In researching the best Zelda clone games for a story I’m working on, I recently played Darksiders for PS3, Xbox 360, and (coming soon) to PC. It’s an okay game with awesome production values, and it’s very reminiscent of Zelda.
That said, it’s one of many modern games that feel the need to artificially inflate the number of buttons used, as if they add any real value to the experience. For example, combat in Darksiders is pure hack and slash. So you’d think you can button mash your way to victory. But no, the developer requires that you press a secondary attack button to finish off your enemies.
It may not sound like a big deal. And other games require secondary or tertieary buttons for strategic purposes. But in this case it doesnt work. It feels forced. Pointless. Letting me cycle through X number of primary buttons presses would have been more enjoyable, since this combat is neither strategic nor puzzling.
My rant aside, what other games make poor use of button actions?
….`button pushing’ is sooo… 80′s…but then again is old new again??
soul caliber [i think i spelt that right
God of War (series)…Boring.
In games like Assassin’s Creed you have to hold the one trigger button to do parry and counter attacks… I just hold the trigger as I fight for quicker victory lol
Soul Calibur actually did a good job, but in this case, that’s an apple compared to an orange. Fighting games are a special case when it comes to controls (and in that case, Tekken has the best control scheme, just not the best combat), whereas Darksiders is a full-out Zelda clone.
A lot of games in the current hardware generation suffer greatly from overloaded controls, and the fault is split evenly between the software developers/game designers and the hardware manufacturers. A) Too many game designers rely on misguided convolution in their designs to create the illusion of game play depth, failing to realize there is indeed a difference between “complex” and “complicated.” B) There’s just too damn many buttons on the controllers. If you do your game genealogy, I believe things point to Capcom being the original culprit here, actually. If I recall correctly, they were the first to start making arcade cabinets with a six button layout at a time when most arcade games ranged from 1 to 3 buttons. Given that once upon a time arcade ports were an important staple in console game sales, the console developers were forced to follow suit by adding additional buttons to their controllers. Nintendo and Sega both made the six button controller the standard in the 16-bit era, and we should’ve all stopped there. But no. Sony was convinced that more buttons were needed, so they doubled the shoulder buttons. Things apexed with the Atari Jaguar, though, which actually had a freakin’ number pad (0-9) in the middle of the controller, although luckily that never caught on. Even nowadays, though, look at how many redundancies are on the average controller: 3 directional input devices, 4-6 face buttons (not counting “Start”, “Select”, etc.), and 4 shoulder/bumper buttons. Add to that motion sensing/tilt, and you might as well just give us a keyboard. Even the Wii-mote could lose three or four buttons and be better for it. Sometimes less is more, but for some reason, most game designers/developers feel obligated to use every button all the time and even create arbitrary features just make sure they use the entirety of the controller. Fail.
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is usually the best games have the most straight-forward and simplistic controls and that poorly designed/implemented controls can ruin even the best game design in an instant.
I had about 30 exhilarating/frustrating hours into monster hunter tri before I realized the + button was used in attacks (yes its my fault for not reading the manual closer). I’m using the CC pro and I have to reach over to press + during my attacks. There are two other shoulder buttons that are unused. I would have preferred they had used those.
Oh hush, Darsksiders is a good game. Nice story and good voice acting.
Also, you don’t HAVE to use that extra button to finish ‘em off. You just beat the guys and get on with the puzzling.