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  • Sunset Overdrive.

    Tutorial: Go from point A to point B.

    Dies.
    Dies.
    Dies.

    Failed to tell you the game operates under "ground is lava" rules. You are to go from point A to point B without touching the ground.

  • So many I can't even narrow down a specific one. Many new titles have tutorials that go over generic bullshit like how to move and aim and then don't tell you how to do anything that's actually unique to the game itself. I hate that shit.

    Really hate having a tutorial objective of "put the goober in the jibjab" but then it doesn't explain what the fuck either of those things are, and it's not obvious by just looking at the situation.

    Oh, The Ascent did this. Tells you to hack something early on; does not tell you how this is achieved. Everything up to that point was walk up to thing and press A/X. To hack you have to HOLD A/X. But it doesn't say that. I had to look it up online. Which is stupid.

    Dark Souls also. But... It's hard to be mad at that one, since being vague is literally purposeful game design with those. 🤷🏻‍♂️

  • Can't believe it's not in here yet, but Monster Hunter. I find the eventual understanding of the gameplay loop to not actually be as complex as I thought it'd be, but getting a good overview of all what you want to do and use isn't really possible even in the latest entries, just specific information about specific mechanics.

    • I couldn't get into MHW at all, and I lay the blame on the awful tutorial, which is less a tutorial and more interrupting you as you try to get to grips with the controls, with dozens of full screen pages of text.

      • Oh yes, legendarily awful. And again, I don't find it that impenetrable in the end, the delivery of the info is just so bad. If anybody wants to get into MH I'd love to help because I absolutely love the series now, but it took concentrated effort to teach myself without anyone to guide me.

  • Diablo 2. The extent of which you're given instruction is "here's a stick, go whack stuff."

    Stat points? Better hope that you get it right the first time - you get three resets per character (unless you get a Token of Absolution which is a super late game item). Hell, before a certain patch this wasn't even a thing. Do it right the first time or you're restarting.

    Same goes for skill points. Wanna put one point into everything, try it out before committing? Well those are now wasted points. Stats and skills get reset at the same time though, so you're not entirely screwed.

    Rune words! The game tells you literally nothing about rune words and yet no build is complete without them. You get three runes that make up a rune word in Act 5 if you complete an optional quest. You're not told what to do with them, or that they must be in the right order (which the game does not provide), or that they must go in a normal, non-magic shield with exactly three sockets. Or that if you imbue the item after building the rune word you lose the rune word's effects. Put them in the wrong order? Bricked it - you cannot remove gems or runes from sockets. Or you can, but it destroys the socketed gems/runes. And you can only do so using....

    Cube recipes. You get a cube, you use it a few times in the game. You're never told that it can be used to upgrade items, combine gems and runes, repair gear, craft items, or take you to the secret cow level.

    If you never did extensive research on Diablo 2 before and while playing, you would be playing maybe a quarter of the actual game.

    • I am so glad I read this, because I've been thinking about trying out Diablo 2 lol. Looks like when I finally get around to it, I'll be doing a lot of research.

  • The worst one I can remember is Final Fantasy 8.

    But also the UI was so complicated and bad that it made me hate the game.

  • Cliff Empire. I'm still on the tutorial technically, I think. There was one part where I had to produce 250 extra power (250 kW I think?), and even though I had used up all the available space pretty effectively, I never got above ~120. So, I went ahead and started building a nuclear reactor... which only got me to ~170. I eventually passed that step somehow. I think it was because there were more people? Anyway, after that I clicked through all the steps I passed (about 20 of them) before I was producing anything close to 250 'power' and I'm pretty sure I missed something; because my reactor caught on fire and exploded. Turns out the fire fighting drones never got water, because apparently I have to set it's delivery priority manually... ¯(ツ)_/¯

    So I rage quit, and here I am complaining about it. Beautiful game though.

  • DayZ comes to mind. I love the game but it kind of just throws you in and says , "Hey there. Survive."

  • Witcher 2, before they patched in the tutorial mission. (Which is still not very good as a tutorial.) Enjoy getting a shitkicking in the very first fight, since you've no idea of the controls.

  • Ultima Online. Idk how it is now, as I haven't played on vanilla servers in like 20yrs, but you basically just got dropped into the game. Luckily, I had a friend who did play who taught me the basics. Otherwise, I woulda just been running around town aimlessly.

    Eve Online is kinda like that, too. Originally, I don't think there was a tutorial (I started in 2005). Over the years, they've implemented a tutorial and iterated on it. Or just completely re-did it over and over again. It was bad. Like Ultima Online, Eve is a sandbox MMO, so no tutorial can show you everything possible in the game. But even the basics felt like not enough and just long and drawn out. The system in place today is certainly better, but players are still better off making friends quickly to learn the ins and outs.

    Planetside 2 also originally didn't have a tutorial. I played the original Planetside back in the day, but the games are pretty different from each other. So it was a bit rough in the beginning. I remember coming across the early biolabs and running around the bottom of it for a quite a long time until realizing there were then "satelite bases" which had jumppads to the top of the biolab entries.

    Even when a tutorial was introduced, it was pretty crap. Like sure you learned the basics of how to move, and how to shoot, and how to spawn vehicles. But the game is so much more than that. Big parts of Planetside 2 is understanding the map and environment, flow of battles, where each bases' capture points are, and of course positioning. And that's all stuff you don't get in the tutorial because there are so many different bases and the continent are large. Plus, some of that can only be learned by playing the game. Which can be frustrating when a player is dying 50 times in a row while getting a single kill (if they're lucky), because they don't yet understand anything I mentioned.

  • Cultist Simulator. However, finding out how stuff works is half the game...

    (The devs also posted a manual meanwhile, that explains the most obsucre mechanics.)

  • The Darkness was pretty decent with tutorials, except for one particular part that involved moving a giant bell out of the way. A friend of mine who was watching me play at the time finally ended up telling me how to do it, because up to that point in the game - and this is a pretty far part into it, not like towards the beginning where tutorials usually happen - this mechanic was never mentioned or used at all. Even in the sequence of moving the bell (I assume to learn the skill??? idk), there are no prompts given to tell you how. It was the only frustrating part for me in an otherwise really cool and fun game.

  • Voices of the Void. Even though it does talk about the basics of the game, it really didn't make the important aspects of these basics that aren't known from other games clear at all.

    It's a demo, however, so that's excusable, even if the tutorial was actually reworked too... I dunno why you need to launch it in order to get into the game though. :D

  • The Binding of Isaac, just some drawings on the ground that don't actually tell you anything.

    • That game is very good at introducing concepts gradually though, and plenty of other things you'll discover by accident, as intended.

  • Guild Wars 2 falls into this category for me. Being from the boom of MMORPGs I'm not sure if the deva figured everyone would just get it kr what. The game has a lot of odd choices in places and it does a poor job explaining those choices or even pointing them out.

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