Call of Duty
Bioshock
Metal Gear Solid

On top of that, it will save you covering a lot of ground that has already been covered and explored, and help you to avoid mistakes that have been made and learned from already. So many lovely 3D and 2D interfaces have been approached.

The thoroughness of the experience on the nintendo stuff recently is inspiring too - eg: passing over a cat in the top corner of the screen with your pointer and having your control vibrate.. the pussycat on screen is rendered a solid, real world thing by this simple feedback.

Got a PS3 and am currently jamming my way through “UNCHARTED”!

Sure, in the old days game menus were mostly about picking the armor to put on your elf or whatever, but those days are gone. One interesting example is the home menu that you see when you start up a PS3. Ten years ago, you just popped in a game, switched on your Play Station, and started mashing buttons. There was no such thing as a “menu” or a “home.” Now you turn on the system and you can navigate a cross-media bar that let’s you do anything from browse the internet to change your settings to shop in a fully-integrated store. The ovarall look is pretty tasteful, and you can tell that serious designers put a lot of work into making it clear and intuitive. But the most beautiful part of it, in my opinion, is that none of it takes place inside a clunky Web browser. In that sense, it may even be giving us a glimpse into the future of online experiences.

Seriously - I would not be at all embarrassed to invite a girl back to my apartment while that menu was on the screen. It doesn’t look like a child’s toy at all. It looks like a piece of high-end entertainment technology. And as the scope of the game industry’s content branches further and further outward from racing cars and blowing away monsters, inspired interfaces like the cross media bar are rapidly becoming more common.

Adding a gameplay element can make even the most boring applications fun (see http://www.technicat.com/writing/play.html). There are some excellent books on the subject, like ‘Rules of Play’ by Katie Salen. I think game design will play an essential role in future software development. I know it will in my work!