One of my favorite examples is in Dead Space 2. In the span of a few minutes, Isaac is introduced to an environment he’s completely unfamiliar with, his would be savior immediately dies and transforms into a necromorph 2 inches from his face, the first tutorial you’re given is to run like hell since Isaac is in a straight jacket, and then the necromorphs do a number on his health, leaving him in the red. All in all, it was not the best start for Isaac that day.
I mean, it's a callback to the first Dead Space where you are getting ambushed, while cut off from your team, with no way to defend yourself. They knew they had an incredibly intense first few moments that set the tone, and they reiterated it perfectly.
What's worse is that you play as that character in another side story Dead Space game. He literally makes it through the whole game to immediately die in the main title.
To be fair to Luigi he wasn't tricked in the 2nd game to visiting a haunted mansion. Instead he was sitting down in his chair at his house when all of a sudden E.Gadd decided to kidnap him by forcefully teleporting him through his TV to his lab. All so he could get Luigi to clean up his own mess.
I'd like to add that in Elden Ring, even if you do defeat the Grafted Scion who acts as a boss intended to kill you, you have to die to continue the game anyway. And it'll typically be done because some rocks fell out from under your feet.
I’m one of the players that was killed immediately in Disco Elysium because I failed to pull my tie off of the ceiling fan blade. I was like, “What the hell is this game?” But then I rerolled my character and it slowly turned into one of my favorite games of all time. Seriously, if you like stranger than normal RPG’s and incredible stories, you will absolutely love Disco Elysium.
If I remember correctly, in Super Mario The Lost Levels (in the West) there was a question block at the very start of the first level that released a poisoned mushroom. We all went for it because it was a mushroom in a Mario game. We paid the ultimate price.
Even when I first played it as an itiy bity kiddy. I knew it was evil. It looked poisoned. Now mario 2 in Japan (which was lost levels here) that one looked exactly like the regular mushroom but with black spots. Anyone would've grabbed that one Also the opening demo straight up spoils that it'll kill u
@@meapickle That's probably why it is right at the start, though, to familiarise people with the idea that not all mushrooms are good in this game at a point where the cost is still negligible.
What I immediately had to think of was Nioh 2, your first enemy is jut a lowly demon thing that is easy enough to handle but then right after that is giant horse demon. And unlike Elden Ring you have to either fight it or run away from it, it is not a scripted encounter to show off how you are gonna die a lot, it is a normal encounter...to show off how you are gonna die a lot.
Remember that time Oxboxtra nearly put a Lethal dose of nutmeg in one of the cocktails for the video game drinks videos? Thank goodness Luke googled it and was like erm that's a lot of nutmeg.😱
And all because Jane misread "Ice, a handful. Nutmeg, fresh." as "Ice. A handful nutmeg, fresh." PSA: Punctuation is important - it could save your life!
It would not have been anywhere near lethal level. But it would have induced a very nasty trip. As in large quantities, nutmeg acts as a never pleasant hallucinogen.
I'd like to nominate Neir: Automata. The tutorial starts off with a few easy enemies, but you get thrown into a very legitimate 2 stage boss battle almost immediately. And instead of lovingly teasing the player with a difficult encounter you're not expected to survive and released into the wild like a From Software game, you get to continue repeating this difficult battle until you get good and win. Then the actual game starts!
Let's also not forget that the very first thing this game does - even before that tutorial - is to unceremoniously thrust you into a shoot-em-up without any explanation where you may be very easily destroyed - before the actual run-and-fight game even really starts. The game even makes it painfully obvious by the way of every one of the other 10 members of your team being killed one by one right in that prologue.
I don't feel so bad about my first attempt at Disco Elysium now, I just went with one of the preset builds and about a half hour in I tried to interview the kid throwing stones at the corpse. It went so badly, I immediately resigned from the police force
My character nearly died from photosensitivity turning on a light and then proceeded suffer a fatal heart attack by tripping over a woman in a wheelchair while flipping double birds at the hotel manager. Frankly it was a thing of beauty.
i like the part where you can go crazy enough to threaten to kill the hardy boys only to put the revolver in your own mouth and if you fail the skill check things go really bad
Sure, Fallout 4 didn't start me off with an enemy or fight of any sort, but before the playable cutscene to open the game is over, there's an irresistible chance to sprint past a road block and die in a nuclear blast. If that isn't trying to kill my character right out of the gate, they just don't know the player base.
@@DeuxLeftHands Can't remember ever trying to keep fighting until there's none left. I usually got bored after a dozen goons or so and let them finish Kain off. Still an awesome game, btw.
Woah, just remembered one from my childhood. Heart of Darkness on PS1. Once you gain control of your character, if you don't move in the first few seconds the thing you're standing on falls and you die. Nobody ever talks about that game, which is a pity, the graphics blew my mind back in the day.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game starts with you in a dark room with a pounding headache. You've got to figure out how to fix your headache using an analgesic (which is gonna be really annoying if you were born in the last 40-50 years and so aren't familiar with the word analgesic), and turn on the lights. Your first instinct might be to look around, take anything that seems useful, explore the house. But unfortunately if you don't leave the house within a few turns, your character will get bulldozed to death and then, a few minutes later, the earth will. (Also the first few times I played the game I definitely didn't even get past "headache in the dark" before getting bulldozed, it is Not a lot of turns)
This reminded me of the classic Sierra games. In Kings Quest you get eaten by alligators if you walk two pixels in the wrong direction after starting the game. In leisure suit Larry you similarly get ran over by a car.
