Nemesis – Returnal
Phrike was the bane of many players in Returnal while Ophion served as the epic finale for Selene’s twisted journey. But it’s Nemesis in the middle that gets the nod for being the best boss fight and one of the standout battles of the year. It starts out in hallucinatory fashion as Selene is transported to a dreamlike world where Nemesis towers over here. After the first phase of lasers and projectiles, some platforming ensures and even more attacks come into play. By the third phase, it’s a desperate fall through the sky, grappling onto whatever platforms available to get closer to Nemesis and finish it off. The sheer scale and spectacle, combined with the difficulty and wildly different phases, made it a killer way to end the game’s first “cycle.”
