Badass Bosses: Bob Barbas

Welcome back to another instalment in PSU.com’s on-going Badass Bosses feature series. Last time around we scrutinized Dead Space’s mighty Hive Mind, and our latest offering once again sticks to the current generation of consoles.

With Ninja Theory’s DmC: Devil May Cry still fresh on everyone’s minds, we thought the time was ripe to shine the spotlight on one of the game’s more memorable scraps – Bob Barbas.

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Head honcho of the nefarious Raptor News Networks, Bob Barbas is the very epitome of sleaze. A demon by nature, his human manifestation looks like your typical middle-aged news anchor, right down to the ample gut and greasy hair-parting. Proclaiming that he’s “just doin' God’s work,” Barbas is yet another one of Mundus’ means to controlling the human race by publicly denouncing Dante as a terrorist. Fortunately, Dante storms Raptor News Networks and confronts Barbas, who shows his true form – a giant, digitized floating head.

Barbos lobs digital death at Dante in the shape of pixelated energy beams and other such hazards. The most common our red energy discharges that move horizontally across the screen, while another sees the villain create a wall of energy, with Dante only able to escape it by stepping through a, shall we say, ‘window’ of opportunity. You’ll see what we mean. Still, our cocky Nephlim can’t actually inflict any damage on Big Bob until you disrupt his power supply. This is done by standing over the three red panels and performing a downward strike with Eryx.

Once this is accomplished, Barbas will experience something of a malfunction, allowing Dante to approach him and hack him to pieces. Don’t let your guard down though; the slimy TV boss will attempt to smack you with a nasty energy beam if you linger next to him for too long. Fortunately, it’s easy to spot when he’s about to charge this attack. In another thematically sneaky attack, Bob will also transport Dante to an alternate reality to battle low-level demons once his health starts to deteriorate. This takes the form of a black and white TV broadcast, where Bob erroneously claims that our hero is slaughtering civilians.

Don’t fall for all the smoke and mirrors though; just keep hammering away at Barbas by hijacking his power supply and he’ll soon be off the air – permanently.

Stay tuned to PSU.com for more Badass Bosses in the coming weeks.