The Most Massive Video Game Bosses
One thing we love about video games is that they often let us accomplish incredible feats, making us feel like total badasses—and nothing is more badass than taking down giant bosses, David and Goliath style. Here's a list of the most massive video game bosses—the really big bads we feel like gods amongst insects after taking down.
Titan — Final Fantasy XV
Like the titans of Greek mythology, Final Fantasy XV's Titan is—as the name implies—absolutely massive. Also going by the name of Archaean, Titan is in charge of controlling Earth, and sports some pretty brutal rock formations bursting out of his right eye socket. Lucky for us, Titan becomes our loyal ally after we survive his attempt at pummeling us into dirt—which is great, because he makes a much better friend than enemy.
Darkside — Kingdom Hearts
Sora might not be very big, but the Pureblood Heartless known as Darkside makes the Kingdom Hearts protagonist look like a miniature M&M.
Darkside is one boss that's tough to shake — appearing in Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Kingdom Hearts Coded, and Kingdom Hearts X. He's huge. He's jacked. He has a giant heart-shaped hole in his torso. He's got yellow eyes that'd put Scut Farkus to shame. (So help us God—yellow eyes!) He's pretty much the embodiment of evil. Did we mention he's huge and jacked?
As far as Sora is concerned, size doesn't really matter — at least if you've got a giant sword...er, key.
Metal Gear Ray — Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Giant robots with nuclear capabilities—that's what the Metal Gear series does best. (Well, that and confuse us with convoluted plot twists and borderline nonsensical story lines, which we admittedly can't get enough of.) Metal Gear RAY is one such giant robot, though it technically lacks nuclear capabilities.
RAY is big and badass, designed to hunt down derivatives of Metal Gear REX, a biped which certainly does not lack nuclear capabilities. Through Metal Gear's history, RAY has appeared in four forms: manned, unmanned, a modified unmanned variant sporting a tail, and an unknown variant manned by Liquid Ocelot. The form doesn't matter—massive, amphibious robot war machines are always badass.
Kraid — Super Metroid
When it comes to pure girth, it's hard for any video game boss to challenge Super Metroid's Kraid for the title of most-overweight boss in the universe.
When we first see Kraid, one can be forgiven for thinking: "Sure, Kraid's big. But he's not that big." A few seconds later, however, this overweight alien emerges further from the underground, revealing his entire body—which sports the kind of gut that'd make Trailer Park Boys' Philadelphia Collins jealous. We don't know much about Kraid, other than that he's a space pirate, he's a master of digging, and he's big—really, really big. He's so massive, in fact, that he takes up multiple screens!
You know what they say: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. This holds especially true if "they" house rocks in their massive bellies.
Cronos — God of War 3
The God of War series is no stranger to massive bosses. If the entire premise of a game revolves around slaughtering Greek gods and legends, you know you're in for some boss battles of epic proportions. No boss in the series, however, is bigger than Cronos in God of War 3.
Cronos is so massive that even a jacked-up God-slaying machine like Kratos is small enough to be crushed between the oldest Titan's thumb and forefinger. When Kratos climbs up Cronos, he's proportionally as large as a flea crawling up your own arm. Kratos is so small, by comparison, that one of the most effective attacks on the angry Titan is to hack away at his fingernail. But as anyone who's had the stomach flu knows, even the smallest germ can cripple the largest of men—something Cronos learns the hard way, receiving the most ferocious form of Montezuma's revenge after rather stupidly ingesting Kratos, also known as PlayStation's most brutal bringer of death.
Cronos may be gigantic, but he's not too clever.
Mehrunes Dagon — Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Mehrunes Dagon, recurring character in Elder Scrolls lore and primary bad guy in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is big, and he's mean—so mean, in fact, that he's an enemy of all mortal races. His body is satanic red, with markings all over it, and he comes packed with four arms! (For when two arms just aren't mean enough.) His primary goal is to conquer the world, eradicate the weak and enslave the mighty. Sounds like a nice guy, right?
Luckily, this Daedric Prince of Oblivion isn't as tough as he makes himself out to be. A handful of well-placed arrows to the knee and Mehrunes' days of destruction are over. Well, at least for now—we'll have to wait and see what Elder Scrolls VI has in store for us.
