Bad Games

RedXIII

Writing up on bad Interface in games...havin trouble thinkin'...ne1 played ne recent games on pc/console that they found had tereible UI....ill prob remember if i played it...cheers

Also wonderin' if ne1 would agree with these points:

Latest games i played and didnt like were (well some UI aspects):

-Black n White 2 ( Found movement really ackward, tutorial boring -couldnt skip-
and selecting between breature - armies really hard, found myself moving armies around wen wanted creature to move)

-TES : Oblivion ( feel oblivion gates were too repetitive, found sum of the menus to be slower unlike morrowind - such as buying items, the mission objectives were sumtimes very hard to understand, or didnt gie much info)

delly

I can see the letters, but they don't seem to make up words........

RedXIII

delly wrote:

I can see the letters, but they don't seem to make up words........

What UI??? User Interface

delly

RedXIII wrote:

What UI??? User Interface

No, I kind of meant the whole post. Its a bit on the hard side to read.

ShiverinEskimo

RedXIII wrote:

ne1 played ne recent games on pc/console that they found had tereible UI

dude - we're not using sms - you are not limited to 160 characters. try typing anyone instead 'ne1'. Please!

You'll get more and better responses if you make the effort on forums like these.

In relation to your request I completely disagree with your points on Oblivion. I thought it was finely polished. The menu systems were perfect considering it was multi-platform. Although in saying that the mod that was released to reduce the size of each item of inventory to fit more on screen was welcome.

Browken Sword 4 I have just finished and as a point and clicker it was mediocre itself. It terms of the UI the camera was dodgy to the point that is was counter-productive.
The characters got stuck in corners and you had to literally click in breadcrumb style to get them to circumnavigate obstacles. Also some puzzles rely on having hawkeye-like vision to get past them (

the chain to hang the meat from for the dog in the courtyard - almost invisible

). This is frustrating and reduces the immersion in the story.

Lego Star Wars II: The original trilogy was an excellent game overall but again the automatic camera took away from it. As a platformer, being able to judge angles is crucial. On the consoles with analogue controls this would be reduced but when being forced to use either keyboard or mouse on the PC it made certain jumps or narrow walkways difficult to traverse. Also at times the camera movement hid a critical item on screen that was necessary to progress. I found myself running around for eternity only to accidentally run at the right angle to make the camera pan in a different way - revealing the item. And yes I'll take a large portion of blame for not running around tight to each wall/barrier in order to survey everything but again - having to do this reduces the enjoyment and immersion of the game.

Most of the other games I've played recently have been on the DS which may or may not be relevant to your study.

Retr0gamer

The worst User interfaces I've had to use were for Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. FFVIII had menus hidden away that I never even realised existed until halfway through the game. The contained upgrades for characters that were essential to proceed and that was the only way I found them. Only really understood everything just before the final boss.

FFTA is an absolute mess of a UI. The shops for buying things are a disgrace that involves you trawling through hundreds of weapons and armour before finding one that might fit your character and then looking through even more menues to find out if it improves stats or gives your character new abilities. Mad an already boring game awful.

Sand

Mostly because Im playing it recently, Civ 4s UI isnt exactly fantastic. Ive yet to find the screen that conveniently notes the trade routes each of your cities has open or even the one that summarises the value of trade between your civ and rival civs. Vaguely important information when considering war.
Guess Im kinda spoilt from GalCiv 2 which assaulted you with information.

And the OP - was it entered using a gamepad or something?

Cuddlesworth

"ne1" ehh? Glad I never bothered with that texting fad. Cant compare to a proper phone call.

Cunny-Funt

Have to agree with what was said about the oblivion gates, veeeeeeeeeery repetitive.

In terms of user interfaces....I dunno if anyone here has ever played Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the ps1??? best beat'em up ever made imo, Still play it now and again, good craic down at a mates gaf with a few cans. anywho, theres one terrible thing about the menu in this game.

Once you have gone into the character select screen there is no way of getting back into the main menu. Theres no back or cancel button, so if you picked the wrong guy or simply wanna exit that game mode you have no choice but to start a round....wait for it to load... then exit the fight once it starts...:mad:


Thats all that comes to mind at the moment.

Zillah

I have to agree on B&W2. Biggest disappointment of a game I played in a long long time. Atrociously designed all round. I strongly suspected I had gotten a beta version some how.

Star Wars Empire at War also had an awful interface. Real time, but worked like turn based. Terrible.

thebman

Worms 3D camera gets annoying at time (good game though after you get used to the weapons).

Any Medal of Honour game. Eh you can see him but there is a wall there, it's just invisible. We aren't going to fix this but we are going to release 3 more Medal of Honour games which will all have this exact same problem. Then people will start buyin Call of Duty instead of the crap that was Medal of Honour games.

RedXIII

Cheers for the replys....sorry about the writing, didnt really noticed, well thanks neway...imean anyway;)

quad_red

RedXIII wrote:

Cheers for the replys....sorry about the writing, didnt really noticed, well thanks neway...imean anyway;)

Dude, I hope you use better English than that in the report you're writing.

Balfa

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

In relation to your request I completely disagree with your points on Oblivion.

Actually, I completely agree with him about Oblivion. The menus in general are fairly crap. No mousewheel use. PgDn, Home, End, anyone? Even Esc wasn't implemented in most menus.

Maybe you played it on xbox or something, but I thought multiplatform games should be designed to the strengths of each platforms, not the weaknesses