So one of my Christmas presents was Gran Turismo (2) for the Playstation (1). Considering the only Playstation game I regularly played before was Need for Speed III, Gran Turismo was a welcome addition to my jet-black CD-ROM library.

The game is really cool and, after having played NFS for far too long, it seems to load really quickly. The graphics are great, but most interestingly, the UI is fantastic in some areas, showing a great deal of careful thought and, dare I say, usability testing, yet there are some features that are simply so boneheaded I can't help but wonder if they were altered later, or if two houses were responsible for different aspects of the UI.

Cases in point: Some navigational screens (administrative screens, not actual racing play) seem to be prefetched off the CD for faster display times. Music is consistant throughout the experience (unlike NFS where the music stops when the 'station has to 'think hard'!), the nonlinear progress bar is just amazing. It starts slow and speeds up gradually so it never seems to take as long as you think it will, and this isn't just careless guestimation of time. The acceleration of the progress bar is linear, though the rate of completion is parabolic (I know this doesn't make sense. It just gets faster is all.)

On the down side, GT:2 assumes that you want to see a replay of your last race after every race you perform, and you have to press three seperate keys with the same thumb (and one with the other) to make it stop. Also, every single time you start a race, test, or other sim, you have to tell it whether you want to drive a manual or automatic transmission. This seems to be a setting most people would set once and forget, or maybe modify once in a long while, but not confirm for every race. In the same category, I shouldn't have to confirm my name (in a non-intuitive two keypress process) every time I set or break one of a hundred records. Either let me link the name to the memory card forever, or at least make it a one keypress confirm (like in NFS:HS).

Without going on too long, it looks like they did a great job of laying out static UI pics and performing a heuristic analysis on individual screens, but a lousy job at task analysis (it looks like there was little work with cognitive walkthroughs and probably no GOMS modelling at all) that would show problems with the actual use of the UI screens displayed.

Still it's frightfully addictive. I'm going to go read now, then wake up, feel guilty for not picking up Karen at the airport at 5:30am, get my long-missed large chai (oregon chai, not that swill Starbucks changed to 18 months ago (what's up with that, anyhow??)) and cranberry scone, and get to work on my statement of purpose.

More on that in my next entry which, ironically, you probably just read.