Best Game UIs

This article got me thinking about UIs in gaming. UI mods were the first, and easily most important mods I downloaded for Oblivion and Fallout 3. A good UI can make a game really shine, and a bad UI can make a game painful to play. So, what game (OOB, not modded) do you think has the best UI?

I'll start by nominating Crysis. Crysis uses the old radial menu format that has (IMO) a relatively poor track record in RPGs (see PS:T and TOEE). However, it seems to fit much better into the FPS genre. The Crysis radial menu wasn't too deep, so it wasn't confusing once you learned what the icons meant. It allowed very fast access to the multiple suit 'abilities' as well as the weapon modifications system, which was also clean and intuitive. This was done in a sufficiently quick and minimalist manner, so that the player never has to break the flow of the gameplay to use it. Top it off with a slick HUD that shows all the info you need without getting in the way, and the Crysis UI is a winner IMO.

Black and White 1 & 2: in what other game can you actually reach out and touch, hit, throw, pick up and stroke things? I never tried it, but there was a dedicated hardware glove that supposedley made the game control instinctive. It worked well enough with the mouse, although you could also be quite clumsy at first as you could pick the wrong thing up or accidentaly slap your creature if you moved too fast... Pretty revolutionary though.

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So, what game (OOB, not modded) do you think has the best UI?

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Dunno if it counts, but all Guild Wars HUD elements are togglable, movable and resizable. Key bindings are numerous and fully customizable (you can directly control AI hero skill usage, for example) and there are a lot of other control aids too, like holding <ctrl> for notifying attack targets, skill usage and status effects to other players. Can't get much better than that, really.

The Crysis UI was pretty good, though I could never execute complex, multi-mode maneuvers with the radial menu alone.

Other than those, the minimalistic interface in Far Cry 2 works kinda well. From RTS side, SupCom interface is a direct descendant of Total Annihilation interface, which was years ahead of its time. I like the Empire tree of Sins as well, it's a great tool but takes some learning to use.

Dead Space UI is pretty neat, being built into your suit and everything.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

Dead Space UI is pretty neat, being built into your suit and everything.

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Star Wars: Republic Commando had a very similar setup. All your health indicators, squad, objective markers and compass were built into your suit's helmet.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i182.photobucket.com/albums/...c_commando.jpg

Warcraft 3.
Or maybe 2.

I am not sure if it counts as a UI, but I loved the Jagged Alliance 2 presentation of the strategic layer as a laptop, including checking your E-mails for missions and going to websites to buy weapons and mercs (and flowers for the Queen). The way the opening movie morphs into the strategic layer as your character opens his laptop was really neat.

Generally, I'd say the less UI, the better. I'm very much happy to have to press an extra button to see the score, and have no problem at all with not knowing precisely how much ammo I have left. Penumbra managed this pretty well, Dark Messiah somewhat worse.

For anyone who knows... What game map is that in the screen shot? On the linked to article.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1. Wonderful interface and controls. An example of how a PC and Xbox port can coexist happily and successfully.

Neverwinter Nights 1. What the HELL did they do to this in NWN2? Everything worked pretty damn well the first time around!

Star Wars: Republic Command. Agree with Monk, this was a well done interface. The game itself was rather unpretentious and fun.

Starcraft. As much as I am horrible at RTS's, they did a really good job polishing this game up. Everything had a keyboard shortcut, the UI was easy enough to understand and use.


Hall of shame

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. THE poster child. They screwed this game up so hard it physically hurt me to try and play it. Good lord. Even WITH the darnified mod, it's still damn awful. Complete opposite to KOTOR1, how NOT to do a dual PC/console port interface.

Dishonorable mention: Fallout 3. More of the same Bethesda, more of the same. *sigh*

NWN2. Corollary to NWN1 above. They really, really screwed this up royally.

Fallout. Not intuitive at all, inventory system was bollox. Loved the game, but ugh.

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Originally Posted by Veho Nex

For anyone who knows... What game map is that in the screen shot? On the linked to article.

