Starting a game off right with the first level

[Barbas]

Remember when the first level of a game wasn't blown on some cruddy hand-holding toturial with an enforced speed limit?

What do you think is the best starting level that doesn't do that? I say it's a three-way tie between the Dam from Goldeneye 007, New Junk City from Earthworm Jim and the Port of Adia from Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil. It's the music that makes these three the top contenders for me; it really gets you into the dangerzone from the first moment.

Spoiler

 

[the December King]

I'm gonna say Serious Sam on the hardest setting.

Just waltzed in, thinking my poop was lembas bread.

By the time I limped to the settings box and dialed it back to toddler levels to reflect my slaughter, I was happily impressed that the enemies often kept wailing on me after my all-too swift deaths until Sam was chunks of blocky 3d meat and pixelly sprays of blood.

Found that in a bin for 8 bucks, like, forever ago. Still ranks as one of my all time best game purchases, for sheer enjoyment.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Resident Evil 4, and I'm counting the entire first part in the town, including the chainsaw guy. Basically up until the church bell rings. That was a fucking intense part! baring the doors and windows, chainsaw madman and dozens of townsfolk. You got like 10 pistol shots, a single grenade and 5 shotgun shells.
Intense!

Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate. Sure there was a little bit of hand-holding, but you had 5 Ultramarines against an entire temple of Cultists and Chaos Marines with permadeath for your mans, all of whom are low level Tactical Marines. It wasn't intense, but you couldn't fuck up and lose too many because those Marines aren't coming back!

Hotline Miami. Fucking Hotline Miami son! Nothing about that was gentle!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like the beginning of Beyond Good & Evil. Learning combat while fighting the boss and all that. It's not particularly difficult but it does throw you into the action straight away.

Resident Evil 4, and I'm counting the entire first part in the town, including the chainsaw guy. Basically up until the church bell rings. That was a fucking intense part! baring the doors and windows, chainsaw madman and dozens of townsfolk. You got like 10 pistol shots, a single grenade and 5 shotgun shells.
Intense!

Good pick!

 

[The Enquirer]

Timesplitters 2. Very, very little was easy about that game, but the first level in Siberia, had a really good range of stealth to shoot outs to zombies. And a helicopter boss fight too.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

After all these years I still really like the beginning sewers segment of Oblivion. It has this feel of smallness, that you're nothing more than a common lowlife escaping prison while getting embroiled in something far bigger. You slowly learn the mechanics, encounter new enemies and gather up gear, until you finally emerge into the sun-streaked wilderness, which for 2006 looked amazing. To me it felt like the perfect beginning to an epic adventure.

God of War II has probably the best opening of the entire series, with a huge-ass epic battle against one of the biggest bosses in the series. It's not a pushover either: when I played on Hard I kept on dying again and again.

 

[distortedreality]

Deus Ex.

Set the tone pretty much perfectly imo, still manages to drag me in every time.

 

[FPLOON]

The original Super Mario Bros.... Before Sonic the Hedgehog and Maga Man X gave people the jizz stains after their first level, this Mario NES game was already do that with the art of simplicity...

Other than that, from a super-biased perspective, the GBA BeyBlade VForce game made sure you spin your bey effectively at all times...

 

[Dubious Cow]

I think Halo: CE did this relatively well. It doesn't strictly meet all the criteria because, for a very short period of time, you do actually have a tutorial and a hand-holder. He basically just makes sure you're not mentally impaired and can move your controller properly. You expect to be baby-stepped all the way through the first level but within a moment or two your guide gets ganked in a surprise explosion and you're left to figure it out from there. The music also fits in with the theme of putting you right there in the danger zone. Plus, if you choose legendary, you don't get any of that tutorial crap. He just rushes out and dies. Of course by choosing legendary you're obviously not in need of any gameplay tutoring, but still.

On a related note to this:

After all these years I still really like the beginning sewers segment of Oblivion. It has this feel of smallness, that you're nothing more than a common lowlife escaping prison while getting embroiled in something far bigger. You slowly learn the mechanics, encounter new enemies and gather up gear, until you finally emerge into the sun-streaked wilderness, which for 2006 looked amazing. To me it felt like the perfect beginning to an epic adventure.

I think Bethesda does this well with Morrowind also.

Again, not meeting the exact specifications because the game doesn't even have levels, but if you actually bother to read through all the pages of dialogue and complex menus on your first run the game only really gives you a small portion of lore and the very basics of how the game functions before kicking your ass out into the most open-ended experience I have ever come across. Seriously, once you're out the door into Seyda Neen there are absolutely 100% NO guidelines at ALL. You can do ANYTHING -- including walk the wrong way out of town and die to a Scrib in 26 seconds or walk the right way out of town and find some serious loot on a dumb-ass Bosmer who literally falls from the sky. I have never experienced a more "Okay, kid. You're on your own now." moment in my entire gaming career.