The Immortal is one of those hidden gems that I never would have found if it weren't for Evercade. Or, well, I guess I would have heard of it eventually from this video. 🤔
Btw AVGN, and Cinemasacre did a special episode covering the game in real time with live action choices. While reviewing the game. Seriously one of the best episodes ever.
The great thing about The Immortal is that *the whole game is like that* (not helped by the seriously clunky controls. They tried).Talk about the difficulty of Soulslikes all you like, I've gotten further in Dark Souls than I ever did in The Immortal (or Ghosts 'n Goblins).
Final Fantasy II. (The Japanese one, not the one on the SNES) That one was REALLY bad for wanting you dead, combined with a leveling system that they never really used before or since to make the early game that little bit harder. :D
I feel like a lot of Resident Evil games can be on a list like this, RE3 remake seems to start really quick with this. Since you’re just in Jill’s apartment and after very little time, Nemesis just breaks straight through the wall and tries to kill her
Thank you! We got The Immortal when I was a kid and I could never Tennent what it was called. I just knew I got killed by that worm, restarted, walked out of the room and got immediately murdered, then quit the game forever.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, player is started in a tavern asking for ale, only to be kicked out, and no sooner than you exit the building you are set upon by an army of enemies with all the paths out of town blocked off
I would like to add the first level from Tomb Raider 2(PS1). It essentially gives you all the traps and more from the end of the first game, and adds 2 T-Rex's to fight at the same time. For the inexperienced and seasoned player it was a gauntlet of death.
Fallout New Vegas, if you explore anywhere aside from going straight to primm you'll find either Cazadores, Deathclaws, Feral Ghouls, and oh a giant Rad scorpion breeding grounds with occupants who will be very mad that a half dead courier is there, and will rectify that issue.
3:11 I remember Markiplier trying to get in on the Elden Ring craze…he found this enemy at the start and just…refused to walk around them. It was an hour of watching him die repeatedly before, if I recall, he stopped playing and never picked it up again (at least on YT). Funny and kinda sad.
Ravenskull on the BBC Micro. On the first level, to even get into Castle Ravenskull you have to use a key while standing in front of the main castle door, which is covered in spikes because, hey, it's a castle. There are two places you can stand - one where the door opens harmlessly to let you in, the other where the door opens right in your face, killing you. (edit - obviously it's a key to open the door, not a magic scroll as I originally wrote. On a later level of the game, there's a scroll that insta-kills you if you use it. The game doesn't tell you what particular scrolls do - some open doors, others teleport you around the map - you have to remember yourself)
At least in the Immortal the game actually starts when it trys to kill you. I wanna be the guy Gaiden is not only extremly hard to beat a single level, the game actually kills you on the level select screen. Before it basically started.
Tales of the Neon Sea starts you in an immediate chase scene, and you'll probably die several times over before you even get to the proper beginning of the story.
Resident Evil 1 does this by making you take down your first zombie with the knife if you are Chris (and you didn’t know you also had less inventory space, no lock picking, and no Barry!). And continuing that was RE4 where you have to take out Dr Salazar and his chainsaw 10 minutes into the game. I must have replayed that for almost an equal amount of time as the whole first stage
"What's this big round thing coming up to me it should have a big round name. Like bround, round, ground! There it is ground!, I wonder if it'll be friends with me"
Kenshi is a sandbox open world game, where you can pretty much walk outside the starter town and immediately get beaten up, robbed, and left for dead. At that's in the default start. I chose the Cannibal Village start for my first game!
I would like to add Project Zomboid to this list. It's possible to spawn in a house with zombies inside which swarm you and end your run within seconds. Especially with high Population settings. It's rare but still pretty hilarious
Resident Evil 2 (1998), the game immediately puts you in the most dangerous area, outside on the streets with zombies everywhere and not enough ammo to kill them all. Even the remake is easier as the zombies are spaced apart and give you plenty of time to run past them.
I remember a game that didn't try to kill you immediately. It just killed you immediately. If I remember correctly, it was called Requiem or something similar. The very first thing you see as you start to play is this : «You just died».
Honestly, though, i think I'd rather have this than 20 minutes of "use WASD to run" or "use left stick to look around". I'm constantly amazed by how many video games assume i have literally never played a video game before.
Excepting Far Cry 3's Blood Dragon spinoff, which takes the piss out of tutorials. Still, it would be nice if games could just ask, "are you familiar with WASD?" at the start. If you want to keep a self-aware tone, have the answers be, "no, what's that?" and "unless you decided to design the game weirdly, yes."
I don't know if it counts, but in the tutorial for the twin-stick shooter Helldivers the first thing it teaches you is how to properly move and aim. Once you've gotten the hang of that, the game incapacitates you in order to teach you how to get back up from the games' 'down but not out' state. Really sets the tone of the whole game.
Huh, weird. When I saw "The Immortal" and recognised the killer slimes and the "Your name is not Dunric" line from the intro, I got confused because I swear that was actually Cadaver (a game by the Bitmap Brothers) which I played briefly on the Atari ST back in the day, as it was in a three-game box along with Xenon and Speedball II. But after Googling both games I don't really recognise much of anything of Cadaver and yet don't remember playing a game called The Immortal at all. So I don't know what my brain did to mix those two titles together somehow :D.
I love this channel. You guys are great, the content is great and the corny jokes are hilarious. Always great topics that I’ve never thought of before and I’m always learning new things about games. Never change.
All I can think of is a new list called "Game tutorials that were so broken that they needed an update." like that game called Steep from Ubisoft that told you to parachute and land in a precise area or you couldn't Play the rest of the game. The devs had to make an update to fix that.
