Gears of War – General RAAM
Frustrating Boss Fights That Almost Spoiled a Great Game
Few boss fights are so ingrained in my memory as General RAAM in the first Gears of War game. The most frustrating thing about this fight is that it highlights the inherent weaknesses of basing an entire game’s movement design on a cover-based system. General RAAM also shows you just how incompetent your AI companion can be, all the while just being a general pain in the behind. At the start of the fight, Dom will reveal his brilliant strategy of running headfirst at RAAM, a strategy which invariably ends up with him being knocked down immediately. The annoyance doesn’t stop there either, as General RAAM serves as a real greatest hits of terrible boss cliches. He’ll regularly put up a shield making him invulnerable, pin you down with a huge machine gun and repeat the same dialogue over and over again.
You fire shot after drawn out shot from your sniper rifle, sometimes hitting the swarm of enemies shielding RAAM, sometimes hitting the ugly brute himself. He inevitably comes moving towards you, meaning that you have to rely on the game’s finicky-at-times movement systems, usually resulting in you getting shot in the back of the skull over and over again. Reviving Dom is both crucial and pointless given that as soon as he stands up he charges once again into the barrel of RAAM’s machine gun. The main reason RAAM will go down in the annals of annoying boss fights is because he restricts movement in a game that is all about constantly moving to new cover. The following cinematic is awesome though, going a small way to make up for one hell of a stressful boss fight.
