I've started using menu transition speeds as a litmus test for the quality of a game, based on the idea that no one enjoys a slow menu. A slow menu can never be satisfying, and at best, is neutral, on a person-by-person basis. It is never good, because it interferes with the actual operation of playing the game, and cannot even be claimed for immersive benefit (menus are inherently immersion disrupting).
At most, it can only be accepted for the first time its ever dealt with (which is why they're employed. For that first usage). Any game that has slow menus despite this more than likely either features a primary designer who does not care that much about playing the game (more likely proud of the graphics and cinematics they can employ) or someone simply incompetent.
This game has slow menus.
It might be CD Projekt, but my hopes are not high.
Even worse, everything is slow, but I'm hoping thats just because its a demo. But that they're more interested in showing off the world and the graphics than your actual interaction with it further implies that they're more interested in showcasing than actually playing.
I agree that slow menus are horrible but there are a lot of good or at least very popular games that have slow or even allaround terrible menus.
It's a problem I wish more people would write about in reviews and designers would think of but I wouldn't go as far as saying the speed of a menu is an indicator of the overall quality of a game.
Its a hueristic so its expected to fail, but obviously I’d argue most good games do have ignorable if not good menu transitions. But regardless, I think I would’ve better described it as targetting how much power the aesthetics designer had versus the gameplay designer (this is an inherit conflict: aesthetics wants control and a limited set of interactions, so that they can each be designed to fit the aesthetic best, while gameplay calls for an expansive/free set of interactions, so the player can explore the world and mechanics). Menus seem to be one of the first to go, as soon as aesthetics become important.
As an example, monster hunter world has substantially slower menus than its predecessors. Its also clearly very excited about its new graphics (as it has every right to be, this is the first in the series in over a decade to have a real hardware upgrade; it started from the ps1 to ps2, and from there it was all handhelds and one on the wii), with fancy cutscenes, scripted monster interactions, and big fancy finisher moves. In most fashions, the gameplay survived fine, but there are clear regressions, like the game does the map exploration for you, because of the difficulty of parsing the environment (a result of making it lush, thanks to having an actual graphics card), an annoyingly large and maze-y town using an auto-travel bandaid (because it looks better than the previous smaller towns).
The game is still good but notably along with all the regressions in favor of graphics was the menu transition speed. The graphics designer clearly had a bigger say in this game than in the previous titles.
The brief portrayal of "jacking in" to cyberspace isn't as weird and psychedelic as it ought to be, but it's better (better = more like the descriptions in Neuromancer) than in any other game I've seen.
Everything is still made of giant glowing cubes, but at least there's visual effects so it jumps around and looks kind of like an image would if it were inserted directly into your mind's eye. "Like city lights, receding..."
This is a weird pet peeve of mine. I'm really glad to see somebody actually appears to share my taste, and I hope in the final game it's even more interesting.
At most, it can only be accepted for the first time its ever dealt with (which is why they're employed. For that first usage). Any game that has slow menus despite this more than likely either features a primary designer who does not care that much about playing the game (more likely proud of the graphics and cinematics they can employ) or someone simply incompetent.
This game has slow menus.
It might be CD Projekt, but my hopes are not high.
Even worse, everything is slow, but I'm hoping thats just because its a demo. But that they're more interested in showing off the world and the graphics than your actual interaction with it further implies that they're more interested in showcasing than actually playing.