroy.

With his 3 forms each getting more ridiculous, the battle can either be a breeze on Easy, or a serious challenge on Normal. Add in a kickass theme and you've got a worthy yet quirky foe.

Orphan of Kos

2

Rounding up the end of The Old Hunters, Fishing Hamlet is the final area where intimidating fish men will fuck you up, especially the giants. At the beginning of an ocean, a child is born from what seems to be Kos, or Kosm's corpse, and it's desperate for parenting.

In fact, the Orphan of Kos is so pissed of at your presence that he uses his massive placenta to break you. He is my favorite (final) boss fight of Bloodborne, has a delicious twisted lore background, a great design, and with his high difficulty, he is easily one of the best boss battles ever for me.

Sigma

3

The rebelling Reploid leader known as Sigma has a tragic past and a relentless tendency to keep returning from the death with a new body in order to rule over mankind. In part 4, he is the mastermind that manipulates Repliforce and Maverick Hunters to go to war with each other.

His 3 battle phases are varied, challenging and scary, and especially his final form is an intimidating and confusing battle, which is comprised of several grotesque Sigma forms which was actually epic in design back then, that it's still a fight well worth revisiting, despite the terrible voice acting and dialogue of preparing to become "space dust".

Jack Norman

4

Resident Evil is well known for it's great creature design, and has seen plenty of memorable boss fights, such as Nemesis, Birkin, Krauser and Albert Wesker. But a lesser familiar final boss just might be my favorite in terms of challenge, score and buildup.

Of course Chris's "Disco ball" quote is amazing, but the epic score, the pain in the ass on Infinite mode, the teleporting movements and the realization that we are dealing with the most advanced tyrant yet makes Jack Norman a worthy way to finish of Revelations.

Death

5

Castlevania is another franchise well known for it's boss fights, and there are many incarnations of Dracula, but also others like Medusa, the Mummy, the Creature(Frankenstein) and the most prominent and prince of darkness's right hand is Death.

My favorite incarnation of him is in Dawn of Sorrow, where a new sick battle song accompanies the difficult fight, as he uses his scythe and sickles to keep you running, while occassionally morphing into a monstrosity further.

Dark Samus

6

Sometimes, all you need to carry a boss battle is it's theme song.

Despite being a cliche clone version of a protagonist like SA-X before it, Dark Samus is actually the final boss Metroid Prime from the first title, and remains the main antagonist throughout each part until the very end of Corruption.

Lenovo ThinkPad

 

Let's talk about my current work a bit.

My current client is Capgemini, which is a global consultancy and IT corporation operating on 3 continents and having 180,000 employees in over 40 countries. Being detached through my own IT company, I have been working there since last year's november.

The team rotates between Capgemini's NL headquarters and Sogeti's NL headquarters, which is a sister company and the original name for the whole organization, as envisioned by the late Serge Kampf.

While we perform local support towards end users, we all work with Lenovo's ThinkPad brand, which are business oriented notebooks that are designed to look like Japanese lunchboxes, also known as Bento.

Interesting trivia also says that Lenovo's ThinkPad series are the only laptops certified for use on the International Space Station. The Chinese company have good success with them towards companies and school because of their durable design and aftermarket replacement parts.

The brand splits up further into the subseries of X, T and W. The X's are intended for traveling and mobile usage, the T's are for the majority of professional employees, and the W's are for high end usage, with intended goals being for instance programming development, and managing virtual machines.

The ThinkPad I personally use for work is a T450, which has an Intel i5 2.30 GHz processor, a 250 SSD, 8GB of RAM and W7 Pro 64 bit. It has a functional internal camera, a smooth trackpad and a suitable touchpad. I had to get used to the Fn-Ctrl association, but then I learned.

What I like about ThinkPad and Lenovo in general is that they have developed an interest from me into notebooks, even though I got myself an old HP Elitebook 2530p already as a gift, unfortunately, the license of Windows 8 on it has expired, and upgrading towards 8.1 or 10 is not possible.

I might have to renew it, or perhaps go into uncharted territory further and install Linux on it. But to get back on-topic with ThinkPad, I'm glad to have gotten knowledge and experience supporting them, and yes, they are good companions in the big world of information and communications technology.

Pokémon Go

 

Global hype can be utterly insane. Recently having been labeled as the most downloadable and most profitable app on mobile phones in the industry, Pokémon Go made the headlines and will surely be remembered for several reasons.

First, it gave people a great social reason to go outdoors, look around, catch Pokémon and stop at special spots where you might learn interesting trivia and visual standouts.

Second, the brand/IP co-owned by Game Freak and Nintendo has easily helped this mobile app gain global popularity, and although the developer Niantic published Ingress previously, Pokémon Go is by leaps and bounds more recognized.

Third, keeping in mind that the update where you will be able to trade the pocket monsters is likely on the way, in the mean time, people battling against each other acting like fictional trainers is what keeps the fans coming back towards this madness.

However, because of the massive popularity, the product has also spotted various incidents around the world, such as crazy people playing the mobile app while driving on the highway, or Japanese teenagers walking around the radioactive site of Fukushima in order to progress, and many more crazy events.

Situations like going with a very large group of people around "hot zones" of Pokéspots such as urban cities, beaches and graveyards, but also when speaking of the fact that the fans are constantly glued to their screens while not minding their surroundings has created hilarious, bizarre and dangerous happenings.

And on a minor less relevant note, the mobile app simply cannot compare gameplay wise to the main series of handheld duo released games. Pokémon Go could be called a lite edition, but when one looks at the social aspect, it's easily overwhelming.

This unexpected and incredible historical event just might be the only push that Nintendo and her 2nd parties needed in order to get really comfortable with mobile releases in the future, while of course separating the gaming experiences through the handheld and console markets.