I know it's not a console game, but Kenshi should definitely make this list. Start out in just about any of the vanilla beginning scenarios, leave The Hub to go adventuring, get attacked by Dust Bandits, bleed out. Or, if you're REALLY lucky, you'll run like hell to an area that's infested with Bonedogs, Skin Spiders, or Beak Things, which will all eat you alive. The learning curve on that game is a little steep.
Disco Elisium. Oh yeah, the game where I talked to a kid, she gave depression to my character and he decided to give up being a detective. Andy forgot to mention that IF you beat the Grafted Scion in Elden Ring, you will die by going to see butterflies on a cliff right after. For games that want to kill you right away, there is Noita. The second you go in the cavern everything can be on fire, or covered in toxic liquid, or you can find a lake of acid, or a lake of lava, you can also be greeted by a Stendari which is a fire mage that bleeds lava or a Happonuljaska which is a flying acid slime that bleeds acid, there can also be exploding barrels (oil, explosives and toxic sludge) that are already on fire. If you are really lucky you can have a Kummitus spawning near the entrance of the cavern. It is a ghost that carries one of the wands you had in a previous run that ended with a death. If you had a godly wand, good luck. Also if you had a wand with the Nuke spell good luck. But it gets better in Noita, if you are really lucky and dumb, you can start with an acid potion and drink it because reasons, but at that point it's slightly more your fault than the game's.
a fair example no one talks about is battlefeild 1. when you first load up the game you are forced to die a bunch of times just so they can make a point about how much war sucks
Nier: Automata is my pick since I just got it. There isn't really a tutorial, and while they're generous with the health, if you go into the game figuring you'll be shown the ropes and the damage you take isn't that big of a deal, you're sadly mistaken. It was about the third time I'd crashed into a pillar during a descent in a ship through a building that I realized...oh. Oh, the game's begun! No room for mistakes and redos, better learn on the fly! You can pause and study your weapons and buttons and switch stuff out, but never are you walked through what everything is. I wasn't prepared for that, but that realization was actually kind of fun, but nerve-wracking. I already knew from top 10 lists and whatnot that you cannot save during the first mission, and that mission is about 40-ish minutes. Yes, generous health is given, but without a tutorial to understand your moves (for example, I took a lot of damage because I didn't know I had a dodge maneuver until I got to the boss and nearly died there), you can quickly burn through your health.
Nier: Automata is also the game where you can kill yourself by unequipping your own CPU. The game warns you that this is a very bad idea but you can do it.
I feel like the tutorial battle from smt 3 fits on this list, if your unlucky you'll have to fight 1v2 battles where the enemies can use attacks with an unnaturally high crit rate thus giving themselves another turn which is basically a death sentence if you play on the hard difficulty.
Disco Elysium is my favourite game I played last year. I initially got used to saving a lot because I'm a curious ADHD riddled goblin that loves making bad decisions but then experienced a glitch where I couldn't save unless I wanted to lose like 5 hours of progress and it became such a fun experience. I managed to fix the save issue without much lost but it's such a terrific game when you just let go and see what happens. I almost died a few more times but you get an understanding of when you're going to do something deadly and can make decisions accordingly. I also love that my dumb inquisitiveness to put importance on the most unimportant things actually paid off in the ending.
I don't know if it was in episode one already, but another Genesis game, Dynamite Headdy, places you in a back to back escape sequence and boss fight BEFORE the tutorial even begins (yes, a game with a tutorial on the Genesis. That is more surprising than being immediately killed). Sure they aren't hard, but you wouldn't know during the very first playthrough and one of the two versions of that boss (there's differences between the J and rest-of-the-world UE versions in difficulty, iirc UE being harder, said boss having more health and more active projectiles on screen) is going to body you on the very first playthrough
My biggest problem with Disco Elysium is that it throws all other video game writing into sharp relief. So much stuff is "good for video games" and very much is just "good".
But when the narration isn’t the central point of the game, it can be better to not try too hard. I like games with rich stories and interactions, but I also find Naughty Bear story perfact: it’s just things like ’Buttercup didn’t invite you to her birthday, she will DIE!’
i'm not gonna lie, i'm using your guys' videos as inspiration for my projects. you guys tend to have good ideas and good criticism, so i take notes! i want my projects to be solid experiences from the start! also it gives me dastardly ideas like making the intro try to kill the player or make undefeatable bosses hehehehehe
Project Zomboid's tutorial teaches you some basics, like controls, combat, and interacting. Then it tricks you into pressing the "shout" button, drawing every zombie in a square-mile radius.
7 more boss battles where you had to fight more than one boss I'd like to throw out Blade Bearer and Cannoneer from Code Vein. They are the Ornstein and Smough homage, but thankfully don't share the heal mechanic during the main story. However, when you encounter that same boss battle in The Depths, they pick up the ability to take on the powers of their fallen teammate, which includes a heal to full health.
These two were the point in the game where i switched my weapon to a Greatsword i had upgraded and that thing just wrecked house. It was almost comical how OP a greatsword in this game is with the right Skillset equipped My tip always go for Blade first as she's much quicker and Cannoneer is just much easier to hit and avaoid when he's alone.
I am reminded of "Plants vs Zombies", in which the game help ("brought to you by the zombies") is to do nothing, as you "win" when the zombies reach your house. But the game that I remember as trying to kill you repeatedly AND immediately is "Weird Dreams", way back in 1989. It's possible to die on the very first screen if you don't move quickly!
I don’t think I’ve had gamer rage has much during this lycan survival in RE Vil’age 😂 (last time was figthing Jinpachi in Tekken 5 decades ago) The game just telles you to survive and that’s it , in village of shadows you might as well just stay in the barn cuz you’ll die as soon as the lycan starts rushing
Gotta mention I Wanna Be The Guy Gaiden again, since it has a Super Mario Bros. 3 level selection screen where you can die between starting the game and moving to the first level's tile.
