It seems to me that the new menu for TSW3 is heavily geared towards console players. As a desktop PC player, I find buttons occupying nearly half the width of the screen to be clumsy and "in your face". More importantly, and for me annoyingly, I find the home screen to be completely pointless: "Store" never used at all because that feature is through Steam for me "Settings" mostly accessed from within game for performance tinkering and pretty much left alone once I'm satisfied "Creators club" very rarely used "Training Centre" whilst a valuable feature is not an everyday one The first 3 of the above are in any case available via perma-links at the top on every page For me, the options found on the "To the Trains" page are my starting point every time and would be a better place to find "Training Centre". This is exasperated by each game experience routing me back to the TSW3 menu "Home" screen and therefore lots of extra on-screen button clicks between games within a session. This is particularly relevant to "Quick Play". I saw a comment about a return to the previous menu after game play in one particular instance, I hope this is extended to offer return to the last menu page after any/every type of game play for example: Review journey completion within the last chosen route and chapter Spawn on foot at a different location on the previously chosen route etc Previously viewed list of timetable services Choose another tutorial etc Another comment about menu pages is that it is difficult to know which menu path has been taken to get to the current list, for example: Choice of Routes and Journeys have near identical pages Choice of train via timetable, scenario or training have near identical pages; I think these could be combined to summarise all 3 game types and also available journeys on a per train basis Perhaps menu page headings and/or navigation breadcrumbs could be used in a similar to websites.
Funnily enough, if you look in the XBox forum, everyone on console complains that clearly nobody at DTG tried to use it without a mouse and keyboard at any point during testing. The colour scheme is super confusing as to what you actually have selected if you have no mouse cursor floating over the highlighted selection and everything requires more d-pad presses and clicks to get to than it did in TSW2, again presumably because the designers were doing it with a mouse where you can instantly move it directly to the button you want.
I can assure you using it on a console is much worse than with a mouse. On top of all the extra steps to actually get to driving a train, there is an endless amount of scrolling up and down to get to what you need to select before you can select it with a controller. It hasn’t been designed with ease of use with a controller at all. Definitely designed for a mouse and clumsily adapted for consoles. You can tell that instantly when playing on a console as the bad start points for selections and the missing necessary shortcuts stand out, unlike the thing you are currently hovering on which only stands out once you select it by which time it’s too late if you were on the wrong thing. Everything seems to be much further away as you say but it’s not a console thing that has made it that way.
I actually quite like the new menu, but it's point- and- click like most every menu and definitely made with a PC and mouse in mind. The only thing I don't like is when you click on " main menu ", it takes you back to the home screen rather than the current route menu.
Is the new UI perfect? No, but the old UI was a joke. The old UI must have been one of the worst I've seen in many years so I prefer the new UI over the old one.
It's rather geared for players with 7" touchscreen tablets than consoles or PCs. The "Windows 8" tile layout and sizes of buttons suggest that.
In general I prefer the new menu I think but with a few caveats. Firstly I thought 'journey mode' had been removed after looking for it numerous times *after* selecting the route. Feels like it makes sense for it to be the next step after choosing between browsing by route or loco. It could go along with the options to choose timetable or scenario after you have chosen your route as no journey spans multiple routes. When continuing a journey, either by coming to it via the menu or selecting the next activity after having just completed one it gives you no indication of the activity length. It's a bit of a pain finishing one journey activity & having no idea if by continuing you are committing to a 20 minute jaunt or a 2 hour slog. This info is available for the activities in timetable mode but doesn't get carried over with the description when continuing a journey. I fell like I'm constantly trying to fight the game to get it to leave the settings how I left them. Constantly having to turn HUD elements or markers on or off again. Might just be me but I'd also quite like them to be set route specific, I tend to drive UK routes everything off except speed changes but for US or German, I need the extra help. The ability to turn of the notification noise when picking up a collectable is fantastic, thank-you.
Maybe hoping to aim the product at Game Pass Ultimate owners using cloud streaming to play on their phones?
I would have to side that it’s PC oriented, I side with this from being unable to skip time by the hour but only five minute intervals. There’s a button clearly visible to skip by the hour but I can’t find any button on the controller that presses it
