Progmatism.com

I'm a big fan of usability in software. I regularly read blogs such as "flow|state" and "joel on software", I'm secretly envious of Mac users, and I always strive to make my own work streamlined and easy to use.

Which is why I was so bothered by the menu system in Resident Evil 4, a game which was so polished and perfected in every other category. Using a sectional, tab-based system similar to Capcom's own "Devil May Cry", it tried it's best to be intuitive, but contained enough control inconsistencies to make a trip to the menu scarier than a horde of zombified Spaniards.

Pretty scary.

The first problem is with moving between tabs. The only way to navigate reliably between tabbed screens is to use B to highlight the tab bar and then press left and right on the D-pad. Using the shoulder buttons (L and R) to switch tabs, which should be the expected means of navigation (since the shoulder buttons on top of the controller logically correspond to the tabs on top of the menu), only works on certain screens. The first two screens, Treasures and Weapons, handle L and R correctly. However, the next menu section, the Map, uses L and R for zooming, which breaks the tab switching methodology. The next menu section, Files, doesn't use L and R for anything itself, yet still prevents L and R being used for tab navigation. In these two cases the only way to change to a different screen is to use the B button.

The Map screen is troublesome in many ways. It's the only menu item to have two means of access; the Z button when pressed in the main game heads directly to the map. However, this version of the map screen is not part of the main menu and there is no way to move to the other menu screens from it. Apparently the designers learned nothing from these same problems when they manifested in the new Ninja Gaiden (which is coincidentally also derivative of Devil May Cry). Why was the map made to work this way? I suppose Capcom just wanted to make the game even more familiar to the Metroid Prime crowd. After you've already borrowed the can't-shoot-while-moving mechanic, along with half the control scheme, you might as well put a map under the Z button.

There are also incongruences between the screens that agree. Treasures and Weapons, which use L and R to the best of their ability, handle the D-pad controls differently. Where as the Weapons screen will wrap around edges, Treasures will not. This is even more confusing when you consider that pressing up from the tabs when in the Weapons screen will move to the bottom of the Weapons menu, while doing so on the Treasures menu will do nothing.

Artist's rendition of equipping the fish

As a related criticism, there's the obvious problem of item pickup. When trying to run and shoot at large crowds of Ganados, something requiring rhythm and smooth grace, the persistent interruptions of gaining items became very distressing. Instead of just having a hud popup when a item is collected (a la Katamari), a full screen display, with text, shows up to stop the action. Very annoying and totally unnecessary.

In conclusion, the worst part about Resident Evil 4 was that you couldn't equip the fish.