Discussion Post: Analyzing User Experience in Everyday Interactions

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I will use this discussion post as an excuse to continue a game I made lots of progress in last summer: UFO Robot Grendizer: Feast of the Wolves. To any child of the Middle East, ask your parents about this show. Chances are they know what Grendizer is. As a franchise, the popular version is that of an anime that ran between October 5, 1975 to February 27, 1977, with many reruns later. While the series saw modest success in Japan compared to its main parent series (called Mazinger), the Arab world, France, and Italy each adopted it. The Arabs kept the Japanese names and melodies in the soundtrack while only Arabizing the lyrics, while France and Italy reworked the character names and soundtracks. With all this in mind, it ought to be no surprise that a dedicated group of fans from France made a video game adaptation, available on all platforms (including Steam). Given my attachment to the series is Arabic in nature, and the developers were sincerely trying to get the game translated into as many languages as possible, I will be playing the game in Arabic and commenting on its UX with Arabic UI. Let's begin.

Once the game boots up, this is the menu I'm met with. Of course I had already set the settings to be set in Arabic. Now because I have played the game before, I will simply click on "Continue" (the first option).

After a lovely animation, I am dropped into the middle of the last mission I was doing. I remember nothing. But here's a screenshot

The subtitles are helpful but notice: the yellow text is supposed to be the speaking character's name. Also, after hearing the audio, I notice that the text is rendered from down to up. the text should read:

Koji Kabuto: Everything's okay, but that's not the case for the airport. The airforce exhibition should've been helping people on the earth; but Blacky got to us first...

Yet the text reads:

The airforce exhibition should been helping people on the earth; but Blacky got to us first... : Everything's okay, but that's not the case for the airport. Have

Notice the issue? I haven't tried the game in English to see what the text looks like in English, but I assume this isn't an issue since unlike English, Arabic, in formatting, is a clunky beast to deal with given every letter has at least 2 forms and at most 5, and how it reads from right to left instead of left to right, not to mention the diacritics, and how no font libraries work for it except a few, and so on. I can forgive it though because the voice acting reminds me of Spacetoon (the channel of the future's young men (as per their slogan (it's a 25 year old TV channel that localizes different anime and other cartoons for Arab audiences))).

Anyways the mission notice at the top right tells me that I have to liberate Perlepolis International Airport from the Vega in order to enable civilians to escape, and we see also the waypoints placed with exclamation points and the distance. This is a very useful feature for someone like me who gets lost in maps easily.

The main task I wish to complete is the mission in question.

As a semi open world game, we can explore a lot within the levels. For example, we can interact with grazing cattle for some achievement. I don't know what it does.

Now in every level there's a tower where the protagonist, Daisuke Amon, Grendizer's pilot, can go and see his buddy Yamada. Yamada allows for the user to upgrade Grendizer's combat abilities in a skill tree. Take a look:

The nicest details are the subtlest. Each skill is either highlighted as MAX and in a glowing golden-red gradient, or II to indicate level 2 out of 3, and is red with a fainter glow, or I to indicate having unlocked the move but not having upgraded it beyond that level, and it's mostly yellow, and then the last one being that I haven't unlocked yet, such as the move indicated by the lighting sign on top of Grendizer. Notice how the selected attack (Dual Shoulder Blades! I think. Once again I don't know the English) highlights the part of Grendizer that it affects? This has no use in function aside from aesthetics and satisfaction. This is a good feedback loop.

Similarly: Notice how the requirements to upgrade are clearly listed? It also tells you what you get when you upgrade. In this case, I would be able to break through enemies that are using shields using this move. Of course, though, the Arabic text's formatting is clunky, but I think we can expect that as a mainstay.

There are more menus but that's for the previous discussion post.

After getting to the first waypoint at the airport, I am absolutely swarmed by enemies with stupid AI that work stupidly well. It may be that I'm not used to my Xbox controller yet, but I had to step back and refill my health (notice the health bar and the fading notification in the bottom half of the screen beside Grendizer. That text is telling me to refill my health by pressing C on my keyboard. The display flipped to keyboard because I took a screenshot with my keyboard).

Now after going back in, on the interaction side of things, we can absolutely murk everything in our paths using combos. This is a fighting game after all, however simple its mechanics are. The fight buttons are X and Y (on an Xbox controller), while A is to jump and B is to dodge/roll. Special moves can be pulled off using the RB, LB, and LT buttons, and it's those special moves that can be upgraded in the skill tree above. In combat, the enemies are marked by a red rhombus floating on top of their entities, and a crosshair locked onto them when Grendizer is targeting them. They have a health bar too, and tiny damage indicators visually tell the user how much damage to the enemy's health each hit dealt.

