inglorious

In case you haven’t seen this amazing video of the gameplay from Avalance Studio‘s Just Cause 2 I suggest you give it a look. The game looks beautiful and appears to have the potential to be a heck of a lot of fun. As it stands in this demo there’s an awful lot going on onscreen for me to get excited about the UI treatment. A lot of this could be streamlined to create a better experience for the player. As of right now I see a lot that would frustrate.

On the positives I do like how when not in use the ammo and the weapon display fade get it out of the way if not in use, otherwise I don’t see much more in the way of innovation. If anything I see a lot of typical mistakes being made. The inconsistent messaging is of particular concern. Money earned and something called chaos are tracked in separate locations from altitude and damage messaging these in turn are in a separate location from subtitles. This scattered HUD requires the user to look all over the screen to gather important data and look away from the action. I am more partial to seeing developers use other forms of feedback like damage showing on the avatar via Fight Night or the screen going red around the edges like in Call of Duty. A player shouldn’t have to look away from the combat to see if there is a collectible nearby, it’s distracting. At the very least center information on the action, Half-Life‘s centering of weapon selection is a great example of this.

The game HUD should be nearly invisible; everything should work in harmony towards focusing the player on remaining engaged. Just Cause 2 looks like and amazing action hero romp and it’s not due till 2010 this should give the plenty of time for Avalanche to put in that extra polish.