"What's your favorite boss battle from any game?"

(question stolen from InsideGaming twitter)
There are plenty of boss fights that are memorable to me, from Dark Dragon in Shining Force 1 to Mr. X from Streets of Rage 2 to Frank Fontaine in Bioshock. All of them had something different about them that I enjoyed.
However, I'm left to choose only one, and that would have to be GLaDOS from Portal. I started the game loving the cheerful little voice that came on in the room of each test chamber, helping to guide me through each puzzle and lead me closer to the prize of cake. However, each success led to increasingly dissuading remarks coming from my supposed helper. GLaDOS began to care less and less about my success, becoming bitingly apathetic towards my well-being as she led me into a firey pit. Someone who I once trusted has now become the thing I must destroy to get out of this terrible place.
Similiar occurrences happen in Halo 3 (with Cortana-Gravemind) and Bioshock (Frank Fontaine/Atlas), yet they never seemed to drive home as hard as GLaDOS did. There's no option to destroy Cortana herself (although she's right on the edge of Rampancy anyway), and Atlas/Fontaine gives himself away instead of denying it all or calling it Ryan's ploy to cloud the eyes of the player.
Or maybe it's simply because of GLaDOS' childlike voice that gets me.

Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope: 240 points

Enter the world of Kaleidoscope, a once richly colourful world that has fallen into disaster, stripped of all colour that once made it beautiful. You play as Tint, one of the residents that has chosen to remain the planet and help the wise men return colour to your home.
The game is simplistically beautiful, being a 2D side-scroller, and only gets more lovely with each colour orb little Tint finds spread throughout the game. Special powers are blessed with 3 colour orbs in the upper left: blue, yellow and red, which correspond with the X, Y and B buttons on the controller. Blue grants you the ability to run faster and push boulders into golems more quickly. Yellow allows you to float for a period of time to get to previously unobtainable ledges. Red forms a red bubble around Tint, giving him protection from certain projectiles. The A button is left simply for jumping and double-jumping.
The background music is quite simple, but soothing and not overbearing to the gameplay. Nothing great, but it's really not too bad.
I've always had a penchant for indie games, as they usually stray from the normal and show just how creative and beautiful games can really be.

The Misadventures of Mr Winterbottom

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom: 800 points.

You control Mr. P.B. Winterbottom on his adventures to obtain the Chronoberry Pie, travelling through time and space to do so. Plenty of addictive puzzles to keep one entertained, the overall theme is a tribute to silent black and white movies, even with added film grain.
Visually, Winterbottom is simple yet still appealing to the eyes. Layered 2-D graphics give it an almost 3-D effect, but isn't distracting in any sense. The design of Mr Winterbottom is a bit on the small side, yet comical in the way his seemingly stickly limbs, compared to the size of his giant head, flail around with jumps and waving with his umbrella.
The music itself is quite catching, also reminiscent of the silent-movie era, with a dark-slightly-cheerful feel to it.
Controls are extremely easy: Left stick to move, A to jump, A again to float, and X to swing your umbrella. The game allows you to make clones that aid in getting all the delectable pies on each level, which is done by holding the right trigger and moving around. You also have the choice of hitting your clones towards the pies. How you clear each puzzle is really up to you.
Sadly, I've seen the "make the clones to solve the puzzle" type thing before at Kongregate.com: The Company of Myself. After playing this simple flash game, I was intrigued by the complexity of making such a game in Flash, and hoped someone would see this game and be inspired to make something similiar for the XBox. Seems my hopes came true.

Bayonetta Interview from GI

So despite my raving about Bayonetta and its sexist ways, I tried out the demo to see if my bias was correct or not.
Bayonetta is a witch whose outfit is composed entirely of her hair, and shapeshifts it into magical attacks. From the short opening flashbacks, Bayonetta has seemingly woken up after a long period of time after some important events occurred, of which she no longer has memory of.
I have to admit, it's not as sexualized as I thought, but that's because I couldn't see a darn thing on the screen from all the flashiness and brilliant colours going on. Most of Bayonetta's attacks seem to fill the screen entirely, obscuring what's really happening. They're quite impressive to watch, but there's so many elements onscreen that it's hard to focus on anything, even the enemies, as they get lost behind the "pretty". Environments are beautifully done from what I've seen so far (and I say "so far" because I really don't plan on buying a button-smasher).
Game Informer happened to come in the mail right after I tried out the demo, and one article was an interview with Kamiya, the director of Bayonetta. I skimmed through it (as I have a dislike for that magazine) and had to roll my eyes at the fact that Kamiya tries to "play off" the sexist nature of the game by saying Bayonetta was designed by a woman. For someone from a country that openly allows the groping of women on their public trains and treats them terribly, does he really think that justifies it? I really don't think the designer really had any say in the matter BECAUSE she's a woman and had to do what her male superiors told her to. NO artistic freedom there. But, of course, to those unaware of the culture, they'll read this Kamiya interview and say "oh, of course it's not demeaning towards women, a woman designed her!" to which I will shake my head and walk away.

A lot of my posts are now gone, for the main reason that the purpose of this blog got out of hand and seemed to gear towards whatever is in my head rather than thoughts on my favourite hobby: gaming. Reviews have been deleted because they seemed...spastic and not well thought out. I apologize if there were posts that people enjoyed, but I hope this purging will put me back on the right step and get me going in the direction I want to be going again.
(I don't usually like pink, but this theme seems to work somewhat)