Since the last entry a game got me a little steamed.
I was dabbling with the tutorial of my preview build of "Lock's Quest" for the Nintendo DS. Several weeks ago, I got a demo of the game during the course of lunch with game director Jeremiah Slaczka. He didn't need to tell me much more about it other than it is partially a tower-defense game. Good enough for me! It's tower-defense mixed with real-time combat, actually, which is pretty interesting.
The "problem" I've had with "Lock's Quest" so far is that it's one of those games with a tutorial that's as long as my subway ride home. I wanted to get going, to play it and enjoy it. But first it had to take me to school.
I don't think I've ever held a game's tutorial against it. There's always something else that makes or breaks a game. But impatiently tapping through the necessary tutorial (it's a pretty complex, though smoothly-presented game) brought back a familiar feeling: tutorial frustration. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has started a game I'm expecting to like only to be bogged down by so much preliminary explaining and semi-interactive teaching and ... okay, okay, let me control the game!
I didn't hold this kind of thing against "Advance Wars" back in the day, so things could work out superbly anyway. A tutorial can't ever ruin a game, can it?
Next: Maybe Facebook will let me start playing official Scrabble at some point.
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