Riftworm — Gears of War 2
Remember the ridiculous killer worms in the 1990 sci-fi thriller Tremors? Of course you do. Now multiply the size of those worms by about one thousand, and you've got a Riftworm.
Gears of War 2's Riftworm is the very definition of massive. This godlike giant is 8-10 miles long, and a half-mile wide. In fact, the terrifying worm is so huge, the only way to defeat it is to go inside it, and cut away at its multiple hearts' arteries with a chainsaw—a mission I'm sure any one of us would willingly volunteer for. (Not.) A real destroyer of cities, the Riftworm makes us glad we don't live on planet Sera.
Deathwing — World of Warcraft
No list of massive video game bosses would be complete without at least one dragon, and few can rival World of Warcraft's Deathwing in size and scale. (Get it?)
Deathwing's got a lot of titles. Officially known as Deathwing the Destroyer, he was once called Neltharion the Earth-Warder, while also holding such titles as the Aspect of Death, The Worldbreaker, The Black Scourge, and Big Bad Fire Dragon of Death. (Okay, so we made one of those up.) The black wyrm has enough titles to make even Daenerys Targaryen jealous, and we're pretty sure that even Game of Thrones' Mother of Dragons couldn't tame this beast.
Deathwing may be terrifying, but players who purchased the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector's Edition were lucky enough to get the Lil' Deathwing companion—a miniature version of Deathwing who's definitely not massive, definitely very cute, and definitely not a rapper.
MAWLR — Killzone 3
Forget about Metal Gear REX or Metal Gear RAY. Killzone 3's MAWLR is a real military-grade weapon of mass destruction. (Though we're not saying that we wouldn't like to see the Metal Gear nuke-walkers and Killzone war machine square off.)
MAWLRs are 280-meter Helghan death machines, capable of destroying both ground and air forces with a cornucopia of installed weaponry. They're walking death machines, in the form of a 10-story-tall battleship on legs. As the name implies, the MAWLR is good at mauling—by which we mean it's good at eradicating everything in its path. The giant mechs are so hardcore, they can even climb vertical rock faces.
Red Eye — Lost Planet 2
Pop quiz: what's over a thousand feet long, has hundreds of spiny limbs, locates its prey with a beard of tentacles, and is the largest of all Category-G Akrid? If you guessed Lost Planet 2's Red Eye, good for you. This giant insect-like monster has loads of little eyes covering its jaws, which house no shortage of teeth. Overall, this massive boss is just plain nasty, and is one big bug we'd certainly like to squash—especially if we were the size of Cronos in God of War 3, and could just step on the damn thing.
Galactus — Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Fans of Marvel's Fantastic Four undoubtedly need little explanation as to why one of that universe's primary bad guys makes his way onto this list.
In Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Galactus is positively massive. And by "massive," we mean can-crush-the-world-between-both-his-hands massive. We mean massive on a galactic scale—hence the name. Players are tasked with shutting down this Marvel villain in the final stage of the game, which is no easy feat, given his triple-quarter-pounder-with-cheese-sized health bar and the countdown to failure always present. No big deal—it's not like the fate of the world lies in the balance or anything. No pressure.
The tables turn in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, however. Players with save data from the original Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the same console can unlock Galactus Mode — giving us the chance to destroy Earth as this massive baddie. Sometimes it feels good to be bad, and it definitely feels good to destroy the world as Galactus. (Just please don't tell the police we said that.)
Storm King — Demon's Souls
Everyone knows by now that Dark Souls predecessor Demon's Souls is brutally hard. Like utterly, impossibly, throw-your-DualShock-3-through-your-TV hard. The last thing players need to go up against in this death simulator is a giant manta ray storm god, with a bunch of smaller-but-still-quite-big manta rays riding on its back. Yet that's exactly what players are treated to in the form of location 4-3's boss, named Storm King.
Storm King is so big that he blots out nearly the entire sky when he soars over you. Really, the only thing we can do is duck and hide behind the stone walls of some ruined buildings, taking our chances, and peppering its massive body with arrows, any chance we get. When the words "the demon was destroyed" finally appear on the screen in capital letters, this is one moment where we truly feel like giant slayers. Giant flying manta ray slayers.
Stone Idol Titan — Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Players who boot up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow don't have to wait very long before they fight their first massive boss, the Ice Titan. One may be forgiven for assuming that things can't get much worse—or, at least, bosses can't get much larger—but you know what they say about people who assume.
