Mastodawn

A question for you all - which VIDEO GAME has your favourite in-game interface? That means UI, controls, everything. An interface that not only feels natural and good but immerses you in the game, makes play easy, AND makes you want to keep playing. Can be from any era.

(Please boost)

Christina Jennifer 1d ago

@vampiress Ico. Everything you need to know is communicated without screen-furniture. It is a beautiful game.

@criffer Screen-furniture. I love that term. The lack of it si why I love and constantly re-play GTA V and RDR2, though RDR2 is leaps and bounds ahead of GTA V.

@vampiress @criffer I started playing RDR2 but have struggled to get into it. What am I missing? I've not played any of the GTA series, but generally enjoy first-person role play story things.

@daedalus @criffer RDR2 is the best video game ever made. Also one of the best pieces of art / stories ever committed in any medium.

GTA V is fine, if you like that kind of thing (which I do, but I wouldn't go claiming it's some unique work of art).

@vampiress @daedalus @criffer I liked how GTA V was structured around id, ego and superego, and how they used Trevor to satirize their own gamer audience, though I suspect the gamers missed that. But other than that, it was just more GTA with better graphics. I’m not very hopeful for GTA VI.

Jérôme Petazzoni 15h ago

@vampiress @daedalus @criffer RDR2 is amazing to watch someone play; but I found the interface confusing as hell if you're not playing it regularly. Coming back to it for a casual hit is virtually impossible for me :(

stibbons 1d ago

@daedalus @vampiress @criffer I left it about half-finished for several years as well, only got in to it when I tried again last year.
Glad I stuck with it that time. The story is a great western, but I do think it drags a little at times.

josh's harp 1d ago

@daedalus @vampiress I found the first few hours very slow and didn't get it either, but eventually it clicked for me once it opened up and I got how it was trying to do things, it was worth pushing through for sure.

tripleman, a 🇨🇦 in 🇩🇪15h ago

@vampiress I dearly love RDR2 but the amount of times I’ve accidentally punched my horse…

Human Brain Enthusiast 1d ago

@vampiress Tetris DX

Leo Schuldiner🤘🏼1d ago

@vampiress OK!!... let me mention a few:

- Rock & Roll Racing (SNES)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (DOS)
- Montezuma (ATARI)
- Quake II (DOS)

Bonus track:
- Prince of Persia I & II

I'm not into games anymore, but those really captivated me back then.

@vampiress I can think of random elements. I've played a reasonable amount of the Oblivion remaster recently and the power selection wheel is a much better UX than the Skyrim system, and I think one of the reasons I prefer Oblivion (also nostalgia). It's so much faster and less immersion breaking than looking through menus (as the Skyrim system feels to me).

Of course in some of your games looking through menus or remembering commands could be immersive for the kind of experience you're trying to build.

@abstractcode @vampiress +1 against Skyrim's menu / inventory navigation and UI system. Havent played Oblivion but sad to hear the UX regressed from a better place in the same series.

Laurent Bercot 9h ago

@ike @abstractcode @vampiress if you want to experience the full UI regression in Bethesda games, try Starfield. The interface is horrendous, with menus being a painful maze every time you need them, which is often. It's sad to see how far they have fallen.

(and I'm not even mentioning the game itself.)

@ska I played a fair bit of Starfield when stress meant I needed something with no stakes to switch off for a while. It solves the problem by making the powers so useless switching them wasn’t worth doing. Just a catastrophe of a game without a single fully thought through game mechanic.

Introscopia 1d ago

@vampiress Opus Magnum!

Jon Gilbert 1d ago

@vampiress I'm probably alone in it, but the original move controls on Grim Fandango felt really natural to me, moving through the screen spaces and knowing exactly what Manny was going to go for next.

it's B! Cavello 🐝1d ago

@jgilbert @vampiress Wow, I definitely can’t relate, but love that for you!

Jon Gilbert 1d ago

@b_cavello ok. 🤷‍♀️

Janne Moren 1d ago

@jgilbert @vampiress
I bet opinion is somewhat divided on that one :) It's a wonderful game either way!

@jgilbert @vampiress Came here to say exactly that! 👍
Full Throttle was similar but I think maybe a bit different?

@jgilbert @vampiress I agree! We're in the minority. I think what it did with attention and head turning was amazing and natural with the movement. I think it was more a case of a trailblazing (dare I say glitchy) implementation of a very novel and good idea that made it a bit tough for everyone to like. Also - and I say this with love - the vehicle movement was glitchy even for its era...

@vampiress hmm... I don't know about all-time favorites, but lately I've been playing Story of Seasons A Wonderful Life and I like how the menus work in that game. There are lots of tools and items but it's easy to switch between them and move things around.

@vampiress very obvious, but definitely persona 5, and not just because the graphic design and motion design are gorgeous. sleeper pick: etrian odyssey nexus has the most refined UI of the series, makes great use of the 3ds second screen, feels really great for dungeon crawling.

emily dogmom 1d ago

@vampiress Okami. The feeling of upgrading your stats is incredibly satisfying, they did a good job making that joyful on its own. And of course Persona 5 just for making it slick

@vampiress Marathon had some neat UIs within UIs, like there was the regular gameplay, but when you connected to a console there was the UI specific to that (alien ship) terminal. I remember the transition between those modes as pretty smooth. (Also using the console was scary because the aliens etc. were still running around behind you even while you’re wasting time looking at the computer… so you needed to figure out that secondary UI pretty quickly.)

Legit_Spaghetti 1d ago

@scott @vampiress The 2026 Marathon's UI, on the other hand, is the closest anyone's gotten to translating the experience of a fugue state into a user interface.

It's a great game, but holy smokes that UI is all kinds of wonky donkey.

K-ZO da Snowman 22h ago

@scott @vampiress huh, I wonder if that's where Void Bastards got a similar mechanic.

