I. Thou shalt not shun thine player's mouse
See this nifty thing called a "mouse pointer"? It was invented quite a few years ago, and it's positively great for, you know, pointing at menu choices and item lists. Thanks, Captain Obvious, you're my hero! So, pray tell, how come I have to press keys and/or gamepad buttons in your game to select options and choose the color of my character's underwear? Why do you have to add insult to injury by choosing menu navigation keys other than the arrow keys and then not letting me know what they are—or, alternatively (and this is my personal favorite), showing me which Xbox 360 controller buttons to press? Dude, come here for a second and look at this box I have with cables coming out of it. It doesn't have a red ring of death at the front, now does it?
The shop and inventory interfaces in Borderlands are good examples. Pointing at items? Psh, that's too old-school. Mmmm, arrow keys—let's have arrow keys for nearly everything. Hit a button to compare guns! Back in my day, we had to point and click to dress our characters... and it took a tenth of the time.
On that note, Burnout Paradise, son, come here. Now, explain to me whose idea it was to make me press F1 and F2 (of all keys) to go back and forth between menus. You can speak up son; no one's going to hurt you. Yet.
, especially about Burnout, that is one annoying menu.
