I play long games where Tutorials can be stretched out into long-choreographed sequences to acclimatise the player to the game mechanics, story and setting together without overloading them. Final Fantasy X is a masterclass at this all the way up until the end of Besaid (about 3-6 hours) [except the Sphere Grid, whose tutorial is abysmal). Persona 5's tutorial takes up every day until the end of the first dungeon with Kamoshida as you get sprinkles of story, fighting, dungeons, school-life and social links (about 8 hours). The Great Plateau of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is essentially the tutorial (and people thought it was so good they had it as the E3 demo and many people didn't realise it was basic training). The entire area around where you walk out (and all the puzzles you see when running around the field) is effectively the tutorial of The Witness (not the mention the bursts of tutorial at almost every area). The way set-pieces are positioned to guide your eye and try certain paths to specific puzzles is fantastic.
Tutorials come in many forms, and the ones I like the most are ingeniously built to coax the player into certain directions while seeming almost invisible.
It is not a "fun" "tutorial", but I always appreciated the Hatsune Miku games continuous use of Levan Polkka during their tutorials. If this song isn't fun, I don't know what is.
@dan_citi: The Great Plateau in Zelda Breath of the Wild is similar to this. I feel like BOTW introduces and has you play with integral mechanics throughout it's opening section more than Witcher though.
If you count the entire White Orchard as a tutorial, then The Witcher 3 comes to mind.
There are a few that have this kind of thing going on in them (I would also suggest Liberty Island from Deus Ex) but in some ways that's more an intro sandbox thing than a tutorial.
As for tutorials, there isn't really much of anything I can think of. I did appreciate a Halo type working in of the tutorial into the narrative (look at these 4 lights Chief).
1-1 is the best tutorial. The first goomba, mushroom, and pipe were all positioned in order to make it likely that you'd gain some understanding of the game's basic mechanics just by playing. No mountains of text, no hand holding, just play.
Obviously games have gotten complicated enough that it's difficult/impossible to take this approach these days. But I still enjoy taking a stroll through 1-1 every now and then; I can't say I enjoy many other tutorials.
As mentioned, BOTW's Great Plateau is a recent fun tutorial.
Nioh, Souls, Vagrant Story, Red Faction Guerilla. Midgar is pretty good in FFVII.
A lot of games have a great first area immediately following the tutorial that sort of behaves as the actual tutorial for the game/presents a challenge, Valkyrie Profile 2 comes to mind.
Not explicitly "tutorials," but I think the new Doom and Super Meat Boy are 2 games that did an amazing job at teaching you everything in the first 5-10 minutes of the game without actually stopping to explain anything. You just... start playing and it all comes naturally but quickly. Teaching players while they play like that is not easy, but almost magical when it happens that smoothly.
@beachthunder: yes, some were discussing "starter areas", which is what I was talking about with Liberty Island. Those aren't tutorials to me, so I don't count White Orchard as a tutorial in W3.
1-1 is the best tutorial. The first goomba, mushroom, and pipe were all positioned in order to make it likely that you'd gain some understanding of the game's basic mechanics just by playing. No mountains of text, no hand holding, just play.
There's sort of a dichotomy in good games though, where the end-user's experience is held in higher regard than the user's input into the game. The structure of the game, similar to the inclusion of narrative, impacts the kind of play that's available to the player. These kinds of games are, at their core, all about teaching and testing the player.
For example, Half-Life 2 is probably more of a training tool / education tool / narrative experience than it is a game. The player's contribution is really only valuable to the extent that it enhances the experience. Without meaningful self-expression, HL2 offers not much interaction and thus you would think not much freedom and not much game, but we accept that because of the richness of the experience. The play, however, feels more like the satisfaction of doing a good job and getting paid than playing a game.
A lot of the good answers to this question would be games that do a good job of disguising their tutorial and basically let you intuit the desired information through level design and environmental queues as well as just experiencing things or experimenting.
But I also think it's worth giving credit to fighting games that have good tutorials. Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Guilty Gear Xrd and Skullgirls are very good in this regard. I've heard KI has a good tutorial too, but I haven't played it yet (Steam version coming, woop woop). Dead Or Alive 5 had a pretty good one too, actually. The earliest example of a particularly good one might actually have been Virtua Fighter 4...
But anyway! With fighting games, there's so much that needs to be communicated accurately to get a player up to speed that you kind of just have to have a biiiig info dump. These games do a really good job of providing concise explanations of concepts and then getting the player to apply those concepts in order to get a feel for them and fully understand, covering not only mechanics and systems, but also the basics of the mindgames you'll need to understand. Some also do a good job of injecting a ton of personality into these lessons so they're not too dry. Tag 2 is really good at this, all the dialogue around the tutorials is fun and silly and so are a lot of the actual tests themselves. Also, Xrd's tutorial has a Pat Benetar reference.
If you're a beginner to the series, madden does a neat little intro that shows you'd the basics of gameplay. However if you're a vet it's an annoying 5 minutes that you can't skip on the initial load
I'd probably go back to Fable 2. That opening Bowerstone level when you are a kid manages to teach the mechanics, set the tone, and give impetus to the plot all without overstaying its welcome.
Here's my wild thoughts. Do the story modes in most modern fighting games count? When I booted up Injustice 2 and Tekken 7 the first thing I did was go into the story mode to learn as many characters as I could before attempting Treasure Battle (Tekken) and the Multiverse (Injustice). The story modes greatly helped in my ability to play the games while also being very entertaining.
These thoughts are wrong but I figured I'd just put them out there
I don't think we would really count those, if we were being scientist sticklers... but this comment and many of the others in this thread bring up an interesting conversation of what a tutorial is, and the meta involved when players *treat* modes as tutorials. Your example I think is super common too kingbonesaw, I bet lots of people use story modes that way. I know I do! Plus, it's hard to imagine the developers don't also look at story modes, arcade, time trial, challenges, etc all as sorts of tutorials in that genre. So, hmmm, maybe... we should count them..
In The Matrix: Path of Neo the first thing you do is fight in lobby scene from the movie and it's badass! Then you go into a combat tutorial inspired by various Jet Lee movies. If it wasn't for the shitty office stealth section it would be a great tutorial.
@jec03: This one was pretty good! Funny, but tedious if you had to do it again since you can't skip any of it. Also, the rest of Blood Dragon is really good.
Seeing as some people already mentioned Call of Duty 4, Titanfall 2 gets my vote, just because the act of wall-running, double-jumping, and sliding is so simple and enjoyable in that game.
Breath of the Wild is probably the greatest tutorial ever created. The way it paces you without you even knowing it, introducing all the different tools and mechanics at exactly the right time, giving you enough to work with where you can fill in the blanks yourself. It doesn't overstay its welcome, and ends with a cool twist before it sets you free.
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