The "Bingo" joke is an appropriate reference to make, since a not-insignificant portion of Village's design is arguably ripped straight from RE4. The game's basically RE4 and 7 tossed in a blender, along with the word "sequel."
Shadowgate for the NES. You could use the lit torch that's meant to light your way on your character, killing them instantly. I'm pretty sure you could also just stand there and wait for the torch to go out, and somehow that killed you, too.
Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny. You start off busting out of prison by shapeshifting into a terrible beast, breaking through a wall, then shifting into a tiny lizard that crawls out of the fortress in the confusion, before reverting back to being human as you enter a cave to search for the Draracle, a draconic being known for giving supernaturally good advice. (3 guesses where they got the name.) All this is cutscene. In, I think, the second chamber of the cave, there are 2 or 3 paths to take. If your approach to solving mazes is the left hand rule, you wind up at the main entrance of the cave, which has been blockaded by the guards from the fortress you escaped from (who are also your primary threat throughout this level). If you run out as a human, they shoot you full of arrows. If you run out as a lizard, they also kill you, but in a different way (I forget how exactly). If you run out as the beast, you slaughter the barricade guards in a cutscene, but as you're doing so, other guards manage to wheel up a ballista right behind you and shoot you with a bolt the size of a small tree, killing you. Back in 1997 when this came out, it was very impressive to have cutscenes that adapt to what form you're in as you do the thing that definitely gets you killed. I've never actually beaten the game, but as it's one of the first I played that managed to adapt to player choices like that, it's always held a special place in my heart.
One of my favorite examples is in Dead Space 2. In the span of a few minutes, Isaac is introduced to an environment he’s completely unfamiliar with, his would be savior immediately dies and transforms into a necromorph 2 inches from his face, the first tutorial you’re given is to run like hell since Isaac is in a straight jacket, and then the necromorphs do a number on his health, leaving him in the red. All in all, it was not the best start for Isaac that day.
Similar thing happened in Dead Island as well.
I mean, it's a callback to the first Dead Space where you are getting ambushed, while cut off from your team, with no way to defend yourself. They knew they had an incredibly intense first few moments that set the tone, and they reiterated it perfectly.
I just started playing through that game a few weeks ago. Holy hell that section was rough
Isaac has a lot of bad days.
What's worse is that you play as that character in another side story Dead Space game. He literally makes it through the whole game to immediately die in the main title.
To be fair to Luigi he wasn't tricked in the 2nd game to visiting a haunted mansion. Instead he was sitting down in his chair at his house when all of a sudden E.Gadd decided to kidnap him by forcefully teleporting him through his TV to his lab. All so he could get Luigi to clean up his own mess.
I'd like to add that in Elden Ring, even if you do defeat the Grafted Scion who acts as a boss intended to kill you, you have to die to continue the game anyway. And it'll typically be done because some rocks fell out from under your feet.
yup fromsoft has it out for us lol.
It's no dragon God's fist to the face, but hey, it works.
Extra icing on the cake, there's a bunch of butterflies you can collect as crafting material just there, over the bit of floor that crumbles away
On the bright side, yey cool new sword!
it's the same in Sekiro. You can beat Ashina, but still lose your hand. From Soft heh xd.
I’m one of the players that was killed immediately in Disco Elysium because I failed to pull my tie off of the ceiling fan blade. I was like, “What the hell is this game?” But then I rerolled my character and it slowly turned into one of my favorite games of all time. Seriously, if you like stranger than normal RPG’s and incredible stories, you will absolutely love Disco Elysium.
"Kojima eh, what's he like?" Never heard one man summed up so brilliantly in just one sentence.
Can I just say how much I appreciate that "lycan subscribe" joke? Because it's a lot.
This channel has always got those top-tier puns 👍
Honestly, that's been something I've really wanted to attach to a werewolf vtuber. It would be PERFECT.
If I remember correctly, in Super Mario The Lost Levels (in the West) there was a question block at the very start of the first level that released a poisoned mushroom. We all went for it because it was a mushroom in a Mario game. We paid the ultimate price.
Didn’t remember much about it. And never experienced that when I was a kid.
It had a skull and crossbones on it, but it did usurp the game design of the original level 1-1.
Even when I first played it as an itiy bity kiddy. I knew it was evil. It looked poisoned.
Now mario 2 in Japan (which was lost levels here) that one looked exactly like the regular mushroom but with black spots. Anyone would've grabbed that one
Also the opening demo straight up spoils that it'll kill u
Now anyone who has Nintendo Switch and have online subscription can play them.
@@meapickle That's probably why it is right at the start, though, to familiarise people with the idea that not all mushrooms are good in this game at a point where the cost is still negligible.
you call it being killed immediately, I call it speedrunning.
Obviously not speed running fast enough
more like speedruining
Instant death %
They call me the true ending finder. Well mostly I call me that...
That’s one way to look at it.
I’ve been trying to find the title of the game “The Immortal “ for about 2 decades. I’m so thankful for coming across this video. Thank you
What I immediately had to think of was Nioh 2, your first enemy is jut a lowly demon thing that is easy enough to handle but then right after that is giant horse demon. And unlike Elden Ring you have to either fight it or run away from it, it is not a scripted encounter to show off how you are gonna die a lot, it is a normal encounter...to show off how you are gonna die a lot.
Remember that time Oxboxtra nearly put a Lethal dose of nutmeg in one of the cocktails for the video game drinks videos?