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That's Farcry 2. The handheld map was good, in that you could drive/walk whilst holding it out, but cycling between amplifications was bit of a pain i seem to remember.

Dead Space does it brilliantly. The Silent Hill 're-imagining' for the Wii may be a contender.

Universal Combat definitely has the worse.

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Originally Posted by alh_p

That's Farcry 2. The handheld map was good, in that you could drive/walk whilst holding it out, but cycling between amplifications was bit of a pain i seem to remember.

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I didn't like it. It was hard to navigate without the map, and they intentionally made it so that you couldn't do combat with the map out. It was like the Doom 3 flashlight, except that at least that flashlight mode had a purpose: force you to walk around either in the dark, or unarmed, both of which heightened the tension. The FarCry 2 map just seemed like an intentional hindrance to the player without any purpose behind it.

Since the NWN games have been mentioned several times, I will say that there was one aspect of them I liked. I can't remember which game did this, but I remember that one of them allowed you to have totally customizable toolbars to put feats, skills, spells, etc in. I recall having three separate bars in different areas for different things, which I found to be very organized. There's a lot to be said for a UI that lets you configure it however you want.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Since the NWN games have been mentioned several times, I will say that there was one aspect of them I liked. I can't remember which game did this, but I remember that one of them allowed you to have totally customizable toolbars to put feats, skills, spells, etc in. I recall having three separate bars in different areas for different things, which I found to be very organized. There's a lot to be said for a UI that lets you configure it however you want.

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I really liked that feature because I like to have all my spells/health potions/abilities on a quick bar for me to hit in combat. I don't like it when the number of things I can put in my quick bar is limited to 1-0 for the numbers on the keypad because then I always end up going into my skills sheet or inventory which is distracting. I was hoping that Dragon Age would use the multiple quickbar system, but I'm ok with the stretchy quickbar because I can get all of the stuff I need to use in combat on it.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

I didn't like it. It was hard to navigate without the map, and they intentionally made it so that you couldn't do combat with the map out. It was like the Doom 3 flashlight, except that at least that flashlight mode had a purpose: force you to walk around either in the dark, or unarmed, both of which heightened the tension. The FarCry 2 map just seemed like an intentional hindrance to the player without any purpose behind it.

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Yep, I found it a pain too. Especially as you couldn't drive for 2 mins without some idiot in a Chelsea tractor with a roof mounted M60 ramming you. Mercs are such bad drivers, and oh! the road rage!

I actually liked the Far Cry 2 map (felt very immersive, even if it was sometimes a bit tricky). The real problem was the infinite checkpoint/baddies which ground you down.

As a historical marker, I'd nominate Falcon 3.0's padlock view function. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that might have been the first usable padlock view system in an air combat sim. That was a revolutionary feature for flight sim UI's, both civilian and military.

The first NWN interface took a little time to get used to, but it was a great design.

Deadspace was a functional and visually interesting UI, but part of that was how appropriate it was for a sci-fi scenario like that. I can't see it being adopted more widely for something like Mount & Blade.

In the category of recent strategy games, I thought Dawn of Discovery had a nice minimalist interface that didn't get in the way, and still allowed easy access to information and control. There was a nice feature where you could go into a sort of cinematic view mode for a closer look at the game world. It satisfied the itch to see eye candy, while allowing the main view to be more functional at the strategy level.

One problem with a "Best Game UIs" thread, is that some of the best ones don't really stick in the memory, because they did their job so well. :2thumbsup:

Good point, Zenicetus.

I think that the Total War UI (or at least the basic battle UI) may deserve a mention. It's clunkier than some mentioned in the thread, but for the most part after a few battles (or the excellent tutorials) you didn't have to rely on the buttons much at all and it became second nature.

I like the HUD in the metroid prime games. All of the information you need is projected on the inside of Samus' helmet visor in a decently realistic manner. Combine that with the various atmospheric effects on the visor (water droplets, steam, reflections, bug goop splatters, etc) and it's spot on for the game. Hard to imagine them using any other kind of setup.