Two guesses where the weak point is.
That robot needs a less glaring weak spot.
That is, certain Boss Fights look very threatening, but all you need to do is hit the incredibly obvious glass chamber — which can either hold the pilot, an exposable core system, or whatever they decided to put behind it — for massive damage.
These are incredibly common around machinery bosses, such as against a Humongous Mecha, Walking Tank, or a Battleship Raid; the latter being less commonly used.
This trope can also be combined with Colossus Climb if the weak point is high up on a structure.
Subtrope of Attack Its Weak Point and usually falls under Shows Damage as well. Compare with Go for the Eye and Sniping the Cockpit. See Vehicular Assault.
Examples:
- Poison Ivy in Batman: Arkham Asylum. This one is odd, considering she's inside a plant. Presumably its actually a transparent membrane.
- Played with in Batman: Arkham City for Mr. Freeze. The actual fight is a very complex Puzzle Boss, once you win it becomes a cutscene of Batman punching Mr. Freeze in the visor and then face.
- Not a playable example, but an actual cutscene. In Bionic Commando (2009), Radd Spencer is gripped by Joe's mecha and nearly crushed to death. He regains consciousness in time to headbutt through Joe's windshield, through the heavily-reinforced glass, and through Joe's face. This causes the robot's hands to free him.
- The first fight with Agnus in Devil May Cry 4 is a Puzzle Boss variant of this. He stands behind an electrified/reinforced glass wall and you must break through it by chucking the flying Gladius swords at it. Otherwise, your ordinary attacks are mostly coded to deal Scratch Damage to the wall instead.
- Abductors in Freedom Wars have giant "pods" on their bodies, the destruction of which will deal heavy damage to the Abductor (as well as liberating whoever is trapped inside). Be careful, though: once the pod is broken, the Abductor Turns Red.
- MechWarrior has this trope in the form of the cockpit hitbox location. However despite the fact that it has minimal armor and a powerful shot can in fact instakill any mech if you hit it the small size and difficulty of hitting it even under the best of conditions makes it almost universally a lucky shot if you pull it off. Crosses over directly with Go for the Eye against an Atlas; the cockpit is in its right eye!
- In The Ninja Warriors Again, the Final Boss, the evil dictator you're supposed to kill, is in a laser-spamming machine with a glass window. And there are loads of minions attacking you! You have to throw the minions into the glass to damage it until it breaks.
- Averted in the old Punisher beat'em up game. The robot boss has some glass panels in its head but those go first and breaking them is no impediment — you have to literally punch the thing into scrap to win (it somewhat resembles the car-wrecking bonus stage in Street Fighter II — the thing keeps losing more and more parts as you beat it up.)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time for the SNES gives you this in your first boss fight against Shredder, who's in a mechanical construct firing all sorts of weapons at you while his Foot Soldiers are distracting you (and the battle is shown from Shredder's point of view). While you can beat up the ninjas endlessly, the only way to beat Shredder is to throw said ninjas into the screen.
- In the Darkwing Duck Licensed Game for the NES, during the final battle with Steelbeak, the first phase involves Darkwing destroying the glass window he is sitting behind. Doing so rewards Darkwing with a first aid kit, which he may need for the second phase.
- Inverted in Earthworm Jim, which has a level where you have to carefully guide an underwater vehicle around. More cracks appear in the glass every time you hit a wall. Oh, and there's a time limit.
- In The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, you have to defeat the final boss by breaking its cockpit cover made of glass.
- In The Lucky Dime Caper Starring Donald Duck, the final boss is Magica De Spell, who is in possession of Scrooge McDuck's #1 Dime. to defeat her, Donald must break open the crystal ball housing the dime, as it is the source of Magica's powers.
- The final boss of the first Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a Humongous Mecha piloted by Donkey Kong, where he is seen controlling the robot in a cockpit protected by a glass dome. Players must defeat DK by chucking barrels at the cockpit in order to break it open.
- In many of the Mega Man (Classic) games, the various Wily Machines that Dr. Wily pilots are generally weak at the cockpit. In a few cases, such as Mega Man 3, Mega Man has to break a different part of the Wily Machine to reveal the cockpit, but eventually, this trope will apply.
- Dr. Weil's final form in Mega Man Zero 4 has an orange pane of glass protecting his head. Break it and he blows up, though it's justified given that his head is really the only "human" part left on the cybernetic monstrosity he's become.
