Some people claim that games might break us free from the boring interface shaped as a desktop. But sometimes even games get it wrong. Even the successful games.

I will discuss three interface mistakes made by three popular XBOX360 games released this year. Halo3, Assassins Creed and Call of Duty 4.

1) Unable to skip cut scenes – culprit: Assassins Creed 
Assassins Creed is a fantastic interactive game. You are able to fly over the rooftops of Medieval cities and kill unsuspecting targets in various entertaining ways. But… you can’t skip the cut scenes. Nope. You have to sit through them. And they are boring, very boring and long. I understand the goal is to create an interactive story, but at least give the player an option to bail out!

2) Bad visual indicators – culprit: Halo3
The most hyped game of this year. And don’t get me wrong, it is a great game. But sometimes it’s so damn hard to see if you killed someone. Especially when you and your teammate are pumping bullets in the same enemy. Eventually your foe will drop to his knees and you have to check the scores to see who got the kill. In a game like Halo 3, where ranking is a big part of the fun, keeping track of your kills is very important. The visual indicator which states you killed someone is a small sentence which pops up on the left bottom corner of your screen. It is almost invisible.

3) Ugly menu’s – culprit: Call of Duty 4.
Speaking about visual indicators, this fourth installment of Call of Duty gets it right. An announcement in the centre of your screen informs you how much points you just earned with a kill or action. Great! Too bad the the menu’s in this game are just butt-ugly. So much care is put in the gameplay, the balancing of the weapons and the crafting of maps but the ball was dropped when they slapped on this Frankenstein of a menu. The font being used is getting on my nerves, it looks severely outdated. The colouring and shapes make you wonder if you accidentally popped in Call of Duty 2. The subtitle of the game is ‘Modern Warfare’ but the menu’s look rather ancient.

Although games might be the future of the interface some mistakes made are very annoying. Game developers should take as much care in the interface as they do in other elements of the game.