10 Brutally Difficult Opening Levels In Video Games
You're lucky to make it through the tutorial.
These days, when we hop into a new video game for the first time, we expect to be broken in gently.
A tutorial stage, simple on-screen prompts to explain the controls and mechanics, that sort of thing. Let us get into the swing of things for a little while. After all, you’re not put behind the wheel of a supercar and expected to break the land speed record on your very first driving lesson, are you?
Instruction booklets seem to be all but extinct, so we’ve got to learn the basics of how to play the game somewhere.
Classic titles, meanwhile, usually had manuals (quite thick ones, too, in some cases), but they often compensated for that by being harder than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pecs, right from the off.
As a result, then, we’re going to be taking a look at a combination of classic and more modern games, exploring some of the hardest opening levels and areas in gaming memory.
10. Driver
That’s right, our first pick’s sure to have been a popular one. If you’re a gamer of a certain age, you reached gaming maturity right around the late nineties. You started to crave more ‘grown up’ experiences, like the ever-controversial Grand Theft Auto series. Driver was another title that surely scratched that itch too.
The original game released in 1999, a driving game (funnily enough) inspired by the awesome, adrenaline-ridden car chases that were everywhere in the movies of the time.
The player took the role of undercover cop John Tanner, who had been sent to Miami to investigate the activities of the Castaldi criminal syndicate without their knowledge. Needless to say, he has to win the trust and respect of some shady individuals in order to do so.
This is how Tanner finds himself in that notorious parking garage. This stage serves as the game’s tutorial, a series of tests of the player’s driving prowess.
For a simple training level, though, it’s infuriatingly difficult, demanding you try to pull off the kind of manoeuvres that aren’t really called for in the course of the main game.
It’s silly, but it's mandatory, and it’s zero fun for anybody concerned.