Thank goodness Luke googled it and was like erm that's a lot of nutmeg.😱
Oh god no I don't remember that
And all because Jane misread "Ice, a handful. Nutmeg, fresh." as "Ice. A handful nutmeg, fresh."
PSA: Punctuation is important - it could save your life!
It would not have been anywhere near lethal level. But it would have induced a very nasty trip. As in large quantities, nutmeg acts as a never pleasant hallucinogen.
Anyone got a link, that sounds funny in hindsight.
@@darthkarl99 Can't post links, as they get automatically deleted. Search for "Royal Conservatory Cooler" and it'll have to pop up.
I'd like to nominate Neir: Automata. The tutorial starts off with a few easy enemies, but you get thrown into a very legitimate 2 stage boss battle almost immediately. And instead of lovingly teasing the player with a difficult encounter you're not expected to survive and released into the wild like a From Software game, you get to continue repeating this difficult battle until you get good and win. Then the actual game starts!
Factsss
There's also the matter of having to restart to 30 minute long tutorial every time you die because you have to beat the boss to unlock the save system
@@chariotboi5061 at least you get one of the many endings that you can unlock
Let's also not forget that the very first thing this game does - even before that tutorial - is to unceremoniously thrust you into a shoot-em-up without any explanation where you may be very easily destroyed - before the actual run-and-fight game even really starts. The game even makes it painfully obvious by the way of every one of the other 10 members of your team being killed one by one right in that prologue.
@@chariotboi5061 rage inducing, as cool as the Gundam flying part is, watched my team mates laser beams to many times😢
I don't feel so bad about my first attempt at Disco Elysium now, I just went with one of the preset builds and about a half hour in I tried to interview the kid throwing stones at the corpse. It went so badly, I immediately resigned from the police force
i also went with a preset when i started it. I managed to die trying to take my tie from the fan... by hanging myself with it somehow?
My character nearly died from photosensitivity turning on a light and then proceeded suffer a fatal heart attack by tripping over a woman in a wheelchair while flipping double birds at the hotel manager.
Frankly it was a thing of beauty.
A chimney made funny noises, so I decided to kick it...
**Dead**
Same here. Got ripped by the foul-mouthed ginger menace Kuno trying to interview him in my first playthrough. 10/10 would recommend.
i like the part where you can go crazy enough to threaten to kill the hardy boys only to put the revolver in your own mouth and if you fail the skill check things go really bad
To be fair, Luigi wasn't tricked into going on the adventure in Dark Moon.
E. Gad kidnapped him.
Sure, Fallout 4 didn't start me off with an enemy or fight of any sort, but before the playable cutscene to open the game is over, there's an irresistible chance to sprint past a road block and die in a nuclear blast. If that isn't trying to kill my character right out of the gate, they just don't know the player base.
If they really wanted, they would gave had several domestic accident opportunities before that.
The first Legacy of Kain game has you facing infinite waves of enemies at the start. You HAVE to die to move forward with the narrative.
It might be memory bias but I believe that I got softlocked in this game because no one else was spawning after a while.
@@DeuxLeftHands ah right! Interesting. Didn't know that
@@DeuxLeftHands Can't remember ever trying to keep fighting until there's none left. I usually got bored after a dozen goons or so and let them finish Kain off. Still an awesome game, btw.
Woah, just remembered one from my childhood. Heart of Darkness on PS1. Once you gain control of your character, if you don't move in the first few seconds the thing you're standing on falls and you die. Nobody ever talks about that game, which is a pity, the graphics blew my mind back in the day.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game starts with you in a dark room with a pounding headache. You've got to figure out how to fix your headache using an analgesic (which is gonna be really annoying if you were born in the last 40-50 years and so aren't familiar with the word analgesic), and turn on the lights. Your first instinct might be to look around, take anything that seems useful, explore the house. But unfortunately if you don't leave the house within a few turns, your character will get bulldozed to death and then, a few minutes later, the earth will. (Also the first few times I played the game I definitely didn't even get past "headache in the dark" before getting bulldozed, it is Not a lot of turns)
In the beginning of Dead Space 2 the protagonist Issac Clarke is chased by a horde of necromorphs only a couple of minutes after beginning the game.
Huge props for mentioning “King’s Field,” and even more so for using footage from the best installment!
"Lycan subscribe" is the best lower third tag I've seen in a while.
I see you, pun-master editor. (Ellen, is that you?)
If I remember correctly Another World had a pretty harsh start too.
Nice to see someone know that game.
If you simply don't touch the controls at all, you'll be dead within ten seconds. If you do, you might last twenty!
Came here to see if that made the list!
It's in the original video.
Even oler in the same genre is Rick Dangerous. Any esitation in the first screen and you were eithercdrushed by a boulder or impaled.
Many roguelike games fit to this category very well because the levels and enemy placements are always randomly generated. :)
Also a lot of Roguelites do the "quick kill first run" to show your Immortal
This reminded me of the classic Sierra games.
In Kings Quest you get eaten by alligators if you walk two pixels in the wrong direction after starting the game.
In leisure suit Larry you similarly get ran over by a car.
The Immortal is one of those hidden gems that I never would have found if it weren't for Evercade. Or, well, I guess I would have heard of it eventually from this video. 🤔
Btw AVGN, and Cinemasacre did a special episode covering the game in real time with live action choices. While reviewing the game. Seriously one of the best episodes ever.
I now have a pretty strong desire to play a Columbo-esque run in Disco Elysium
Of course Disco Elysium is the first thing on this list. I’ve heard a lot about this game.