@vampiress PSI-5 Trading Company with those beautiful keyboard shortcuts

trampinheavy 1d ago

@vampiress
We can't forget the pip boy in fallout 3 - actively bad to use but somehow still charming and enjoyable b/c of the immersion.

In general I really enjoy when the ui allows keyboard shortcuts for repetitive tasks (pressing a few keys vs clicking and dragging to sell something, for example)

clonedhuman 1d ago

@trampinheavy @vampiress Yes, I love the Pip Boy interface for the immersion. Also the annoying things about it also help with the immersion for some reason.

Daniel Saidi 1d ago

@vampiress Dead Space’s diegetic UI.

Raven667 1d ago

@danielsaidi @vampiress I was looking to see if someone was going to bring up Dead Space, the UI adds to the immersion.

I'm playing Subnautica again (waiting for 2 to be early access) and really like how you interact with the environment, the lack of map and need to open lockers and panels and whatnot, or fix things with tools really adds to the immersion as wel. There are only a few places in the _very_ early game where you will be prompted to "press A" or whatever, there is as little "game" UI as possible.

Hyper Light Drifter should me mentioned because the UI has no words and the game no dialog, but it is understandable through environment cues.

Oliver Kennedy 1d ago

@vampiress I never played it to the end, but Uplink. The UI *was* the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplink_(video_game)

Uplink (video game) - Wikipedia

Captain Salem 1d ago

@okennedy @vampiress incredible game. Wish introversion would make a *modern version.

@csalem @okennedy @vampiress

Not by the same developer but TR-49 is a great example of a modern game which uses this concept of the U.I. being the game to great immersive effect

@vampiress for in the ingame UI Dead Space always comes to mind. The life etc on the back of the character, the inventory etc on projected screens, as well as the cinematics. Really improved the immersion for me.

Brian Davis 1d ago

@vampiress I would say all the early lucasarts flight sims with Tie Fighter being the peak of the era. But not only the Star wars stuff. Their WWII flight sims we're also very good.

Shawn Gettler 1d ago

@intrepidhero @vampiress I was going to say the same thing. The cockpit HUD was information-dense without being cluttered and, despite there being like 47 keyboard shortcuts, the controls felt perfectly manageable.

mcSlibinas 1d ago

@vampiress minecraft. Vanilla minecraft UI is the right thing to play game. I can hide UI, it's not necessary, let's say, for mining or fishing, but i feel bad without it.

it's B! Cavello 🐝1d ago

@vampiress @thomasfuchs I’m not sure if this is the vibe, but the indie mobile puzzle game #Beglitched has a super cute vibe that I adore. It contextually really feels right on a phone and the way it played with the expectations of what were viable moves was surprising for its time.
I think the match-three drag style design language has persisted across so many games because it is so satisfying and simple.

@vampiress definitely Breath of the Wild

@fkinoshita @vampiress Zelda games have always felt very intentional and intuitive to me, and the controls become part of the feel of the game in a way not many others do. Good answer.

Janne Moren 1d ago

@vampiress
A really great UI would usually not be noticed by the user. My current favourite are the Hollow Knight and Silksong games. You have a *lot* of moves, tools, special attacks and so on, and the developers managed to make the controls feel intuitive and easy to use; and they do a great job teaching you about each new thing in-game without you even realizing you're going through an invisible mini-tutorial.

Tom Dullemond 1d ago

@vampiress I liked in Dead Space how the in-game inventory was real time and projected from your suit so if you wanted to access it (and be helpless for a bit) you really wanted to be in a safe space.

@vampiress For me it was Neverwinter Nights (the first one.) It had this wonderful radial system where you would either right click or press on the number pad (I forget which button, 5 I guess?) and then you'd have items, actions, spells, etc all in there. I got so I could use the number pad to fire off a series of spells really fast in it. And, apparently, according to everyone else on the server, lag the server. 😆

You still also had the tradition interface. It wasn't one or the other after all. Between the two you could do anything fast and easy.

It's good for mouse, keyboard, and gamepads. Why it isn't more of a thing I don't know, but some games are starting to realize radials work and it's in a few today again at last.

@vampiress White Knuckle's is minimal but also tells the player a lot.

Brad Grzesiak 🦆1d ago

@vampiress Flower on PS3

Any button is “go,” and the controller’s physical motion is the direction

Lee Dohm 1d ago

@vampiress I feel I have to submit two answers because I feel like simulations have to be in a category by themselves, whereas non simulation games have a whole different philosophy.

Simulation - Elite Dangerous. It's idea of multiple consoles that you can access for different purposes but the primary flight controls are a breeze to use. It is a really really convincing simulation of what one would need to fly a spaceship.

Game - Console edition of Stellaris. I have played the heck out of that game for years and years and bought pretty much all of the expansions because the interface is just so accessible.

Battlezone and Tempest. #👴

Piers Cawley 22h ago

@knapjack Hard to disagree. Pong and Breakout too.

@vampiress Cruelty Squad

Kewlio: gideo vames?!1d ago

@1337 It's

memorable, I'll give you that.

Flexbars from World of Warcraft, before they nerfed it.

@vampiress maybe a cliche answer but Fallout 4 felt very immersive to me and the controls and pip boy graphic design were a big part of that.

Cap Ybarra 1d ago

@vampiress baldurs gate 3 controller controls

Benj⛧min 1d ago

@vampiress @dosnostalgic I liked Borderlands UI a lot. It had similarities to Fallout 3, which I loved.

AN/CRM-114 1d ago

@vampiress the interface for the original X-Com was a joy, switching between atrategic management and tactical combat modes. There was no minigame, it just flowed really well

YourShadowDani 1d ago

Astroneer! I love how they integrate inventory physically on the character!