Remember the wonder and excitement you felt when getting home with a copy of Kingdom Hearts 2, followed immediately by the disappointment of having to play for three hours as some guy you didn’t care about and wonder when things were going to get interesting? What about slipping into the Octocam with Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4, only to have to sit through a lesson on the warlike nature of humans and how corporations will eventually supplant our current government systems before you could join the battle?
"Look at how intimidating these new creations are. Don't fight them, just look and be in awe during some cutscenes, dummy."
When the beginning of a game teases you with something fantastic, then flips you off and tells you to sit there, shut up, and wait for the fun part, that makes me nerd rage.
Honestly, why is this still acceptable? I still suffer from blue balls after waiting eight years for last fall’s Golden Sun 3 and the chance to get back into Weyard, only to then wait through novels of dialogue in the opening areas. For the love of The Wise One, just let me push pillars around with giant magic hands. That’s all I’m here for!
And those painful memories of how the little beetle man in Okami, Issun, almost managed to beat Navi the Fairy in terms of annoying dialogue interruptions and ruin the woefully underplayed masterpiece? They surged back during the first thirty minutes of Okamiden when Issun was the first character on screen. Guess what happens. No, the answer is not “a can of Raid,” but you
If you STFU, I promise I'll go kill them.
With games becoming shorter and shorter as production costs rise, there’s really no excuse for wasting any part of a game. And to start off with boring tutorials and wordy dialogue is like going number two on millions of dollars because your team couldn’t reconcile the story set up and game instructions with important things like “fun” and “entertainment.”
True, all of the games mentioned in this nerdrage (with the exception of Okami and the newly released Okamiden) have been commercially successful, but that’s in spite of stabbing their players in the brain during the first five minutes. Plenty of wonderful titles are passed over, or worse, resold because developers forgot the golden rule of entertainment – always keep them wanting more. Instead, they seem determined to get that “No thanks, I’m good” reaction.
Note: Okamiden is fantastic once Issun leaves you alone. Go play it right now or you’re not my friend anymore.
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Tags: boring, gay-nerds, Golden Sun 3, Kingdom Hearts 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Nerd Rage, Okami, Okamiden, video game introductions, video game tutorials, videogame
