I picked up Silent Hill Origins the other day. And playing this game really shows me why in-game tutorials are a must-need in every game.
I never been more lost in a game before. I admit I'm not the best at games but I'm still pretty good and can hold my own. Also, I usually never read the manual but nowadays we don't need to because of extensive in-game tutorials that teach us what to do. But Silent Hill Origins lost me completely because it didn't have any in-game tutorials on the how-tos of playing the game. And to make it worse, I didn't have the manual either since it didn't come up with the copy of the game.
Here are examples where I had to figure things out the hard way in the game:
1. The game didn't tell me how to save. I thought it would save with checkpoints or automatically but it didn't. And after a few hours of playing, I died and had to start all over!
2. Also, I had to figure out how to do the combat. That I figured out since most games are similar. But I wondered why enemies didn't die even though I kept whacking away at them. And it was until I checked GameFaqs that it told me I had to do a finishing blow. Usually in-game tutorials shows what you're supposed to do, like a "X" button shows up indicating you need to do a finishing blow, but not in this game.
3. Another thing was a enemy that wraps his legs around you. Everytime they wrapped its legs around me, I kept pressing every button to shake them off. But for some reason they don't come off and I keep losing energy. Then I found out on Gamefaqs again that when they wrap around you it triggers QTEs to get them off! The game doesn't even tell me that I was supposed to time buttons! I had no idea! That really ticked me off.
4. And finally the item management is horrible. I kept picking up these health drinks and enery drinks but I wasn't getting healed. Then after an hour later, I found out that you have to go in the menu to heal yourself. Of course this is a no-brainer and I should've figured this out but usually, in-game tutorials tell you how to heal yourself the moment you pick up your first item.
Anyway, those are some examples. This game isn't terrible by any means but having no in-game tutorials really frustrated the heck out of me. Now I'm getting something out of it since I know what to do. But for those few couple of hours of guess-work, even starting all over again, it was one of the most frustrating experience I had with a game in a long time.
Most games I've played have great in-game tutorials. I think this is why tutorials are important especially in games with complex situations and controls.
Log in to comment