10 Things Video Games Really Need To Stop Doing

7. Mandatory, Long Tutorial Sections

I’m not here to gatekeep and I know some people who pick up a video game might be doing it for the first time and do need to be versed on the basics but I think it’s about time that tutorials which make us “Press W to move forward” at least become optional. Spending full minutes learning how to walk and pull out a gun when the buttons are the same in almost every video game could at least be streamlined to allow for the majority of gamers who just want to get cracking.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with mind-numbingly detailed tutorial levels, so long as the rest of us can skip them without missing anything important.

While games like Black & White 2, Nier Automata, Pokemon Sun/Moon and, more recently, Deathloop have infamously painful tutorials, at least the latter lets you turn off tutorial messages if you dig into the menu settings. Bless Far Cry: Blood Dragon for including its tutorial called “Military Program For Idiots” which includes gems like “Press X To Demonstrate Your Ability To Read”. Of course, not every game can turn its tutorial into a joke, so for that we’ll tip our hat to games like Half Life and Deus Ex that house their tutorials in training grounds areas or menus where you can get caught up on the basics if you need them but they exist separately from the main game.

That said, if it’s not the tutorial to Driver level bad at least we know it could be a lot worse.