/rant incoming

I honestly believe a HUD minimap is one of the worst game UI elements a game can have. There is rarely a canonical explanation to begin with as to why your character magically knows the layout of rooms they haven’t entered and even worse that they know the position of enemies.

Even further, in the rare case that it does make canonical sense, you find yourself staring at this little 2D representation of the map that frankly looks terrible in comparison to the game world, yet you are forced to use it for navigation.

The most egregious example of this is GTA V and RDR2. In GTA, you could maybe explain that there is a GPS, but why isn’t this mended with the phone your character has? And in RDR2? No explanation at all. It’s near impossible to get from A to B in RDR without missing a turn because I’m usually trying to pay attention to the environment. This absolutely does not foster exploration. It becomes a checklist of locations to visit and naturally finding elements in the game world rarely happens.

An example of this being done well is something like Watch Dogs or Assassin’s Creed where you could argue in Watch Dogs that their augmented reality tech makes sense to be able to get the drop on enemies and building layout. AC has the whole simulation aspect.

Another example is something like The Crew where you can reliably disable the map entirely with the overhead GPS line that guides the player. More games would benefit from this by keeping your eyes on the world.

I’d love to see more games where disabling the map doesn’t ruin gameplay. In AC and Watch Dogs, they were mostly made for this and a large portion of the game can be played almost entirely HUD-less.

One last thought to leave on is that of you feel you absolutely must guide the player by map, why not make the map in-engine like many journals in games. Hell, RDR2 has an in-world journal that feels super life-like. Why not extend this to the map?

/end rant

Another issue I had with exoprimal (besides having only 3 maps and one gamemode, the mtx clusterfuck) was the UI. It was all over the place both in-game and in the menu's. No idea where to look for.

V risings build menu was tedious as well. Putting everything in one big line made finding your pieces and their variants hard.

On menu's: I don't mind a few more clicks as long as the information is found intuitively and is clearly presented. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. What I do like though is presenting them in an immersive fashion like metro exodus or an oldie: medal of honor multiplayer.

I think age of empires did a solid job of giving you the information you needed. Even as a little kid I understood what I was looking at.

One thing that frustrates me is when a game doesn't have a mini map option in the HUD. Obviously there are exceptions such as Elden Ring where it works better to not have one but in general I would prefer it to be an option especially when it is an open world game. I get lost driving in my own neighborhood, there is no way I am going to figure out where to go in a game without one.

I want to give a quick shoutout to Fable 2. The breadcrumbs UI trick was great as it let you know where to go but allowed you to enjoy the scenery. No longer did I have to focus on a tiny ass mini map on the corner of the screen. Can’t wait for the new one to come out.

(Screenshots taken from the Interface in Game site, here: https://interfaceingame.com/games/team-fortress-2/)

I wanna talk about the game I'm currently absorbed with, Team Fortress 2. TF2, being rather old, allows total customization of the UI, from the HUD to the menus. The default UI is clear, but also dated in places; you can really see where they slapped on new elements that clash a bit with existing ones, like the medals on the scoreboard compared to other elements, or the loading screen for a map, which has the very old Source infobox in the bottom right, a stylized background and panel taking up most of the screen, and a well integrated but still a bit off info bar at the top that was added more recently. The most glaring example is probably the community server browser compared to the newer slide-out tabs and menus for navigating play options. If Valve was still doing major work on this game, I'd say they need a good UI unification art pass.

When browsing TF2 custom HUDs on a site like this, there's quite a few different styles to choose from, ranging from those that attempt to refine the vanilla HUD to those that make it something entirely different. Many competitive players prefer minimalistic HUDs that put pertinent information like health and ammo count closer to the center of the screen, so that one doesn't need to divide their attention while fighting. Still others will pick a HUD that is a different style but still "complete" and fleshed out; even others still will fill their UI with memes (which I never understood, but to each their own).

Sometimes you just have to appreciate the little touches, though, like the animations and presentation on a map's video tutorial and the class select screen. It oozes a particular aesthetic that the game has deviated from, over time.