Hey, come on down to Revachol, you may like it lol
@@CharlieBravo1118 Probably my best game...ever...ever,rumours of Disco 2...we can only hope :)
It's honestly the only game where your choices are actually make or break. Legit DnD experience
It’s so good
Play it!
The great thing about The Immortal is that *the whole game is like that* (not helped by the seriously clunky controls. They tried).Talk about the difficulty of Soulslikes all you like, I've gotten further in Dark Souls than I ever did in The Immortal (or Ghosts 'n Goblins).
Perfect Weapon for PS1. First game I ever returned. You wake up on an ice planet freezing to death and need to find a device in the level to stop it.
Ahh! I recommended Torment: Tides of Numenera in the comments on a previous video, so happy to see it make it into this new list!
I did too, it was a stupid one and now it's the only thing I actually remember from the game (I stopped playing after a while).
So did I! :D I consider this proof that our lives were not "utterly meaningless"
@@Knopey Same, buddy!
Final Fantasy II. (The Japanese one, not the one on the SNES) That one was REALLY bad for wanting you dead, combined with a leveling system that they never really used before or since to make the early game that little bit harder. :D
The wilds NEAR the paths you're supposed to use to get to the next town are next level stuff WAY beyond you early game. Late game though? WMAHAAHAHAAH
I feel like The Evil Within deserves a shout out. I remember a LOT of dying in that game before you reach the intro song...
I feel like a lot of Resident Evil games can be on a list like this, RE3 remake seems to start really quick with this. Since you’re just in Jill’s apartment and after very little time, Nemesis just breaks straight through the wall and tries to kill her
Disco Elysium is my favorite game of all time. What a fucking masterpiece
Recently binged all of your old videos, keep up the good work
Thank you! We got The Immortal when I was a kid and I could never Tennent what it was called. I just knew I got killed by that worm, restarted, walked out of the room and got immediately murdered, then quit the game forever.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, player is started in a tavern asking for ale, only to be kicked out, and no sooner than you exit the building you are set upon by an army of enemies with all the paths out of town blocked off
I would like to add the first level from Tomb Raider 2(PS1). It essentially gives you all the traps and more from the end of the first game, and adds 2 T-Rex's to fight at the same time. For the inexperienced and seasoned player it was a gauntlet of death.
By the way, thank you for finally including a link to the relevant previous video!
Neo Scavenger would be a good game for a comments list. You exit a cryo pod and almost immediately get attacked by a werewolf.
Fallout New Vegas, if you explore anywhere aside from going straight to primm you'll find either Cazadores, Deathclaws, Feral Ghouls, and oh a giant Rad scorpion breeding grounds with occupants who will be very mad that a half dead courier is there, and will rectify that issue.
Similar when trying to going to Mariposa Military Base from Vault 13 right out of the gate.
3:11 I remember Markiplier trying to get in on the Elden Ring craze…he found this enemy at the start and just…refused to walk around them. It was an hour of watching him die repeatedly before, if I recall, he stopped playing and never picked it up again (at least on YT). Funny and kinda sad.
It’s always awesome when OutsideXbox comes out with a new video!
Ravenskull on the BBC Micro. On the first level, to even get into Castle Ravenskull you have to use a key while standing in front of the main castle door, which is covered in spikes because, hey, it's a castle. There are two places you can stand - one where the door opens harmlessly to let you in, the other where the door opens right in your face, killing you.
(edit - obviously it's a key to open the door, not a magic scroll as I originally wrote. On a later level of the game, there's a scroll that insta-kills you if you use it. The game doesn't tell you what particular scrolls do - some open doors, others teleport you around the map - you have to remember yourself)
A BBC Micro? So it's just a medium sized one?
At least in the Immortal the game actually starts when it trys to kill you.
I wanna be the guy Gaiden is not only extremly hard to beat a single level, the game actually kills you on the level select screen. Before it basically started.
Tales of the Neon Sea starts you in an immediate chase scene, and you'll probably die several times over before you even get to the proper beginning of the story.
Resident Evil 1 does this by making you take down your first zombie with the knife if you are Chris (and you didn’t know you also had less inventory space, no lock picking, and no Barry!). And continuing that was RE4 where you have to take out Dr Salazar and his chainsaw 10 minutes into the game. I must have replayed that for almost an equal amount of time as the whole first stage
"What's this big round thing coming up to me it should have a big round name. Like bround, round, ground! There it is ground!, I wonder if it'll be friends with me"
"Oh, no! Not again!"
Kenshi is a sandbox open world game, where you can pretty much walk outside the starter town and immediately get beaten up, robbed, and left for dead. At that's in the default start. I chose the Cannibal Village start for my first game!
Pretty much all old games qualify.
Super mario? Goomba to the face
Ghouls'n'ghost? Zombie to the face
Bomberman? Your own bomb to the face
I love how this is the second week in a row where this channel has specifically called out and made fun of the mgs5 intro.
I would like to add Project Zomboid to this list. It's possible to spawn in a house with zombies inside which swarm you and end your run within seconds. Especially with high Population settings. It's rare but still pretty hilarious
The Forest starts with a plane crash. And somehow, the plane crash is only the first of many things that try to kill you
Resident Evil 2 (1998), the game immediately puts you in the most dangerous area, outside on the streets with zombies everywhere and not enough ammo to kill them all. Even the remake is easier as the zombies are spaced apart and give you plenty of time to run past them.
On top of that, the 1998 one was still using the old style tank controls of that time which made dodging even harder.
@@soultpp And fixed camera.
I didn't know anything about Disco Elysium before going in and immediately died from a heart attack when reaching for my tie :/
And people say dark souls is hard
Theory: the metal gear solid games are just old man Snake's drunken tall tales
I remember a game that didn't try to kill you immediately. It just killed you immediately. If I remember correctly, it was called Requiem or something similar. The very first thing you see as you start to play is this : «You just died».