Notice how the rock in the back is also marked as an enemy target! That's because part of this mission needs me to break the rocks to clear a path for the civilian planes to leave properly. Be fooled not by the Grendizer's perspective, humans are tiny. Notice also how the rock has a teal fist logo near it too, with a health bar? That means that the move I must use to hit it and deal damage is the normal light attack (X) move, and no amount of special moves can break this otherwise. There are some enemies with this sort of thing too and they are the most annoying to deal with.

On a note related to feedback: the sound of the hits, versus the blocks, and when Grendizer busts out the moves and combos, is all very satisfying. There is always a visual anime-esque feedback when a collision happens between my fist and the enemy's face, and only God knows how satisfying it is. The game plays like a rhythm game sometimes, however unintentionally, with how smooth the combat flows with respect to the player's input. I think wireless controllers face more issues though since wireless controllers have a lot greater delay than wired controllers and wired input.

I would like to take a pause and note how the soundtrack (which is an absolute banger) is one of the most subtly effective forms of feedback this game gives in its interaction. If you're far away from the trouble and nefarious shenanigans the Vega are up to, the soundtrack is rather peaceful. However the moment you step into the danger zone, things pick up and become tense, and then when combat begins you get an adrenalizing rift that intensifies the experience and makes entering a flow state that much easier. The soundtrack is dynamic and dependent on what's going on.

After combat I found what the game calls "meditation spots". Interacting with it heals Grendizer's health completely and the special attacks bar (the thin incremented bar under the health bar). A bonus is that you get a lovely panorama of the entire setting from that vantage point of where the meditation spot is as Daisuke reflects on something. Here, he's saying that "Water is the most precious resource of earth. I must protect it."

Now why does he say that? What is his lore? Who is Daisuke Amon? And where does Grendizer come from? Play the game to find out I won't spoil it. The game tells you in the first 10 minutes.

Now after some more combat (in waves) and putting my fist in as many Vegatronite robot faces as needed, I finally completed a mission! The first of probably a lot more. The level is one thing and the mission is another. Each level has probably 4 or 5 missions depending on the point in the story. I usually complete them all in one visit to the level, but that's optional.

Here the Vega head whom Daisuke and Koji refer to as "Blacky" is angrily asking over comms (that we intercepted), "How could a simple novice plane like that get away from you!? Make a lesson of this place! Or else I'll make you a lesson for those who don't heed!"

The mission here was asking us to liberate the airport from Vega's forces and to clear a path for civilian flights to escape with the civilians from Vega's forces. The Vega are pretty much the archetypal imperialists, seeking resources without a care in the world for any loss of life. And because this is an anime, Japan is the first target instead of the entire earth, much the same way New York is for Western media. I digress.

As a video game Grendizer is pretty solid for first time users. If the user is not an epic gamer™, however, and are instead a casual gamer or non-gamer, then the interface may be a little clunky to navigate, tough to understand, and the enemies terrifying. To someone who is an epic gamer™ though, the main pain point is the designation of RB as the sprint button and not RT, because I have launched attacks repeatedly when I only intended to sprint. Otherwise, the game is playable, has lots of potential, and is very fun. In terms of accessibility, the language options is a Godsend, especially for those who prefer playing the game in Japanese, French, Arabic, or whatever other language. The issues however are in those languages like Arabic where the display does some tomfoolery and shenanigans, not at all displaying in order.

A good flow is combat. Combat is so much fun because of how fluid it is. I believe it works better than many other games that exist on the market, such as Grand Theft Auto V, because while GTA V is a AAA game that is allegedly fun, unlike GTA V sending the player into a tidal wave of police officers being absurdly aggressive, Grendizer's combat flow respects the player by stopping the waves of annoying enemies once the player has achieved the intended goal. An interaction that could be improved though is when encountering cattle. There's just nothing that happens. I almost incline to say it's a good interaction because of how funny it is, but that's the internet humor in me speaking.

Another improvable feedback loop is perhaps saving the game. The game relies on auto-save, and while auto-save is really good and useful, it's not supposed to be the only way to save a game. Enabling the user to manually save the game to a save file, and selecting the save file itself to load its save data, is a lot cleaner to the player than auto save. There is a small floppy disk symbol to indicate saving that appears in the bottom left corner of the screen, but it's small and faded, meant to be out of the way. Assuming even then that I am aware of my progress being saved however, there still is the issue that I don't know when it's safe to exit the game. There have been instances previously where I exited the game and reloaded it later only to find myself at the position of the last autosave, and not at the position that I was in. In one instance this caused me to redo an entire level. Consequently, the game felt — and I am ashamed to admit it for this wondrous franchise — burdensome.

Alas. The soundtrack however more than makes up for it. Here's a medley version of the Arabic intro to the anime sung by the late Sammy Clark (1948-2022).

Below is a screenshot from one of the promotional screenshots on Steam. It's beautiful.