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Secrets of Great Menu Design
By Edge Staff
July 29, 2008
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Options menus are an irritation, a barrier to pleasure. As a result, we’re used to many games downplaying them as far as they can, embedding control configurations and difficulty levels, character and profile creation as tightly into play as they can.
Whether you think about them or not, they’re part of the ritual. The one in which you’ve picked impatiently at the translucent plastic wrapper of a new game, drawn the curtains, flipped the console and TV on, and you’re ready to load for the first time. You’ve allowed the splash screens and introductory movie to run their natural courses, and as your anticipation reaches its peak, the ‘Press start’ screen finally appears.
Though your mind will be on the game itself, that start screen is speaking volumes. Will it magnanimously allow you to press X instead of start? Will it instigate another loading screen? What sound did it make when you pressed the button? What typeface was used for the text? What’s the start screen for, anyway?
In such formative moments tiny details are all forming your attitude towards the game before you’ve played it. The menu system, the options screens – the bits and pieces you need to negotiate in order to get to the actual game – we rarely consider them with much depth, but they’re intrinsic to the experience.
Certainly, with a new game, options menus are an irritation, a barrier to pleasure. As a result, we’re used to many games downplaying them as far as they can, embedding control configurations and difficulty levels, character and profile creation as tightly into play as they can. Halo, with its request to look up subtly determining whether a player plays with an inverted Y-axis, and the way that the Final Fantasy series delays getting you to name your character until an NPC in the story asks who you are – these are acknowledgements that players just want to jump in with as few questions as possible.
It’s probably not for another couple of hours of play that you actually think about the menus in any overt manner. Perhaps it’s after a sequence of dispiriting deaths or a downturn in pace that has made you restless. Sooner or later you’ll become curious about the other features the game might hide. And, usually, such curiosity won’t go unrewarded.
One of the most annoying UI designs on the XBOX360 is when the game always asks you where to load/store your savegame. Halo3 excels, it assumes you want to use the last device, which is nearly always correct. But other, newer titles like Bad Company and GTA IV bumps you out of the game UI and shows the Xbox blade asking for a storage device. Bad Company ask for storage device on start up (in addition to the archaic "press start" splash screen). GTA IV asks on first save - auto or user initiated.
Why ask at all when the current set-up only has one possible storage device? Why ask the user to choose from a list of one?
The very worst offender I've come across is Cars on the xbox. It's targeted at kids from 3 to 12 (or thereabout) and features one of the most convoluted storage UIs out there. Load game, Select device, confirm load. And on every completed event the same for storage. For kids who can yet read, this is a major show stopper.
Good article.
The Halo trilogy certainly has a great menu system; though, not being able to configure your controls once you were in a game in Halo one was a big flaw. We spent many LAN parties setting up a game, jsut to quit because someone still hadn't set their profile to inverted, and they couldn't do it from within the game. Of course, this was all rectified with Halo2 so that's all good n_n.
The one part of menu design I personally cannot stand is splash screens. Being taken to a screen, just to press X so that I an be taken to another screen is completely pointless. Perhaps if the splash screen is at the end of an introductory movie, maybe; like in MGS or Final Fantasy. But in a game like Battlefield: Bad Company where you go to the splash screen, press X, and -then- watch the intro movie, it jsut doesn't make sense to have that splash screen.
Personally, most menus just get in the way once you have the settings you require for your game. If you do need to have them though then at least let the player skip through them as fast as possible. Call of Duty 4 being a great example. From booting the game to getting into a lobby in multiplayer takes no time at all.
Great article. I find menu design extremely fascinating, and have thought about many of the various designs brought up in this article. Halo 3's simple, yet complex system that lets you do anything you want. Metroid Prime 2's awesome artistic design, yet flawed functionality. I don't know, it just gets me going when I play certain games. The most beautiful menu design I've ever seen was Colin McCrae's DiRT, with its quasi-3D Flash design. It was like watching a movie trailer when going through the menus.
One example I would like to cite is Lumines' menus, where it creates a distinct song when going through the menus. Each menu has its own beat, but they're all cut from the same song. So as you move from menu to menu, you're recreating the song, only remixed. It's amazing.
I enjoy GRID's 3d menu and camera movement around your selections. Visually it is very appealing. I must say that GT5:P menu screen is very beautiful. Very easy to navigate and definitely sets itself apart from other racers.
Another game who's menu system I enjoy is Q-Games Pixel Junk Eden. The start screen is a game itself in which I enjoy. You immediately have a sense of what the game will be like. One other
The last one I will mention is Heavenly Sword. Probably not for how the menu controls but the intro into the menu selection is very unique. Exiting out of the game to go into a monologue with the main character as it transfers into the menu screen is just genius to me.
I have to say, most playable game menus like PixelJunk Eden irritate me (however I love Eden's so far)
One menu that has really stood out is the Half Life 2(and subsequent Valve game) menu. Simple text and tabs overlaid on an in-game scene(or paused action.)
One that drove me insane was DIRT's 3d menu, where you zoomed from pane to pane as you select options. It looked flash but was sluggish and disorientating.
DIRT's menu was sluggish but I must say they definitely improved it in GRID. It's fast and sleek.
For me, the Half-Life 2 menus were cool in theory, but when it takes 2-3 minutes to load the main menu (what with it being a 3D room and all), it gets old really quick, especially when you want to play the game and all you see is that stupid loading textbox for a few minutes.