Honestly, though, i think I'd rather have this than 20 minutes of "use WASD to run" or "use left stick to look around". I'm constantly amazed by how many video games assume i have literally never played a video game before.
Excepting Far Cry 3's Blood Dragon spinoff, which takes the piss out of tutorials.
Still, it would be nice if games could just ask, "are you familiar with WASD?" at the start. If you want to keep a self-aware tone, have the answers be, "no, what's that?" and "unless you decided to design the game weirdly, yes."
The Darkness 2. First mission gets you immobilized and under attack while your friend tries to get you out of burning restaurant.
I don't know if it counts, but in the tutorial for the twin-stick shooter Helldivers the first thing it teaches you is how to properly move and aim. Once you've gotten the hang of that, the game incapacitates you in order to teach you how to get back up from the games' 'down but not out' state.
Really sets the tone of the whole game.
Huh, weird. When I saw "The Immortal" and recognised the killer slimes and the "Your name is not Dunric" line from the intro, I got confused because I swear that was actually Cadaver (a game by the Bitmap Brothers) which I played briefly on the Atari ST back in the day, as it was in a three-game box along with Xenon and Speedball II. But after Googling both games I don't really recognise much of anything of Cadaver and yet don't remember playing a game called The Immortal at all. So I don't know what my brain did to mix those two titles together somehow :D.
I love this channel. You guys are great, the content is great and the corny jokes are hilarious. Always great topics that I’ve never thought of before and I’m always learning new things about games. Never change.
Mad Rat Dead starts with the rat protagonist's death, if that counts
All I can think of is a new list called "Game tutorials that were so broken that they needed an update." like that game called Steep from Ubisoft that told you to parachute and land in a precise area or you couldn't Play the rest of the game. The devs had to make an update to fix that.
I know it's not a console game, but Kenshi should definitely make this list. Start out in just about any of the vanilla beginning scenarios, leave The Hub to go adventuring, get attacked by Dust Bandits, bleed out. Or, if you're REALLY lucky, you'll run like hell to an area that's infested with Bonedogs, Skin Spiders, or Beak Things, which will all eat you alive. The learning curve on that game is a little steep.
Disco Elisium. Oh yeah, the game where I talked to a kid, she gave depression to my character and he decided to give up being a detective.
Andy forgot to mention that IF you beat the Grafted Scion in Elden Ring, you will die by going to see butterflies on a cliff right after.
For games that want to kill you right away, there is Noita. The second you go in the cavern everything can be on fire, or covered in toxic liquid, or you can find a lake of acid, or a lake of lava, you can also be greeted by a Stendari which is a fire mage that bleeds lava or a Happonuljaska which is a flying acid slime that bleeds acid, there can also be exploding barrels (oil, explosives and toxic sludge) that are already on fire. If you are really lucky you can have a Kummitus spawning near the entrance of the cavern. It is a ghost that carries one of the wands you had in a previous run that ended with a death. If you had a godly wand, good luck. Also if you had a wand with the Nuke spell good luck.
But it gets better in Noita, if you are really lucky and dumb, you can start with an acid potion and drink it because reasons, but at that point it's slightly more your fault than the game's.
I died because I had a heart attack from my discomfort from a very uncomfortable chair.
Edit: I replied before Andy mentioned this exact moment 😂
Kid? I think you mean "Meth Gremlin"
I died of depression in Disco Elysium because I failed a stat check and this was very early on.
Devil may cry 3. Demons attack you as soon as the game begins. As noob in action game as I am, I lost at the first mission
first a fire whale swallowing a helicopter, then a fiery unicorn ...... does mr. Kojima have a history with substance use? 0_o
I tried playing 'The Immortal' on NES. Same result. Don't think I ever got past the second level.
a fair example no one talks about is battlefeild 1. when you first load up the game you are forced to die a bunch of times just so they can make a point about how much war sucks
Nier: Automata is my pick since I just got it. There isn't really a tutorial, and while they're generous with the health, if you go into the game figuring you'll be shown the ropes and the damage you take isn't that big of a deal, you're sadly mistaken. It was about the third time I'd crashed into a pillar during a descent in a ship through a building that I realized...oh. Oh, the game's begun! No room for mistakes and redos, better learn on the fly!
You can pause and study your weapons and buttons and switch stuff out, but never are you walked through what everything is. I wasn't prepared for that, but that realization was actually kind of fun, but nerve-wracking. I already knew from top 10 lists and whatnot that you cannot save during the first mission, and that mission is about 40-ish minutes. Yes, generous health is given, but without a tutorial to understand your moves (for example, I took a lot of damage because I didn't know I had a dodge maneuver until I got to the boss and nearly died there), you can quickly burn through your health.
Nier: Automata is also the game where you can kill yourself by unequipping your own CPU. The game warns you that this is a very bad idea but you can do it.
7 games? That’s easy:
Demon Souls
Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Dark Souls III
Bloodborne
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Elden Ring
I feel like the tutorial battle from smt 3 fits on this list, if your unlucky you'll have to fight 1v2 battles where the enemies can use attacks with an unnaturally high crit rate thus giving themselves another turn which is basically a death sentence if you play on the hard difficulty.
Zilla sends his regards, Wang. Original Shadow Warrior - game starts with an enemy mook jumping in through the window of an apartment you start in.
