My friend Kevin Mangan likes to compare to Street Fighter IV to chess. With strategy happening in seconds opposed to drawing out over the length of your average chess game. He’s right, and for those of you gifted to have the hyperactive twitch skills to play this form of super-chess, Street Fighter is probably a game you love.

It’s also beautiful. Kotaku posted a gallery featuring these screens of Capcom‘s upcoming Super Street Fighter IV, all prominently featuring the onscreen UI. (Hard to avoid with that style of fighting game.) There’s some beautiful stuff going on here. I know I am fairly vocal about constantly moving towards a HUD-less experience, but when it comes to a game like Street Fighter the UI really just enhances the gameplay. All that information is needed, this allows a player to risk an attack or choose to play more defensively as well as adapt their strategy to whatever the situation requires.

I really like how characters models, and effects move in front and behind the UI as a whole. To me that sort of  integration feels a lot like the lines a network will project onto a football field while watching a NFL game. The action revolves around what you’re seeing, and the HUD/UI doesn’t block the action or interfere with gameplay. It’s quality work. I look forward to seeing it in action in the game.

Rockstar‘s Red Dead Redemption looks great, as the video above shows. I like the trimmed down UI, and the quick shot of the “store” UI looked pretty slick as well. Interesting choice for that persistent mini map in that lower left. Looks like it with lifted right from Grand Theft Auto IV.

Kotaku posted this interesting little video coming out of Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab and Savannah College of Art and Design showing the gameplay footage for ARhrrrr an augmented reality game in development. It’s running on a handheld device from Nvidia called the Tegra. The Menu and HUD are pretty uninspired and clunky, but the possibilities of allowing players to draw their own maps and use real world objects to interact with the game is pretty spiffy.

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.

BioShock 2 returns to Rapture

The internet quaked with excitement as 2K released the first BioShock 2 game play footage via GameTrailers. I loved BioShock, even with it’s mediocre ending, it was still one of the most engrossing and memorable games I have played in ages, and it’ll hold a special place in my heart. So seeing the new footage excited me.

If you haven’t played and beaten the first game you may want to avoid the video after the jump. Otherwise, give it a look. It’s still in development, and it’s a very short video, but the game is looking very playable. The video shows some new faces and some old friends, and a quick peek at a neat underwater scene (I’d like to see more of this.) I’m going to wait for more game play footage before I really delve into commenting about the UI. My initial reaction is it’d be nice to see some of it toned back and moved more along the lines of EA‘s DeadSpace or take a page from Fight Night’s strategy.

Check the video after the jump, and leave a comment, what do you think?