Close to a year and a half after its initial reveal during Nintendo’s E3 presentation, Daemon X Machina is finally available. I’m kind of a sucker for high-speed mech action games, as the Zone of the Enders tattoo on my arm may suggest, so I was more than happy to pick it up. I’m only a handful of hours in, but so far I’ve enjoyed my time with it. It feels like I’m playing through an extremely campy mech anime, with all of the ups and downs one might expect that to entail. There is one thing that had bugged me since I played the game’s Prototype Missions demo back in February, and that was the Heads Up Display (or HUD, for short).
From a technical perspective, there’s nothing wrong with this game’s HUD. Most of the items presented to you provide valuable information, and are placed within a proximity of where you’ll be looking for the majority of the game, which makes sense. I get that if I was actually piloting a giant bipedal robot that could fly, the amount of information being presented to me would make an airplane pilot shake in his boots, but there’s just something about this particular layout that feels… congested.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the developers were one step ahead of me. In keeping with the game’s focus on customization, you are given the ability to adjust individual items of the HUD to suit your fancy. Position, scale, and even transparency are all modifiable. You could even turn off elements if you so please. The only exception to this is the reticle, which cannot be modified and will remain active at the center of the screen.
This system is not without its issues, however. A few elements that I re-positioned had alternate modes that could only be seen during actual gameplay. This required some amount of trial and error, as certain components would either overlap others, or end up off screen entirely. Once you fiddle with it enough, you’ll get a feel for exactly how much room a particular item needs. It’s by no means perfect, but it gets the job done.
My first experience with UI customization came in the form of the indie title Dust: An Elysian Tail. This was during my fledgling years of owning a computer that could play games other than Minesweeper and Space Cadet 3D Pinball, and the novelty definitely left its mark. I struggled to understand why it was that no other game I’d played up until that point had this. Keep in mind that my experience with game genres that focused more on simulations or resource/cooldown management, where I believe this type of functionality to be more commonplace, was practically non-existent.
Oh, to be young and naive. This is partially speculation, but I assume it boils down to evaluating the cost of its implementation versus the benefit it may provide. Is it worth putting in the extra effort to create and test this type of functionality, or would that time be better spent just iterating on a singular UI layout? I could see this being even more true with multiplayer-focused games, as I can only imagine the balancing nightmare a feature like this might impose.
That’s to say nothing of the handful of games over the years that have offered somewhat similar experiences. Popular first-person shooter franchises like Call of Duty and Rainbow Six have offered HUD-less modes for awhile now. Even companies like Nintendo have dabbled in the concept, with their most recent one of note being The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its “Pro Mode”, which removes all in-game UI elements, save for Link’s hearts.
There is something inherently comforting about being able to make yourself “at home” within a game, so to speak, especially as games continue to ask for more of our time. It’s a small gesture, but I was happy to see that it was included (tedium notwithstanding) in Daemon X Machina, given that it’s a bit of a rarity in console games. Here’s to hoping we see more of this type of customization in action titles (or any titles, for that matter) in the future.