Disco Elysium is my favourite game I played last year. I initially got used to saving a lot because I'm a curious ADHD riddled goblin that loves making bad decisions but then experienced a glitch where I couldn't save unless I wanted to lose like 5 hours of progress and it became such a fun experience. I managed to fix the save issue without much lost but it's such a terrific game when you just let go and see what happens. I almost died a few more times but you get an understanding of when you're going to do something deadly and can make decisions accordingly. I also love that my dumb inquisitiveness to put importance on the most unimportant things actually paid off in the ending.
to be fair on Luigi, he HAD to go in, to rescue his bro and friends. and the peer pressure in the 3rd game must have been immense haha
I used to love playing The Immortal back in the day, but I never got anywhere near to finishing it. I still have the cartridge somewhere...
I cackled way too hard at "Lycan Subscribe". High five to whoever came up with that
I don't know if it was in episode one already, but another Genesis game, Dynamite Headdy, places you in a back to back escape sequence and boss fight BEFORE the tutorial even begins (yes, a game with a tutorial on the Genesis. That is more surprising than being immediately killed). Sure they aren't hard, but you wouldn't know during the very first playthrough and one of the two versions of that boss (there's differences between the J and rest-of-the-world UE versions in difficulty, iirc UE being harder, said boss having more health and more active projectiles on screen) is going to body you on the very first playthrough
"Lycan subscribe" will probably be my favourite pun of the year and we're only in February.
My biggest problem with Disco Elysium is that it throws all other video game writing into sharp relief. So much stuff is "good for video games" and very much is just "good".
But when the narration isn’t the central point of the game, it can be better to not try too hard. I like games with rich stories and interactions, but I also find Naughty Bear story perfact: it’s just things like ’Buttercup didn’t invite you to her birthday, she will DIE!’
Why did Luigi go to a haunted bar?
To get all the Boos.
@4:52 An unintentionally appropriate video encoding glitch
i'm not gonna lie, i'm using your guys' videos as inspiration for my projects. you guys tend to have good ideas and good criticism, so i take notes! i want my projects to be solid experiences from the start!
also it gives me dastardly ideas like making the intro try to kill the player or make undefeatable bosses hehehehehe
Project Zomboid's tutorial teaches you some basics, like controls, combat, and interacting. Then it tricks you into pressing the "shout" button, drawing every zombie in a square-mile radius.
7 more boss battles where you had to fight more than one boss
I'd like to throw out Blade Bearer and Cannoneer from Code Vein. They are the Ornstein and Smough homage, but thankfully don't share the heal mechanic during the main story. However, when you encounter that same boss battle in The Depths, they pick up the ability to take on the powers of their fallen teammate, which includes a heal to full health.
These two were the point in the game where i switched my weapon to a Greatsword i had upgraded and that thing just wrecked house. It was almost comical how OP a greatsword in this game is with the right Skillset equipped
My tip always go for Blade first as she's much quicker and Cannoneer is just much easier to hit and avaoid when he's alone.
Far cry 5 should definitely be on this list you are still in the "cutscene" when you are attacked
"Lycan subscribe". It's been a rough time lately and I'd about forgotten what laughter was. Thanks.
I am reminded of "Plants vs Zombies", in which the game help ("brought to you by the zombies") is to do nothing, as you "win" when the zombies reach your house.
But the game that I remember as trying to kill you repeatedly AND immediately is "Weird Dreams", way back in 1989. It's possible to die on the very first screen if you don't move quickly!
I don’t think I’ve had gamer rage has much during this lycan survival in RE Vil’age 😂 (last time was figthing Jinpachi in Tekken 5 decades ago)
The game just telles you to survive and that’s it , in village of shadows you might as well just stay in the barn cuz you’ll die as soon as the lycan starts rushing
Jinpachi is a breath of fresh air compared to that dang Azazel.
Gotta mention I Wanna Be The Guy Gaiden again, since it has a Super Mario Bros. 3 level selection screen where you can die between starting the game and moving to the first level's tile.
"Lycan Subscribe" is my favorite chyron joke you guys have made. nice.
The "Bingo" joke is an appropriate reference to make, since a not-insignificant portion of Village's design is arguably ripped straight from RE4. The game's basically RE4 and 7 tossed in a blender, along with the word "sequel."
Shadowgate for the NES. You could use the lit torch that's meant to light your way on your character, killing them instantly. I'm pretty sure you could also just stand there and wait for the torch to go out, and somehow that killed you, too.
It’s fun to see old games in these lists
In kingdom come deliverance you can die before you even start the game
Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny. You start off busting out of prison by shapeshifting into a terrible beast, breaking through a wall, then shifting into a tiny lizard that crawls out of the fortress in the confusion, before reverting back to being human as you enter a cave to search for the Draracle, a draconic being known for giving supernaturally good advice. (3 guesses where they got the name.) All this is cutscene.
In, I think, the second chamber of the cave, there are 2 or 3 paths to take. If your approach to solving mazes is the left hand rule, you wind up at the main entrance of the cave, which has been blockaded by the guards from the fortress you escaped from (who are also your primary threat throughout this level). If you run out as a human, they shoot you full of arrows. If you run out as a lizard, they also kill you, but in a different way (I forget how exactly). If you run out as the beast, you slaughter the barricade guards in a cutscene, but as you're doing so, other guards manage to wheel up a ballista right behind you and shoot you with a bolt the size of a small tree, killing you.
Back in 1997 when this came out, it was very impressive to have cutscenes that adapt to what form you're in as you do the thing that definitely gets you killed. I've never actually beaten the game, but as it's one of the first I played that managed to adapt to player choices like that, it's always held a special place in my heart.
I remember playing The Witch’s House, where if you’re not playing attention you get crushed in the very first room
"My prediction: pain."
That description of death is haunting even though this situation is so hilarious