This feels like cheating almost.
My answer is Ff13 if you consider everything leading up to stealing a plane to be the first level. That crystal cavern and city are beautiful. Then you go straight to a junkyard.
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Games that blow their wad in the first level
- Thread starter Phediuk
- Start date
My answer is Ff13 if you consider everything leading up to stealing a plane to be the first level. That crystal cavern and city are beautiful. Then you go straight to a junkyard.
Yeah the fact that they re-use the boring troll fight like 8 times and the death animations are exactly the same was mindblowing. Good game but not without its flaws
The original Dragon Age was best when you were still in the intro content for your chosen race. The rest was very good, but I don't think it measured up.
Similar for Star Wars: The Old republic. Everything after your class stories was lacking, because it stripped out all of the personalization such that the plot didn't really make sense for certain classes. I'd also go so far as to say the class stories themselves also got worse as they went along, at least until the very end.
Similar for Star Wars: The Old republic. Everything after your class stories was lacking, because it stripped out all of the personalization such that the plot didn't really make sense for certain classes. I'd also go so far as to say the class stories themselves also got worse as they went along, at least until the very end.
I wouldn't have called Gormott great, but it's better than most of the rest of what follows. It's a long slog with little in the way of development for the vast majority of it. Enjoy those maps.
Weird one, but Solider of Fortune comes to mind. It was supposed to be the most violent game of all time, back then, and I played the first level from the demo over and over because I was blown away by the detail. When the full game came out, never touched the rest.
Strong disagree, the Landsmeet section blows the rest out of the water in Origins.
Agreed with TOR though.
I think City Escape is the most iconic stage of the game for good reason which is why everyone remembers it. I don't think it's the best stage in the game though. I think it could be argued the best stage in the game but those other stages I mentioned stand up to it in my opinion.
You could use that description of City Escape to describe Metal Harbor.
I still get stressed out about thinking about getting to the top of that rocket. God, A-ranking that stage was fuckin' miserable.
That's a very fair take. It was a strong game either way, I just had the most fun when it was really tailored to my initial choices.
I'll add another vote for GoW 3. It squanders so much potential after that opening scene. It blew my mind back in the day but it's easily my least favorite GoW of the mainline titles. Still occasionally get the urge to play that intro though.
Do you mean Crew Expendable in CoD4?
MW2's opening levels (beyond the tutorial) are Team Player and Cliffhanger, the former of which is pretty bog standard and serves mostly as an extended tutorial, but the latter of which is one of the early highlights of the game.
the action packed intro of the original darksiders really got me pumped...
...and then the rest never lived up to that intensity. that was the peak moment of the game for me. if that wasn't bad enough, then the fetch quest at the end was real bad.
...and then the rest never lived up to that intensity. that was the peak moment of the game for me. if that wasn't bad enough, then the fetch quest at the end was real bad.
Gah, I've been replaying the game on Dolphin and I am convinced that is fucking impossible. Sonic isn't good at making the 90 degree turns to get through that section smoothly.
Well done.Not a single DOOM/Quake/HL joke yet. I am disappoint.
Looks like I'm way too late.
I think Dying Light is a game where the RPG progression only serves to simplify the mechanics, and that the slums area is much better than the affluent section of the city. Also a lot of the later special zombies just suck to fight.
For me, nothing beat the frantic feeling of when I was grabbing scrap wood to defend myself and kicking downed zombies to death. Crowds of zombies were to be avoided, not cut through. Getting neon battle-axes and shotguns out of every trunk later on is tiresome. A couple of the move upgrades are nice (drop kick is a big one), but things like zombie camouflage and instant kill neck snaps/curb stomps just made the game feel less exciting. The retractable grappling hook is fun for a while, but ultimately dumbs down the thinking you have to do to scale obstacles.
I hope Dying Light 2 is better in all that regard.
For me, nothing beat the frantic feeling of when I was grabbing scrap wood to defend myself and kicking downed zombies to death. Crowds of zombies were to be avoided, not cut through. Getting neon battle-axes and shotguns out of every trunk later on is tiresome. A couple of the move upgrades are nice (drop kick is a big one), but things like zombie camouflage and instant kill neck snaps/curb stomps just made the game feel less exciting. The retractable grappling hook is fun for a while, but ultimately dumbs down the thinking you have to do to scale obstacles.
I hope Dying Light 2 is better in all that regard.
Are you referring to the Forest level? That was one of my least favorite levels, it was slightly open but I did the bases in the "wrong" order and it reset the enemies. Terrible.
Thought the best stretch was 3-5 (The derelict spaceship mission, the city center one and then the beginning of the infiltration of the Helghan area).
