Games that lock fun behind bloated intros need to stop

The worst I can think of is Max Payne 3, I just Alt-F4 that shit after a while. There's less shooting but more cutscenes which you can't even skip! Cutscene -> 4 mins of gmaeplay -> cutscene. -> 2 mins if you're lucky of playtime -> cutscene. Such a shame because the gunplay and set pieces are great.

I really liked 1 & 2, just go guns blazing and tbh I really despise Time Stop mechanics. They break the flow of shooting, it's not fun.
 
There was a time where gaming manuals read in the car coming home from the store solve that purpose. So you could just put your new game in and play. But yes, today we have these infinite unskippable tutorials lot of times, for games that are basically all create by the same few templates or so, where you could instead easily pick it up and play without any problems.
 
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That's what I was going to post: the absolute embodiment of the overly long tutorial.
 
I agree. I'm replaying MHWilds on PS5 via GameFly (got it on PC) and I feel like the story mode is the long winded boring intro you're forced to play through before the fun part (high rank) starts.
 
This is specially bad when it comes to boring narrative exposition. Very rarely I'll care about a game's story or setting from the start. Give me a reason to care for it first and THEN show all of that stuff.
And make it optional, too. This is why FROM games are good. You can avoid 90% of story-related things if you only care about the gameplay. It's not forced on the player at all.
 
This is specially bad when it comes to boring narrative exposition. Very rarely I'll care about a game's story or setting from the start. Give me a reason to care for it first and THEN show all of that stuff.
And make it optional, too. This is why FROM games are good. You can avoid 90% of story-related things if you only care about the gameplay. It's not forced on the player at all.

From games are almost the gold standard for doing it right imho. Basically everything is optional except for playing the game.
 
Star wars jedi fallen order. Didn't make it past the train at the beginning. Long ass, boring as fuck tutorial that forces you to kill enemies in a certain way. Suck my stump, uninstalled.
 
Yeah, this drives me nuts. If you're game is good, I'll care enough to work things out. Also goes for long-ass narrative chapters. Comparing Drake's Fortune to A Thief's End is really telling. The original is just one action sequence to the next: everything is driven by the gameplay, and everything is learned on the fly. Uncharted 4 meanwhile has about seven chapters of walking talking and climbing, including a god-awful flashback section and a section where you sit and have dinner on the couch. It doesn't really start until you reach Scotland, and even that's not super engaging.
 
Agreed.
The thing that absolutely infuriates me though are Co-op focused games that have some 2 hours single player intro before they even let you team up with your friends.
You and some friends buy a coop game like Dying Light 2, you finally manage to coordinate a time you can all meet up online and start the game (which can be tricky when everyone is in their 30s and on different time zones), and then the first session is basically everyone playing on their own through some slow ass 2 hours long single player tutorial so the devs can shove their shitty story and characters in your face.
 
I also hate this. If it takes more than 6 or 7 minutes to be playing the game, I'm generally turned off. JRPGs have been really bad about this over the years and it pushed me away from the genre.

By contrast, I just picked up Ninja Gaiden 2 Black on the Steam Sale and within a minute, you're butchering enemies and need to stay on the block button almost at all times. The game has it's issues (performance sucks), but hot damn does it feel nice to be treated like an adult.
 
Hellblade 1 is kinda unbeatable there. The opening credits are literal minutes of Senua canoeing on a foggy river with ASMR voices talking in her head. And then there's an hour of the polar opposite of fun. And then I dropped the fucking game.
 
Hellblade 1 is kinda unbeatable there. The opening credits are literal minutes of Senua canoeing on a foggy river with ASMR voices talking in her head. And then there's an hour of the polar opposite of fun. And then I dropped the fucking game.
I was gonna say, the entire fucking game is that tedious intro sequence of other games stretched into game length.
 
Tainted Grail does a very smart thing and offers a skip tutorial option when you start a new game. The game gives you gear to cover various loadouts/builds too.
 
OMG yes I hate it so much. Stellar Blade.. I literally just force quit the pc demo and deleted it. because of th long drawn out unskippable cutscenes.
 
Cyberpunk
Red Dead 1
Red Dead 2
GTA V
The Witcher 3
No Mans Sky

All great games

All 100% SHIT INTRO

Need more like Dark Souls
 
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It's actually kind of funny reading about a Kojima game that doesn't have bloated cutscenes. It's almost an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp.
 
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