 

[Nazulu]

There are thousands of games that start simple but perfect or do something interesting with no hand holding, but the best I've seen so far still, after all this time is Super Metroid and Half Life's intro's. By far, no competition.

Super Metroid for ingeniously giving subtle hints in the intro vid, then throwing you right into a perfectly creepy platforming stage to get used to it all, before running into some intense encounters, and again on a bigger stage.

And Half Life just throws you into utter chaos with B movie type shit popping out of everywhere crevice.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I think Bethesda does this well with Morrowind also.

Again, not meeting the exact specifications because the game doesn't even have levels, but if you actually bother to read through all the pages of dialogue and complex menus on your first run the game only really gives you a small portion of lore and the very basics of how the game functions before kicking your ass out into the most open-ended experience I have ever come across. Seriously, once you're out the door into Seyda Neen there are absolutely 100% NO guidelines at ALL. You can do ANYTHING -- including walk the wrong way out of town and die to a Scrib in 26 seconds or walk the right way out of town and find some serious loot on a dumb-ass Bosmer who literally falls from the sky. I have never experienced a more "Okay, kid. You're on your own now." moment in my entire gaming career.

I'm going to commit the ultimate heresy now and say both times I've tried playing Morrowing I hated it. That might be because I was playing it vanilla, and the box of the GOTY I got didn't have the proper instruction manual. The game told me jack shit, and didn't seem to care at all about what I was doing, and not in any good way. For example, explaining that using weapons you didn't choose to specialize in renders them practically useless would have saved me a lot of frustration (seriously, I whacked at one rat for like 3 minutes with that lightning shortsword). I remember the world map being confusing as hell to make sense of, the shitty draw distance makes the world even more confusing to navigate, and the lack of any sort of quest tracker or objective markers made trying to track quests a chore. The only objective I remember being given at the start was to deliver a package somewhere, after which the game basically goes "Okay, looks like you'll have to level up a bit before doing anything else, shoo shoo!"

A lot of these complaints might stem from the fact that Morrowind comes from an earlier breed of PC RPGs where they were still more simulations of tabletop RPGs with 3D graphics rather than games with their own mechanics. But still, after Oblivion, and definitely after Skyrim, I just couldn't take the clunky design, ugly graphics and poorly tutorialized mechanics.

Spoiler: Inb4... OH SHIT!

 

[Aetrion]

I really liked the tutorial section of Witcher 3, for one, it was optional, and the fact that the tutorial had you slip into the role of the teacher who was showing moves to a student didn't give you the feeling that the game thought you were incompetent.

 

[bliebblob]

I'm partial to a good baptism of fire, and I've yet to see a better one than the first level of devil may cry 3. Starts off with some awesome cutscenes, then drops you in exactly where the last one left off: in a simple square room with vanilla weapons, and a horde of basic enemies barreling down on you. Enjoy! It's not one of those pseudo-tutorials either, where it all looks very scary but the enemies do next to no damage. Nope, those basic guys very much can and will tear you up if given the chance. They even went so far as to mimic the enemies' cutscene positions at the start of the level, i.e. weapons already raised, so unless you start kicking ass the second things start they'll swing and a good chunk of your health will be gone already. Good stuff.

Spoiler: Here it is in it's entirety, if you want to see for yourself.

​

 

[necromanzer52]

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a great example of how to do a tutorial right. Don't interrupt gameplay to explain anything, just have an instruction pop up on screen and let the player figure it out.

On the other hand, I love how Abe's oddysee pulls no punches with its opening level. You have one instruction: "Get me outta here!", beyond that the game just tells you to figure it out for yourself. You go to the manual if you need help.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

As far as JRPGs go, I'm going to push Skies of Arcadia. Where other games might start you out in a classroom or as glorified pest control clearing out someone's back yard, Skies of Arcadia starts you off right in the thick of things as soon as the opening cutscene ends. In the first 15 minutes you and your fellow pirates board a battleship belonging to Evil Empire du jour, wipe out the crew, steal their shit, fight a boss battle consisting of a giant armored bull that shoots lightning, publicly disgrace an Admiral (later leading to his demotion), rescue a space-princess, and make off like bandits with everything that isn't nailed down while your father lets you steer the family air-ship home on your own. Now that's how you kick off a game right!

 

[EyeReaper]

I guess I'll go with a pretty obvious one. Sonic Adventure 2, Good Guy's story mode

Not only do I remember it as the best level in the game (really not saying much, game has aged about as well as Macaulay Culkin) but I'm pretty sure its bgm is one of the best original tracks in gaming. Easy top ten. I'd even wager that I'd put it in the top five.

Spoiler: The track in question

absolute ear beauty.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night comes to mind among those not yet chosen. The introduction is actually the final battle from the previous game, except this time you can't lose because of Maria, though you are rewarded for not relying on her and beating him normally. Then you go through the first section of the castle with slightly less of a cushion in the form of the Alucard equipment before Death yanks it away from you and leaves you to fend for yourself at last.

