Brrroom Brrroooom: Driving Game Interfaces

I’m a bit of a car nerd so I loved Forza Motorsport 2. It’s probably the most played game on my Xbox and I have fond memories of taking breaks from my university dissertation to do a quick lap round the Nürburgring. I loved that they put in more common everyday cars alongside the supercar monsters of the game, and there’s even a version of my own car in there, which I bought and painted to be the same (and promptly supercharged).

So I’m pretty excited for the new version coming out this year, not only do the cars look amazingly good, the whole user interface design seems to have stepped up too. From a video I watched, the developers wanted to give the game the feel of a luxury car brochure and it definitely feels like it has matured from the previous version. We now have less brash colours – it’s the cars that deserve to stand out, not the interface – and it just feels much more pleasant and relaxing, although the music helps there too. There’s a lot more generous spacing going on, with the type being set more consistently.

I wouldn’t say that Forza 2’s interface was badly designed – I never had any troubles with its usability – but sometimes things felt a little crowded, a little over-designed and there was always a slight boy racer feel to proceedings.

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