User Interface Intuitivity Test

In my recent quest to finish a bunch of half finished games, I discovered a new and interesting way to critique games.  Part of the problem of coming back to a game is that you've forgotten how to play the game and in some cases, getting back into it can be difficult.  This makes for an interesting way to see just how intuitive a game's interface and controls really are.  If you've already made it past all the tutorials, a good game won't keep reminding you how to play the game (I'm looking at you Skyward Sword and your insistence that I forgot everything every time I start a gaming session...).  However, a game should have some method for a player to refresh their memory about how to play.  Usually, this boils down to a controls/moves menu on the pause screen.  That should be the absolute bare minimum you should have in a game for returning players.

Beyond that, your interface should be clear enough that it's fairly easy to remember what everything represents.  If one little symbol lights up in a certain circumstance (e.g. the player has picked up the Hoobajoob of Greatness), it should be pretty obvious what that light stands for.  It's also really nice if the player can just pick up most of the controls without having to look at that menu.  One of the games in my backlog quest was Thor: God of Thunder from Liquid Entertainment (the company I used to work at).  One of the things I had the biggest difficulty remembering how to do it was also one of the game's most interesting aspects.  When you're fighting one of the big monsters (and there are a lot of them), you can grapple them to enter a special grapple mode: kind of like a mix between God of War's kill quick time events and Shadow of the Colossus boss fights.  Most of these have arrows appearing on the sides of the screen indicating if you can move to a different area on the monster.  However, for some reason I can't decipher, instead of just pushing that direction, you have to press B and the direction.

Setting aside whatever reasoning made this decision happen, a lot less of my time would be spent being confused and would be spent having fun if a small B in a red circle appeared next to the arrow.  If I just see an arrow as a player, I would think I could just push the joystick in that direction (a la Dragon's Lair).  It took a heck of a lot of trial and error (and death) before I realized the whole B button thing.  Therefore, this part of the gameplay fails the intuitive test.  I don't know how common it is for player's to come back to a game they never finished after months away from it, though, so this could all be moot.  For all I know, I'm the only person alive who tries to clear their backlog like this.