The Stone Idol Titan in the beginning of Chapter 2 positively dwarfs the Ice Titan. After a lengthy cutscene, in which we witness a pile of rubble transform into a massive, Aztec-esque living statue of godlike proportions, players are challenged to take down the game's largest boss. And believe us, it ain't easy. The process involves returning some giant rocks to sender, climbing up the Titan's legs and laying waste to some kneecaps, before ultimately shoving a Dark Crystal through the big momma's crown.
Players really looking for a challenge can attempt this stage's trial, which is to defeat the Stone Idol Titan in two minutes. Good luck with that.
Iustitia — Bayonetta
We're not entirely sure what Iustitia is, but we're positive it's gigantic. And weird.
Bayonetta's boss Iustitia is some strange conglomeration of faces—15 in total—and tentacles, all rolled up into some weird, massive ball of bad guy. Or gal. (Again, we're really not sure.) The monster's adult faces feature huge tongues with children's faces at the end, sporting expressions of euphoria, rage and despair. (We're not alone in thinking this is pretty weird stuff, right?) Rendering Iustitia even more disturbing is the fact that it only makes guttural gurgling noises, and only speaks — with a child's voice — to Bayonetta after being defeated. (Yeah, definitely weird.)
Everything about the massive freakshow that is Iustitia bothers us.
Necrogiant — Painkiller
One might be forgiven for having never heard of Necrogiant, the first boss in People Can Fly's 2004 first-person shooter Painkiller—but believe us when we say that he is, in fact, a giant.
Standing somewhere in the vicinity of 200 feet tall, Necrogiant provides a large target to shoot at—and shoot at him you must, if you wish to take him down. There isn't anything particularly remarkable about this boss, other than the fact that he's one of Lucifer's generals, and has the ability to throw tornados at you. And like real life tornados, you don't want to be anywhere near them—they'll kill you almost instantly.
The Guardian — Darksiders 2
Throwing around a giant hammer like it's a toothbrush and packing some hand-cannon heat, the Guardian is one massive, corrupted construct you don't want to mess with.
The Forge Lands' final boss in Darksiders 2, the Guardian wasn't supposed to be bad. In fact, it was constructed in an attempt to counter Corruption, and was only turned evil after an earthquake cut off access to the foundry where it was being constructed—sadly turning this would-be gentle giant into a right pain in the heart stone. Don't let the Guardian's lack of a health bar scare you, though—even giant constructions of corrupted energy can be felled. (Just don't let him glitch out on you and permanently block your path!)
Gongen Wyzen — Asura's Wrath
First there was Wyzen. Then there was Vajra Wyzen. All pale in comparison to this Asura's Wrath villian's final and most powerful form: Gongen Wyzen.
Gongen Wyzen is beyond massive—his size and girth is straight-up planetary. Capable of destroying Asura with the mere tip of his finger, this Deity can only be defeated by channeling all of Asura's might into a six-armed super punch straight into said fingertip. Fortunately for planet Gaia, Wyzen's fingertip is apparently his weak spot, causing his whole body to explode in a supercharged chain reaction. (Who knew?)
We feel a bit weird about destroying Gongen Wyzen, as his final form looks more than a little bit like a planet-sized statue of Buddha.
Any Colossi — Shadow of the Colossus
As the name implies, Shadow of the Colossus is all about slaying colossal monsters. That's pretty much all you do in Team Ico's legendary PlayStation 2 classic.
Shadow of the Colossus was the first game that really made us feel small. The world was big and open, the atmosphere and story were both minimalistic, but nothing made us feel smaller than encountering one of the many Colossi roaming the scarce world.
All of the game's bosses are massive. We're talking really massive. Even the smallest Colossi is still, well...colossal. Defeating these bosses often requires clever thinking and climbing up their furry parts. (Get your mind out of the gutter—we're talking about beards and stuff.)
Perhaps what makes Shadow of the Colossus so special is the fact that, after we slay one of the Colossi, we don't feel very good about it. It's often a rather sad experience, making us feel less like gods and more like murderers. Regardless, the game is an absolute must-play for video game enthusiasts everywhere, and features some of the most impressively massive bosses in video game history.