Bosses From Hell v2.0 - Review by Catastrophe

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Catastrophe
Retired Staff / Community Team Member
Posts: 2558
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2012 2:44 am

Bosses From Hell v2.0 - Review by Catastrophe

#1

Post by Catastrophe » Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:43 am

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Created by Arkore
Project Background: Bosses From Hell, as the name implies, is a boss fighting mod. It features a roster of over 30 bosses, 32 arenas, and a new arsenal of weapons. The neat thing is that all bosses work on a "tier" system - as in for every ten bosses defeated, you enter the next "tier" which unlocks new weapons, bosses, and ramps up the difficulty.

Initial Impression: On my first connect I was instantly offended by the default hud. I don't understand why this mod uses that atrocious visor hud when it takes up so much god damn space with useless info. Anyways, I switched to the fullscreen hud and joined the game, the rules of the game was simple to understand. Everyone gets in the arena, if you die, then you get put into a waiting room, and if everyone dies, then the waiting room is opened and everyone gets another try. If you actually manage to beat the boss by some miracle, then everyone goes to a central hub map where they can restock and battle the next boss.

The bosses themselves seemed to be impossible to beat with more than eight players, but I love challenges like that. Unfortunately, the server host thought otherwise and basically rcon'd every boss. Way to go. So, I decided to give it a full play through with several friends to experience the project fully. A majority of this review is based on that experience. (Yes, we played the ENTIRE thing)

Content:
Bosses
A majority of the bosses are essentially Realm 667 rips that have been enlarged to seem more boss-like. Now, there's nothing wrong with R667 rips as long as the monsters have been edited. Unfortunately, most of the bosses's modifications boil down to BIGGUR, FASTER, STRONGER PROJECTILES! Aside from health and size, there is little to no difference between some bosses compared to their R667 counterparts. Which is a damn shame because it makes most of the minimally edited bosses almost fodder-like. I'd say about two bosses for every tier (1 tier = 10 bosses) have given us trouble. The strategy to beat a majority of the bosses is basically barraging them with the most OP gun at hand while circle-strafing so they can't fight back - which is quite boring. Some of the bosses do have minions they bring out to assist them in a fight, but they come out based on time - so what ends up happening is that the boss dies before the minions even come out to help them... Which is just a bad mechanic.

Another flaw with the bosses is how their health scales. When there are 8+ players, the fodder bosses take FOREVER to kill because their health scales linearly with the amount of players in the server. For every player in the server, the boss gains additional health which equates to its' base health multiplied by 1.5. To put things into perspective, if a boss had an initial health of 20,000, a server with ten people would result in at least 100,000 health. Holy shit. Which is unfair because the maps don't even seem like it can fit more than ten people. I'm not saying that it's too hard - rather it wastes so much time because of how pointlessly high the bosses health is. I think the bosses health would've scaled better if it was based on an exponentially decaying graph, where the health gained would have diminishing returns as the players increase.

Aside from all these flaws, the challenging bosses are fun as hell - they involve a lot of teamwork, map awareness, and quick thinking. The most notable foe was the Arachnophyte(Map30). We failed to beat this boss over 40 times just because of how crazy its attacks were - and it required the utmost communication and coordination to beat. It was able to shoot BFG balls, spray hitscan, create flames that instakills, and teleport behind anyone at will. But this difficulty is what makes beating the boss so satisfying, and I wish more bosses were designed like this. I also thoroughly enjoyed all of tier 4 wherea lot of crazy stuff happens. But I will let you guys play it yourself and find out.
Weapons

You gain weapons as you progress through each tier. Tier 1 = Bullet-based weapons, Tier 2 = explosive weapons, Tier 3 = Plasma weapons, and Tier 4 = BFG-esque weapons. You initially begin with three new weapons on each tier, but after beating the first five bosses of a tier, you gain access to a stronger fourth weapon as well. The weapons themselves decent, aside from tier 1 where most of them are pretty ghetto. The main problem with weapons is how they suffer from power creeping, which basically means getting new weapons from a higher tier usually results in your current weapons being useless for the rest of the game. And unfortunately, some of the "better" weapons are just too strong. For instance, the first five stages of tier 3 can be easily beaten just by spamming this gun, and for the rest of tier 3 that's essentially your go-to gun.

Ok now for the irritating things about weapons. When you restart a round, you have to scavenge for ammo every fucking time. Why doesn't it just automatically refill your ammo? That's a terrible way to balance a map. Another problem is that the pistols priority is too high, when you run out of ammo for a gun, you switch to the god damn pistol even when you have fully loaded super chaingun. Oh ya and if you join mid-game you are so fucked because the mod doesn't automatically give you the weapons everyone else has - you're stuck to scavenging shitty weapons until you go back to the hub. You also get a jetpack that's ghetto as fuck. I can't begin to describe how clunky this garbage is, you all need to go in there and use it yourself. But be careful! You can't see what's in front of you half the time. Oh and the nuke teamkills. Also punching takes ammo. Lol.

Additionally in the hub map, new tiers give you access to more armor, ie green and blue armor. But that doesn't matter because you are given a power-up that grants 250% HP and 250% armor starting from tier one - which renders the majority of bosses prior to tier 3 to being downright fodder. Like really, I have never seen a single sphere destroy the balance of an entire wad this badly before. That sphere needs to be removed from tier 1 and 2 ASAP.
Maps
Most of the maps actually look decent. Gameplay wise though, they're rather bland as almost all of them are just arenas. It would have been cool if some of the bosses could manipulate the map. Some people complained about jutting rocks that hinder player movements, but I say that adds to the difficulty of the map. Players should always be aware of their surroundings.

I also like the simplicity of the hub maps as they progress rather nicely. One thing I'd work on is adding a system similar to Stronghold, so that to exit the hub, atleast 50% of players need to be near a portal. Because currently, one guy can exit the hub before players have enough time to gear up.

Aside from this, I don't really have much to say about the maps. Most of the entertainment comes from the bosses really.

Rating:
Fun Factor - 8.5 / 10
Balance - 6 / 10
Creativity - 7 / 10
Replay Value - 4 / 10

6.5 / 10 - Worth a try (4 players preferred)

Awesome Possum
 
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RE: Bosses From Hell v2.0 - Review by Catastrophe

#2

Post by Awesome Possum » Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:53 am

Good work again with the reviews! I also have to ask - is this one worth beating? I remember playing it but haven't had any good times with it. I didn't really progress past the first couple of bosses without stopping...
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Catastrophe
Retired Staff / Community Team Member
Posts: 2558
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2012 2:44 am

RE: Bosses From Hell v2.0 - Review by Catastrophe

#3

Post by Catastrophe » Thu Aug 20, 2015 2:11 am

Awesome Possum wrote: Good work again with the reviews! I also have to ask - is this one worth beating? I remember playing it but haven't had any good times with it. I didn't really progress past the first couple of bosses without stopping...
Thanks! Currently, it's not bad for a playthrough. I'd say it's better if you play in a group because single player is nearly impossible on tier 3.

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