!?Games with the worst tutorial EVER!? My vote - Disciples II

[Raaritsgozilla]

How about X3: Terran Conflict? When choosing the Humble Merchant start, you only get a short (optional) flight school tutorial, that shows you how to navigate with the ships. But halfway through it, it tells you to shoot an object down. Too bad, none of your starting ships have guns! Better luck next time!
That's not even mentioning that the tutorial gives you absolutely no tips at all about what to do in the universe or how to do it...

Indeed. I quit because of that, I just had no interest in the game

[Caddybear]

I'm actually scared of cockpit view in racing games. When I drive, my head can swivel. In racing games, it's like I'm wearing horse blinders. The few games where I like cockpit view still have mouselook, but they're not racing games, natch.

Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one. The other day my dad made fun of me for playing a racing game on third person. Sigh.

My vote also goes to CKII, it's not like they didn't try but I guess developers should just ship tutorials as videos with the game. That's pretty much what I do anyway on most grand strategy or management titles: go to youtube and look for some guide or let's play that explains what's going on.

Also X3. I didn't understand how to get past the tutorial, so... I uninstalled.

Freespace 2 had very boring tutorials that had really good information .. and they sweetened the deal by giving you a medal for putting up with them. And I liked how they gave more advanced lessons as you progressed in the game and explained it by being assigned to another squad. I just love that game and everything it did.

[trjp]

Racing games played from third-person - it's just cheating, in my book - it also makes it harder to control the car because by the time you see it sliding, you should already have corrected it!!

I tend to stick with bonnet-cams because in-car shows far-too-much dash/pillars etc. Yes, I can see those in my real car if I LOOK at them - but mostly I just see out of the windscreen. Developers need to consider that - they need to remember your screen is set away from you, not in your chest!!

At least one of the Shift games does just that and gives a 'zoomed' option from in-car - but games like Dirt (2 onwards) use the in-car view as a difficulty setting, with achievements and rewards boosted for using it!!

[Barberetti]

I keep forgetting X3 has a story. I bought it, selected the custom start, then attempted to conquer the universe. No tutorial to worry about. Much nicer. That fucking interface though. I can only handle playing the game for a couple of weeks at a time before the constant going in and out of the huge nests of menus starts to drive me insane.

If I remember rightly, I've got huge sprawling bases in all of the main pirate sectors in the middle of the galaxy, with patrols guarding all of the gates.

Damn, I'm starting to get the urge to play ...

[soldant]

Il2 Sturmovic.

Absolutely useless! They might as well have not even bothered to include them. The text was quite procedural in nature but it was all way too fast, never explained why you should be doing anything, and didn't even have an appropriate camera perspective for some of the time. Incidentally Microsoft Flight Simulator X probably has one of the better series of flight tutorials around (not the quick ones, the one that they've kept since FS 2000 or whatever with the actual instructor).

How about X3: Terran Conflict?

Also fairly bad for a tutorial, but I think X3's problems go far deeper than that. They're effectively using the same core interface as their very first X game, which has had more and more crap bolted onto it over the years. Half of it was designed for a mouse, the other half was designed for a keyboard, and neither one works particularly well. On top of that information is difficult to get to and poorly explained, and the game insists on calling simple things like units of goddamn time something different just to be a pain in the arse.

[Moraven]

Pretty much every single-player campaign for every RTS and FPS on the market nowadays is an extended tutorial for multiplayer.

Well with Starcraft 2 it broke from the norm with the different units between single and multiplayer along with the ability to upgrade your units.

They had the challenge modes to help teach some fundamentals for multiplayer. They are trying that again in the expansion with more multiplayer tutorial missions.

[sinister agent]

Il2 Sturmovic. There was a series of in engine tutorial videos covering taking off, landing, and teaching the use of the different ordinance available. The one covering the correct use of rockets was less helpful than it might of been- not too long into it, the plane crashed. The tutorial text continued, but was a little harder to successfully follow.

I'm not sure how much it would have ended up helping even without that rather odd little bug. I had a further issue involving taking off fully laden- I could get off the ground, but couldn't manage to get higher than a few hundred feet, no matter what I did with landing gear, flaps or WEP. My squadron would zoom off into the distance and grump at me for not following.

Oh yeah, good call. Il2's tutorials were hopelessly bad, even without bugs.

[QuantaCat]

Also fairly bad for a tutorial, but I think X3's problems go far deeper than that. They're effectively using the same core interface as their very first X game, which has had more and more crap bolted onto it over the years. Half of it was designed for a mouse, the other half was designed for a keyboard, and neither one works particularly well. On top of that information is difficult to get to and poorly explained, and the game insists on calling simple things like units of goddamn time something different just to be a pain in the arse.

Yes but thats not really being discussed here, as we could go on and on about X3s problems :D
However, they are "fixing" that with the new X.