Video Game Main Menus

I was wondering what people think about Main menus in video games.

I just popped in GTA IV yesterday cause I wanted to play it again and realized it has no main menu.

That got me wondering what if more games took that approach say for example if Uncharted 2 after starting up the game just got right into the action.

Now I realize that it couldn't work for every type of game but I think for games that are single-player heavy it could greatly improve the immersion.

I'm not a fan of what GTA did. Yes, its cool and puts you right into the action and is also a neat stylistic choice but I HATED having to boot up the game then wait for the game to load up to Niko's apartment if I all I wanted to do was just go do some multiplayer. It made it more of a hassle to do stuff like that then needed.

The PC version does have a main menu but still makes you load up singleplayer if you want to do multiplayer.

That would be cool on consoles but it's something that microsoft and sony frown upon I think. On PC I always want to go to the options menu first though to make sure everything is all right.

If this really worked it could be cool, but I don't think it's something that would improve "immersion" all that much, I don't think anybody really felt an extraordinary sense of realism for not having a main menu in front of GTA IV. When you think about it, we always need to move through UIs and loading screens to get to the game we want, why would we feel that much more immersed from having one less screen?

I also think GTA IV is a good example of how even for many single-player heavy games this is a bad idea. Just getting straight into the action looks fine on paper, but in that game sometimes you couldn't just get straight into the action. If you wanted to load a different save file or access multiplayer you'd have to wait for the game to load up, access a smaller, less convenient menu in-game, select what you wanted, then sit through another loading screen to get into the action. It just wasn't worth the trade-off.

It's neat in theory, but whenever I get a new game I go straight to the options to see what's there and turn on subtitles so it would be a hassle if every game would do that.

I'm a fan of menus, I hated the fact in GTAIV I would have to load Single Player to get to the multiplayer. Sometimes you have more than one save file too, for example in Vice City and San Andreas I would have two. One for my main and one for cheats and messing about.

I love Valve main menus as they usually change depending on how far you are in the game. This is the best way to do it I think. Infamous does it well as it has a main menu at the start, but soon gets rid of it in order to get you into the action every time you play it.

I love menus. I also love splash screens where you have to press start and then it says the name of the game at you

Resident Eeeevil!

I really like menus. In GTAIV I always wanted to load up a diffrent save instead they just tossed me in and I had to wait till it loaded.

I think its good if its a pure single player game. I would not mind Skyrim loading up my last save automatically