Tis the season to get the snot beat out of you by the toughest ice bosses out there! Thankfully this list is here to tell you who you should be working to avoid when you’re out and about on your video game journey.
Remember that as pretty as snow is when it falls, as is ice when it forms, it can be deadly! Also it really hurts when you get pelted in the face with a snowball!
Thardus – Metroid Prime
“Thardus is a towering, sentient creature of stone charged with Phazon radiation. Thardus attacks its prey through a variety of well-developed techniques. It can hurl huge boulders at its prey, or curl itself into a gargantuan bone-crushing ball. Thardus is also able to encase its targets in ice, making it an extremely dangerous foe.”
Let me check… gigantic, sentient, hard as stone, curls into bone-crushing ball and can freeze it’s prey in place! You can bet your last euro on it that I was ruined by Thardus more than once twice ten times … okay a hell of a lot of times. Like the rest of the bosses and monsters in this list, Thardus is smart and deadly. Defeating him requires you to be able to search out his weak spots while making sure your own defences are up and ou’re prepared to shoot down incoming rock projectiles and dodge his rolling attacks.
Just when you think you’ve got him on the ropes, he calls down a blizzard hindering your vision even further.
Ie monsters fight dirty and speaking of fighting dirty…
Mr. Freeze – Batman: Arkham City
I actually found the Mr. Freeze fight in Batman: Arkham City to be one of the hardest encounters in the game. Freeze is a pawn, trapped in the prison city and used by the Penguin and Victor Strange. Desperate to recover his cryogenically frozen wife, Nora, Freeze enters into a deal with you to help develop a cure, you find traces of Ra’s Al Ghul’s blood and he’ll create the medicine.
Freeze has other plans though and after developing the concoction turns on you with extreme force. Possessing battle armor, sensor jammer and heat seeking drones, you need to think fast to take him down but don’t think the same trick is enough to fool this brilliant mind.
Freeze is as cool when it comes to his tactics as well as his body temperature and you’ll have to tackle him using every gadget in your arsenal and your surroundings not to mention deliver several beatings to bring him down.
Deerclops – Never Alone
I like deers! I don’t like cyclopes! I am terrified of the deerclops!
This one eyed forest dwelling beast appears in winter and will attack and kill everything around it. In Don’t Starve, the player tries to survive… the deerclops tries to not let you do that! Oh and it that does that exceptionally.
Possessing a pretty healthy stamina and the strength to match it, the reward for taking one down might seem worth it but this mutated Bambi eating monster won’t go down easy. When it’s blood chilling cry is heard, if you’re not prepared to fight then you better be at least ready to run!
Oh and if you do manage to kill one don’t get comfortable! Deerclops will be back in three to six days and your own warning will be that horrifying call.
Shiva – Final Fantasy XIV
Across all of the Final Fantasy games where summoning a powerful creature/deity/obese Chocobo, Shiva has remained my favourite. That is until I encountered her in Final Fantasy XIV.
Retaining both her beauty and ferocity, the fight with primal Shiva is one that requires your party to be in perfect sync if you’ve any chance of defeating her.
Lorelei, Elite Four – Pokémon Red
You might be thinking Lorelei is a little strange to be on this list but let me explain why she deserves to here ahead of other ice-based bosses and baddies.
Do you see that somewhat sinister looking Dewgong and that Lapras giving you the dead eye? Yeah! I still have nightmares facing those two in Pokémon Red!
Lorelei is the first member of the Elite Four you encounter and battle. As an eager Pokémon trainer, younger me went into the fight with my innocence (naivety) and hopes for a Poké-Master title coming down the line. I left it changed! A broken man!
Her sprite in the first games lulls you into a false sense of security – she’s the first fight, the game designers are bound to go easy on me with her and her Pokémon. No! No they are not! Lorelei works on stopping you dead in your tracks by freezing you and then chipping away at your healthy while you stand their defenseless.
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