- Mother Brain from Metroid, Super Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission. Missiles or Super Missiles are needed to break the glass, which still fails to kill her. Same goes for Mecha Ridley in Zero Mission.
- In Pac-Man World 2, Inky, Pinky and Clyde are all defeated this way. Pinky's mech is an odd example. The glass cockpit is coded to be a weak point, but you can't actually attack said cockpit without hacking (you're supposed to attack a different weak point), yet the glass dome continues to depress and crack anyway.
- The real version of the brain-powered psychic tank in Psychonauts (as opposed to the mental blueprint version, who is more of a Bullfight Boss) is defeated by using telekinesis to fling chunks of concrete at the glass dome shielding the boss's brain.
- The Sonic the Hedgehog series has many bosses defeated in this manner, particularly in the 3D games:
- Robotnik's Ship, the final boss of Sonic Spinball, is a more justified example than most, as the glass-domed cockpit is inside the ship itself. You have to break into the ship first, then hit the cockpit's glass dome enough times to shatter it.
- The Egg Viper from Sonic Adventure is an odd example in that the cockpit is usually fully-enclosed and impregnable, but every now and then Eggman will open it up and expose his weak point just so he can taunt you.
- The three GUN mech bosses in Sonic Adventure 2 - Big Foot, Hot Shot, and Flying Dog - all have identical-looking glass canopies that the player has to hit in order to disable them. In the case of Big Foot (fought as Sonic) and Hot Shot (fought as Shadow), this is fairly easy, but Flying Dog is fought as Rouge, and aiming your glides so that you hit the cockpit is easier said than done.
- The final boss of Sonic Heroes' regular stories, Egg Emperor, has a circular window in the center, behind which Eggman's face is visible as he pilots it. Just to make sure you know it's the weak point, it also glows in multiple colours.
- All of the day bosses from Sonic Unleashed have Eggman riding and controlling a robot in a cockpit. The player needs to attack him there in order to damage him using the Homing Attack or Boost. The nighttime exclusive Egg Dragoon follows this as well, where Werehog Sonic needs to punch Eggman's glass covered dome via quick time events in the PS3/Xbox 360 versions.
- The final boss of Sonic Colors, the Nega-Wisp Armor, has the Egg-o-Matic seated in the top of its head, protected by a glass canopy. The player has to Homing Attack up to it in order to hit it. Each time you hit it, you'll free a Wisp - free enough Wisps and they'll combine their abilities to help Sonic deal the finishing blow.
- The revamped fight with Metal Sonic in Sonic Mania Plus has him use the Phantom Ruby to transform into Giga Metal, a giant robot similar to Metal Sonic Kai. His weakpoint is glass barrier embedded in his chest that is shielding the Phantom Ruby. The player needs to hit the glass eight times in order to defeat the upgraded Metal Sonic.
- Megaleg in Super Mario Galaxy and Diggaleg and Megahammer in Super Mario Galaxy 2. In fact almost every robotic/mechanical boss in each game is subject to this.
- In Super Methane Bros, the three intermediate bosses can only be destroyed by repeated hits to their glass cockpits.
- In Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, in the haunted pirate shipwreck, Buster beats Montana Max to the titular "hidden treasure" by seconds. During the battle against him, a scuba-helmeted Monty bursts out of the floor, leaving gaping holes into the One-Hit Kill water below. To defeat Monty, Buster must destroy his scuba helmet.
- Captain Syrup's flying saucer, which serves as the Factory Final Boss in Wario Land II, has a crystal cockpit which you need to break with body slams so you can throw the bombs she launches back directly at her.
Roleplay
- The first hostile entity in Destroy the Godmodder had a cracked glass cockpit. Despite being pretty big, it got curbstomped after the weakness was revealed.
- In Knights of the Old Republic, the key to defeating the final boss is shattering containers with prisoners, from which he keeps leeching life to heal himself.
- More Elite Mook than boss fight (although they are treated as boss enemies the first few times they appear), Atlas mechs in Mass Effect 3 are a variation of this trope: they have glass cockpits which you can break and then kill the engineer piloting it so you can hijack the mech and pilot it yourself, using it to kill the rest of the Cerberus troops. While cool, this turns out to be Awesome, but Impractical, since, by the time you manage to break the glass, the mech will probably be on the brink of death anyway (and if the Atlas mech is destroyed while you're in it, you get a Game Over); it's simpler to just destroy it outright.
