Throughout my years of gaming something has bugged me, I couldn't say what or how or pin it down to a particular game, it was just gnawing at me; and recently I finally discovered what it was with the bargain bucket purchase of Ninja Gaiden II (...contains strong bloody violence were the only words I needed to read, not exactly a poster child for gaming I admit...) and I was happily slashing, dismembering and eviscerating my way through the game when, in a moment if clarity, I discovered exactly what my bug was:

End of level guardians.

Call them what you want, big bosses, end of level bosses, they have one thing in common; they annoy me and make me say 'yuck' whenever I play a game that contains them. Back in the realms of the past, video games were as linear as a Roman road (look up linear in the dictionary and you will see the cover of Double Dragon from the Spectrum 128k I assure you) so it was necessary to include these bosses or guardians to stop the game play falling into a monotonous foot dragging experience. I accept this, having kicked the arses of the bizarrely coloured bosses on the aforementioned Double Dragon many times in my youth. But this is the modern era, the time of the open world, free roaming, sandbox video game, game play is already unique and varied; even fairly rigid and linear first person shooters of the past decade (Killzone, the Call of Duty series, Medal of Honor) have pretty much dispensed with the 'stupidly tough nut' at the end of each level as actually getting through the levels themselves was challenging enough, World at War on hardened springs to mind – the last thing I want to have to do is confront some unrealistic superhuman at the end of twenty minutes of difficult play. It was at this juncture that I realized exactly why I had stopped playing Gun on my old X-box. McAllister, an end of level bad guy so heinously difficult that in the end I just gave up. Not very courageous or 'stick at it' but fudge it, it wasn't fun.

So, thanks to Ninja Gaiden II, I have finally realised exactly what was bugging me. In my opinion anyway, I feel that in the modern gaming environment, end of level 'guardians' are pretty much redundant (so was the tick tack toe game against a fish in Alex Kid many moons ago.....) and their inclusion seems to be a major 'cop out' as it were, a lazy and hackneyed way to round off a level rather than just making levels challenging and varied enough to dispense with a boss.