Worst offender of menu confusion

While watching Unprofessional Fridays, Thayder's Quest reminded me of a problem I've encountered a few times in the past. Main menus that do a horrible job of communicating which option you are currently highlighting. I.e. I'd find myself hitting "Quit" when I wanted "Resume".

What games are the worst offenders of this that you've found?

Every chinese food place ever.

Oh, you mean in games. I guess anything that doesn't use X and Circle (on Playstation, obviously) for confirm and cancel, respectively. This is mostly a problem when it comes to recent HD collections of old games, such as Ratchet and Clank, but occasionally pops up in modern games still.

@Spoonman671: I got so used to having circle be accept from the MGS series that when I would play other games I would still do it out of habit. that shit was annoying as hell.

Recent good example of this for me at least is Anarchy Reigns.

The only thing that comes to mind is when I would play a bad console port on PC where the devs were so lazy that they still have all the button prompts labeled with the console controller icons despite trying to play with a MKB. As well, I recall playing one of the Splinter Cell games on PC and it being unplayable because they never told you what the key was. They would just say things like "Walk up to the door and hit the use key." but they never told you hat the dam key was!

It's not so much because of an inability to tell what is highlighted, but one of the worst menus I've found is the NBA 2K series (and maybe MLB 2K as well, but it's been a number of years since I've played that one).

Just check out the beginning of the NBA 2K13 Quick Look to see what I mean. Jeff, and Vinny end up playing a bunch of practice mode because they can't figure out how to start a standard exhibition game.

Castle Crashers - Pc

They want you to use a controller so damn badly that trying to get through that thing with a keyboard is more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be. Also no mouse support of any kind is beyond stupid. It is one lazy ass port that is for sure.

@Spoonman671 said:

Every chinese food place ever.

Oh, you mean in games. I guess anything that doesn't use X and Circle (on Playstation, obviously) for confirm and cancel, respectively. This is mostly a problem when it comes to recent HD collections of old games, such as Ratchet and Clank, but occasionally pops up in modern games still.

If I'm not mistaken, in Japan most games use circle as confirm and X as cancel.

Anyway, now that I'm playing PC games I'll occasionally find a menu where I have to put the mouse in a certain spot, like right in the middle of the button or something, to get it to highlight. Borderlands, I'm lookin' at you. Speaking of, Borderlands' UI in general is a lesson on how not to make user interfaces.

NBA 2K13?

Playing my Wii U and realizing how much the 360 screwed me over because they switched A and B around on the controller.

When you play Japanese games on a NA PS3, circle is select and x is cancel in game, but its vice versa when loading/saving something. Yeah, that gets about as confusing as you can imagine.

Madden 13.

Might & Magic Clash of Heroes (PC) had a little bit of that. I'm certain it wasn't the worst offender of the games I've ever played but it is the last game I beat so it's fresh on the mind. Great game otherwise though.

Fire Pro Wrestling, my god, it is so difficult to navigate.

@WMoyer83: Fire Pro Returns had good menus from what I remember.

Also helped that those were in English.

@oldirtybearon Just try to create a wrestler without the manual. It's awful.

@squiDc00kiE said:

While watching Unprofessional Fridays, Thayder's Quest reminded me of a problem I've encountered a few times in the past. Main menus that do a horrible job of communicating which option you are currently highlighting. I.e. I'd find myself hitting "Quit" when I wanted "Resume". What games are the worst offenders of this that you've found?

YES

I was going to mention this even before I opened the thread. I hate when games do this. The worst offender is P.N.03

I don't know about worst, but Dark Souls has perhaps the easiest to understand. Load a character, create a new character, or go fuck yourself.

@ShadowConqueror said:

I don't know about worst, but Dark Souls has perhaps the easiest to understand. Load a character, create a new character, or go fuck yourself.

In other words, all three selections are "go fuck yourself?" Sorry. I've had bad experiences with Dark Souls lately. (:

The penguins of Madagascar. No seriously I lost a save game because light orange was the selected option and not dark orange..

Recent good example of this for me at least is Anarchy Reigns.

@SuperWristBands: It was really confusing at first the shades of green they use for the menus make it look like your hilighting something that you aren't or at least it did to me...

It might sound odd but I really hate the menu system in Fable 3. Well it's not really a "menu" at all, it basically just takes you to some weird room and that's where you change your equipment and weapons. But it's so slow, it just loads every time you do it and it get's really annoying.

Also MineCraft's menu system is pretty confusing until you figure it out.

@ShadowMoses900 said:

It might sound odd but I really hate the menu system in Fable 3. Well it's not really a "menu" at all, it basically just takes you to some weird room and that's where you change your equipment and weapons. But it's so slow, it just loads every time you do it and it get's really annoying.

I don't think that sounds odd at all. That's got to be one of the worst menus ever.

One of many complaints about that game.

@believer258 said:

@Spoonman671 said:

Every chinese food place ever.

Oh, you mean in games. I guess anything that doesn't use X and Circle (on Playstation, obviously) for confirm and cancel, respectively. This is mostly a problem when it comes to recent HD collections of old games, such as Ratchet and Clank, but occasionally pops up in modern games still.

If I'm not mistaken, in Japan most games use circle as confirm and X as cancel.

Which actually makes a lot more sense when you think about it.