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[DeVeAn]

A game that gives you control right out the gate should really be more commonplace imo. One that comes to mind is X-men 2 Clone Wars on the Genesis. As soon as you hit power the game starts with a random X-man. What other games out there do this or something similar? Does it matter to you? I really appreciate the idea as I can get a feel if I'll like the game while spending very little time with it.

I recall Sakurai explaining this along with being able to pause at ANY time.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES.
Push Start and you’ll be steamrolled in two seconds if you don’t move out of the way of the incoming bulldozer.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

Not a ton of modern games, there is usually a bit of intro. Almost all of the games that literally boot into starting a game are going to be arcade games like Pac-Man. Best example I can think of recently is Animal Well.

VVVVVV, Half-Life, and to a lesser extent, Half-Life 2 and Breath of the Wild. Short cutscenes/rail segments but you are in control of the character and able to do something almost immediately. Little wasted time.

 

[neocycle]

Yea, I hate the long introductions in videogames. Let me play!
There is too much blabla in videogames!

 

[Madserb2023]

Half life

 

[fart town usa]

Heavy Rain for PS3

 

[RoboFu]

ahh i miss the nes days of power on to title screen then right into playing.

 

[Garibaldi]

I might be misremembering but I'm gonna say Metal Gear Solid. Altho I might be confusing myself and it could be a Persona game.

 

[cormack12]

Nier automata just throws you into a battle doesn't it? And God of War 3 too

 

[ReBurn]

Pac-Man

 

[Kamina]

There aren’t may games that do this these days.
I always appreciate games that at least keep the intro brief, like Souls games for example: usually there is a short intro video but then you are directly dropped into the game.

 

[Games of Today]

Road Redemption. You watch a short 20 second intro video and then you're immediately riding the motorcycle.

 

[CamHostage]

Hmm, good question. It would be hard to do today because of all the corporate boilerplate and legal needs of business up front (and also title menus tend to have some important choices to make before you play, even if they are distracting on replay.) With today's Sleep Mode, it's also not as cool/useful a timesave since you're usually booting right into your save anyway. But I would love for a developer to try it, and I'm with the OP that the impression of an immediate start in the Xmen 2 Genesis game was always legendarily bold. (Albeit Xmen also felt a bit like a bug at the time, like the game skipped a step. Journalists had to explain how cool the start was there, and even with that it felt like something was missing even that early in narrative games)

Playable title screens are often my fave way to start a game (even if these playable titles lock you into a corridor or slow dialog sequence, like Half-Life's train ride to Arkham Asylum's Joker escort.) I think it'd be really cool if the title came up on a game, and you don't even hit start, you just walk right past the title and into the game world.

 

[ReyBrujo]

I don't think there are any games other than the X-Men for Genesis where you don't even need to press Start to start the game. Maybe Pong for Atari, or one of the Pong consoles or the Magnabox Odyssey games.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Bayonetta

Assassins Creed 1

 

[CamHostage]

Nier automata just throws you into a battle doesn't it?

Naw, still a Start screen and still kind of an opening cutscene, although it's a unique and fun way to start; you think it's just a story sequence and suddenly you're SHMUPing!

And God of War 3 too

No, there's a Start screen plus an extensive prologue. Gotta explain all the Titans backstory, all of Greece and eternium is involved here.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

GTA games typically start you off with very little limitation. I think GTA5 kinda broke it with the intro, but the rest you can explore at least one of the islands when you start.

 

[March Climber]

Half life

?

 

[DeepSpace5D]

Inside does this. Great game.

 

[amigastar]

Diablo 2

 

[CamHostage]

...I could swear there was one if not several games with a playable title screens, even if the screen is limited? Like I remember something where the game starts and you're up on a cliff looking down on an environ, and it looks like CG or a cutscene but if you move the controller your character can walk around. You can't really go anywhere, you still have to press start to begin the campaign, but you can practice run and jump and attack before even jumping into the game world, and maybe there were even some secrets up top there to find to get you started.

Does that sound familiar?

 

[March Climber]

 

[intbal]

Duke Nukem 3D

 

[wondermega]

Pac-Man

Cannot be overstated enough. More than just about any game I can think of, you feed it a quarter, press start, and the game plays the little intro ditty and off you go. Moreover, the player character starts moving immediately - you see him consuming the dots, therefore showing the player the goal of the game right off - and he will just go into a wall (and become a target) unless you start moving the joystick. It is so simple and perfect.

 

[JetBlackPanda]

This thread got me thinking about how it would be nice if the game asked you "Are you an experienced player?" if yes it let you skip the intros where it literally explains crouching and jumping and how to move the camera.

 

[KimDongHwan]

The Witness and Braid

 

[Sooner]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES.

Oh, I thought there was one NES game that didn't have 45 minutes of cinematic cutscenes before gameplay. Thanks fir reminding me which one.

 

[DirtInUrEye]

Control.

 

[phant0m]

Yea, I hate the long introductions in videogames. Let me play!
There is too much blabla in videogames!

Some of these newer games have so many. Goddamn. Systems.

If you need to spend the first 40 minutes of a game tutorializing every mechanic, your design sucks or your mechanics are bad.

I swear devs have forgotten how to actually teach the player through gameplay and just say ehh, throw up a dialogue box that explains it.

 

[deriks]

Like this X-Men I guess Doom 1 and 2, Quake 1 and 2, Blood, Duke Nukem 3D

Similar is NieR Automata, God of War in greek era (or "when Kratos was great"), and Bayonetta 1 and 2 - 3 takes some minutes and she even walks at first...

 

[Laptop1991]

Yes i agree, i have been frustrated on a few occasion's waiting for the intro to finish so i can actually play the damn game, especially when i cannot skip the intro, telling my screen "i don't care, get on with it!! lol

 

[Arsic]

Diablo 2. Pick character and go.