Not a single DOOM/Quake/HL joke yet. I am disappoint.
I've blown a few megawads in my time.
What
How could you say that lol, gonna need to explain more than that.
I imagine this is usually because the opening/first level is designed last after the devs have gotten real good with designing the game. I guess this doesn't happen with every game, though.
I think Brutal Legend would be one of my picks, was hoping the rest of the game would be more like that.
I think Brutal Legend would be one of my picks, was hoping the rest of the game would be more like that.
Strongly agree. The finest act of that game had them onto a masterpiece. Then the rest of the game happened. Such a shame.
Strongly disagree. The game gets so much better after Midgar in my opinion. I'm actually replaying it now and was bored by the end of Midgar.
which first level? the dinosaur kingdom maybe, but the hat kingdom?
You mean the choppy awkward barely coherent stretch they hacked up to avoid 9/11 imagery? C'mon.
MGS2 is the very impressive Tanker sequence followed by a bunch of nonsense. Perfect choice for this thread.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
The first level had great atmosphere (helps that I live in Toronto), amazing music, and since it's the start of the game, the challenge was ideal at baseline stats. It sold me on the game being the level in the demo. Playing the full game had me disappointed that nothing else quite matched up, and by then I noticed how out of wack the leveling was.
The first level had great atmosphere (helps that I live in Toronto), amazing music, and since it's the start of the game, the challenge was ideal at baseline stats. It sold me on the game being the level in the demo. Playing the full game had me disappointed that nothing else quite matched up, and by then I noticed how out of wack the leveling was.
I dunno, for me the only real enjoyable section of DNF was navigating the Duke Burger while shrunken.
I really disagree with MGS2. Maybe you just had to be there or something, but I went into it years later knowing all about Raiden and the bait and switch, etc, and I vastly preferred the Raiden part of the game.
I love Dark Souls as a whole, but the Undead Burg/Parish is still my favorite part of the came.
Gormotts the least interesting level in that game and not at all the only place they put in budget, this is a borderline shit post
Man the first Xenoblade was the opposite.
I remember thinking Gau Plains was the big set piece and then I got to the mines which kind of sucked...
But then the swamp. And the jungle and the snow level. Wow.
Oh yeah, this is a good one. GOW 2018 peaks at the beginning of the game and nothing afterwards surpasses it.
ITs a drive by xb2 hate post, same with the person calling it a slog. Not liking something doesn't make it bad
Yes and no. As far as level design/world design goes Gormott is definitely my favourite.
Pacing is very BioWare where it's a bit slow at the start but ramps up later and you tend to rush locations in favour of story. I'd say there are two locations on par with Gormott. Your mileage may vary
Gormott and Uraya are essentially what people loved about the first and second games, wide open expanses that were quite pretty. but once you hit Mor Ardain, they become linear and uninteresting. they're still somewhat wide, but compared to the first two, it kinda felt like they started to run out of gas. Leftherian Archipelago was interesting, if it was in Xenoblade X. otherwise it was an annoyance with all that negative space. Tantal was too big for its own good when you remember how vertical it was. trying to do both wasn't interesting with the lack of interesting geography. Tempermantia was them trying to be wide and open like Gormott or Uraya, but with none of the interesting features. sure it made thematic sense, but it was still bland from an aesthetic standpoint. the other two areas (the spoiler ones) are just long-ass dungeons that suffered the same thing Mechonis did in the first game
I mean, counter point, those areas were not annoying, aesthetically pleasing and fun to play in. Especially the floating islands...Opinions I guess. Tantal and the last areas were the most engaging because of the story stakes so id hardly say gormott is the only good area
The forest mission was not without flaws, but it seemed to be the most "next gen" level in the game, at least in my eyes. It was open and, graphically speaking, looked great. I do recall the respawning enemies. Not great, like the game itself.
all the hubbub about only 40 MS staff being on the game was something that I could feel with XC2. I just wasn't interested in the world they designed. Mor Ardain was just annoying to explore when I tried to fill out the cliffside factory part. Leftheria made me wish Skells from XCX was in the game. the snow area had some interesting gimmicks to it that made it memorable, like the slopes and the night time version with all the glowing rocks.
at the very least, MS is staffing up to prevent the same issue from happening, to it makes me hopeful for the environments in the next game
This a good one. After the opening, it went from being a game I was excited about to a game I was forcing myself to play.
Yeah the grappling hook was a bad idea the way that it was designed and every single one of the special zombies/humans is abysmal. I did like the 2nd half though because it meant your weapons lasted more than 5 minutes. The stuff with infinite stamina at the end of the skill trees was bad as well
I thought it was actually pretty ugly at the time compared to the later stuff. The trees and shadow dithering was distracting.