Still you feel like a badass leaping over the castle gate and waltzing through those first hallways backlit by a storm, already killing beasts thrice your size and accompanied by infinite weak zombies.

 

[happyninja42]

Mark of Kri. First mission is you going out to kill an entrenched group of bandits, and it's done in a very badass way. The amount of narrative buildup for that first mission was just wonderful, and you are just as brutal and lethal in that "tutorial" as you are in the rest of the game. Very few games sucked me in as well as that game did.

Homeworld: Cataclysm. Opening mission is your ship answering a distress call from your homeworld, and you warp into a pitched space battle in high orbit over Higarra. Yeah it was still a tutorial, but it didn't feel like one. It felt like I was showing up to try and help push back a hostile aggressor that was trying to take our only world from us. Basically, mission one was "Prevent the annihilation of your planet, by yet another hostile fleet"

 

[sageoftruth]

God of War did a pretty good job of it as well, so much so that it got mentioned in an Extra Credits video about good tutorials. What better way to start you off than by having you impale a hydra on a ship's mast?

 

[Dubious Cow]

I think Bethesda does this well with Morrowind also.

Again, not meeting the exact specifications because the game doesn't even have levels, but if you actually bother to read through all the pages of dialogue and complex menus on your first run the game only really gives you a small portion of lore and the very basics of how the game functions before kicking your ass out into the most open-ended experience I have ever come across. Seriously, once you're out the door into Seyda Neen there are absolutely 100% NO guidelines at ALL. You can do ANYTHING -- including walk the wrong way out of town and die to a Scrib in 26 seconds or walk the right way out of town and find some serious loot on a dumb-ass Bosmer who literally falls from the sky. I have never experienced a more "Okay, kid. You're on your own now." moment in my entire gaming career.

I'm going to commit the ultimate heresy now and say both times I've tried playing Morrowing I hated it. That might be because I was playing it vanilla, and the box of the GOTY I got didn't have the proper instruction manual. The game told me jack shit, and didn't seem to care at all about what I was doing, and not in any good way. For example, explaining that using weapons you didn't choose to specialize in renders them practically useless would have saved me a lot of frustration (seriously, I whacked at one rat for like 3 minutes with that lightning shortsword). I remember the world map being confusing as hell to make sense of, the shitty draw distance makes the world even more confusing to navigate, and the lack of any sort of quest tracker or objective markers made trying to track quests a chore. The only objective I remember being given at the start was to deliver a package somewhere, after which the game basically goes "Okay, looks like you'll have to level up a bit before doing anything else, shoo shoo!"

A lot of these complaints might stem from the fact that Morrowind comes from an earlier breed of PC RPGs where they were still more simulations of tabletop RPGs with 3D graphics rather than games with their own mechanics. But still, after Oblivion, and definitely after Skyrim, I just couldn't take the clunky design, ugly graphics and poorly tutorialized mechanics.

Spoiler: Inb4... OH SHIT!

I've actually heard this same complaint a lot, and I think that the frustration induced was almost consciously intended. It creates a kind of dichotomy between players: People who like Morrowind and people who dislike Morrowind. The former group tend to be a little more familiar with retro RPGs and Roguelikes and such -- the kind of thing that gives you the very bare necessities and lets you figure it out on your own. This may be through online guides (CHEATERS!) or frustrating trial-and-error, but the end result is the same: you did it by yourself. The latter half tend to be more new-school players who revel in the likes of post PS2-era gaming, favoring titles like Skyrim and Black Ops. They like interesting concepts and engaging stories but not at the cost of gameplay, graphics or their own precious time. BEFORE ANYONE TRIES TO MURDER ME, THIS IS JUST A SUBJECTIVE GENERALIZATION FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.

I fit in with the former group insofar as I love the challenge of pushing through an extremely difficult experience no matter the cost because the final victory is so much sweeter. Morrowind was amazing because it really is an entirely different and independent universe. You create your character and get your basic shit and then you walk out into a town and from there you can do absolutely anything you want granted you can figure it out. Kind of like real life. Not trying to be mean, but a lot of it is just common sense overlooked by people who are used to being hand-held in their games. You're a Redguard Spellsword? Okay, maybe you should swap out that Steel Tanto for a Dwarven Claymore and grab some armor... I mean, it literally tells you what your best skills are (for instance: Redguards have a +15 long blade bonus and Spellswords have long blade in their major skills by default) and gives you information on equipment and spells given you actually put in the time to investigate it (for instance: bringing up the info screen on a Daedric Katana reveals that it is, in fact, a long blade type weapon that has the most damage potential using chop attack style.)

That being said, Morrowind is obviously not for everyone, so I wouldn't really call it blasphemy or heresy to dislike it.