Menus
There's only one menu, everything you need is accessed from there. That makes it a daunting monster of a cluttered beast to get your head around initially, but it actually doesn't take too long in practice.

This is what it looks like:


Beautiful, isn't it? But what it lacks in style it makes up for in function. You can glance at your vitals in the bottom right, food and water are the main ones to keep an eye on. Health regens over time as long as you've got food in your belly, Stamina replenishes rapidly if you stand still for a moment. Walking doesn't drain your Stamina, so take your time when foraging and if you're surprised by a predator you'll have enough in the tank to fight or leg it.

Top left is your inventory, piss about with double taps of A and holding it down to get different results, RT is to use stuff there and then. Bottom left is your hot linked items. You assign a D-Pad button to four items, usually your Pick, Torch, Hatchet and Spear. When out and about hacking stuff to bits your stuff will break, handily anything in your hot link will be remade by hitting the button without going into the menu as long as you have the required materials. You can assign alt links which you access by holding LB then hitting a D-Pad or face button and they work in the same way.

The middle is obviously your character and what he's wearing at a glance, the slots for clothing are up top right.

When you level up you get a point to increase one of your attributes and a few engram points to spend on the upgrade tree.

It really doesn't take long to get to grips with, and I was surprised to find that I don't really spend much time at all in the menu. The most time is spent dithering over which upgrade is best, catapult for some ranged combat or a cooking pot to make a decent minced dino ragu?

There's no reason not to give it a shot as you get a free hour with it, you'll know by then if it's your bag or not.