Why I Hate Button MashingJanuary 1st, 2008 by Suzie
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I hate button mashing. It feels like an exercise in pointlessness. What exactly it has to do with your characters fighting skill I have yet to figure out. I highly doubt that someone can decapitate a beastie just by hacking out four sword moves in a vaguely random pattern. And it frustrates me. I think it’s meant to frustrate, that somehow getting to the point where you want to smash your controller through your television means that when you finally complete it - through luck more than anything - you’re meant to feel elated.
I don’t feel elated. At best I’m glad it’s finally over, at worst I’m retiring from the game (I’m unable to retire from the game without defeating the frustratingly difficult bit, but I’ll be blowed if I’m wasting anymore of my life on it).
There is a fine line between interesting controls and button mashing. God of War just sits on that line, never taking the mashing too far. A game that thoroughly appalls is Final Fantasy 8, in which you can hit the square button repeatedly in order to make your GF’s strength power up. Why? Is the GF doing squats and limbering up? No, it would appear Square just wanted to make you sit through the same damn cinematic experience over and over again, unable even to go and put the kettle on for a cup of tea while the pretty lights and big tidal waves crash about the screen.
Intense bouts of button mashing cause actual pain: see Sonic Rush. Is it, perhaps, meant to make you identify with the pain the hero is experiencing? Is the burning of your carpal meant to equate to the agony of being smacked repeatedly with the sharp end of a sword?
There are fighting and sports games devoted to button mashing. Devotees have no problem finding them. And you know, that’s cool, diff’rent strokes and all that. What I resent is when its included in a fucking RPG. Just because every video game has to have one of these ‘now press circle’ moments, we’re reduced to lab rats, frantically stabbing at the right button when we’re told to, storyline and interactivity be damned.
Consider World of Warcraft. In a difficult fight, you may well be required to hit hot keys in a particular combo. Fast. The difference between this and button mashing is that you aren’t told what to hit or when. You get to use your brain as well as your reactions. It actually has some vague resemblance to a real battle, where you have to be aware of what’s happening rather than following some god-given voice-in-the-sky presumably yelling “Now do this! Now do that! Now block! Block damn you, not feint! Start the battle over!”
It is, I think, the laziest kind of gameplay control for designers. After all, all they have to do is program some symbols to flash up on the screen. They don’t have to worry about players doing something unexpected, or coming up with their own tactics. There’s just win or lose. Get it right, or get it wrong - in which case you’ll go back to the beginning: grinding your teeth and wearing your wrist brace.
The games that require you to hit one button repeatedly - aka Mario Party - are even worse. If a piece of sticky tape or a small rock can beat a human at the game, it’s a bad game.
Do you enjoy button mashers? Have you decided spending your life with permanent wrist pain is worth the joy of completing extended sequences of matching symbols to buttons? If so, please feel free to array your arguments as to why this is not the most pointless waste of time in the history of the universe in the comments section.
January 1st, 2008 at 11:53 am
Funny you should mention Mario Party. I remember the first game in the series had many minigames where you would have to rotate the analog stick really fast to win. There were a lot of techniques to do this, and I remember that the one I used was to just rest my palm on the analog stick and move it in fast circular motions… problem is that the N64 analog was kinda jaggedy (compared to the nice soft dual shock analogs) and it would hurt and to do this continuously and there were lots of reports of people injuring themselves on these minigames, which were pretty much impossible if you didn’t hold the analog stick in some special manner.
Consequently, those types of games were removed in the next couple Mario Party entries, and I’d be surprised if they were reintroduced.
But I think the true games which give button mashing their name (”BUTTON MASHAN GAEMS”) would be the fighters which became infamous because it’d be possible to win against most opponents a decent amount of the time simply by mashing buttons. This is how most people start off playing after all, since especially in the old days most fighters didn’t have intuitive movesets that were easy to grasp (I remember always wanted to do Zangief’s Piledriver but never could, hence my attempts to play with him always devolved into BUTTON MASHAN.) I think nowadays with less steep learning curves, though, this has become a much less profitable strategy in most games.
January 1st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Yes, Street Fighter for the Sega was my button mashing game of choice - I didn’t have the manual for some reason, so I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to pull off special combos. After managing to beat several supposedly skilled players via stabbing randomly at buttons and running in different directions, I thought maybe I had an amazing talent for fighting games. Tekken proved that I didn’t
But yes fighting games, and sports games are/were the rulers of the button mashing genre.
I read about the Mario Part game that ended up injuring people, though I didn’t play it. You have to wonder if they actually bothered testing it at all
Any kind of repetitive motion can cause serious problems, especially in kids!
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:28 am
I spose that you wouldn’t like Bishi Bashi Special (PSone) then. The whole game is about button mashing. ^_^
Lately I have come under fire from my brother. Hes been accusing me of being a button masher in fighting games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters. I can understand why he would say this as I press buttons extremely quickly but most of the time I have a good idea of what I am trying to pull off. Its tough to judge because I subconsciencously know what I am doing but when he asks me afterwards I don’t know.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Button mashing is pretty lame but it is a part of gaming. Mario Party is only good if you’re HIGHLY intoxicated, lol.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:42 am
If I’ve been playing a lot of intense, tactical games - like GRAW2 or Rainbow Six: Vegas - I like a good button masker form time to time. It is nice to not have to think too much and be able to game and unwind. However, even if the game is a button masher I still want to be able to do some cool combos. Most recently Spider-Man: Friend or Foe was my button masher of choice. It had some fun cartoony graphics and cool combos.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Only good game where buttonmashing is inplemented well other than GoW is Shooting Watch. My highscore is 23 Shots per second