I’m not sure when exactly the change happened, but I sure am sick of it. Over the past few years, it feels like every action game developer has collectively decided that R1 / RB is the button for “light attack,” following in the footsteps of Dark Souls and other Soulslikes.
No!!! This is an affront to the video game gods. Put those inputs back on the face buttons.
I first noticed the trend in a pair of action games released at the start of this console generation. Godfall, the vividly colored “looter-slasher” from Counterplay Games, was a timed PS5 console exclusive featuring a control scheme in which R1 performed light attacks, R2 performed heavy attacks, and X controlled your dodge. Weird, I thought at the time, but not so weird as to panic about it. For one game, I could deal.
Around the same time, I picked up Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Ubisoft’s Viking Age simulator designed to show how BIG an OPEN WORLD could be on the new consoles. (Turns out: too big!)
It took all of two seconds to realize that, despite skipping years between series entries and jumping to a whole new console generation, Ubisoft opted to retain the revised combat controls it introduced in 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins. As with Godfall, that framework put light attacks on R1 / RB and heavy attacks on R2 / RT.
By the time Immortals Fenyx Rising, Ubisoft’s best Ancient Greece-inspired map game, rolled around, I was sick of it. Even more egregiously, by default, Immortals Fenyx Rising put the sprint button on X / Square. (????) But Ubisoft games blessedly tend to have sprawling accessibility menus, including options to fully remap controls. It required some fiddling — two actions can’t map to the same button, so coming up with a scheme is a puzzle unto itself — but I eventually landed on a control scheme wherein X / Square controlled my light attack.
I now do this for every action game that allows for button remapping, in particular for new Assassin’s Creed games. Even if it makes it difficult to get on a horse without accidentally attacking it.
One part of the rationale here is practical. Take it from someone who’s played hundreds if not thousands of hours of Halo, the majority of which have been spent with the control scheme where RB = punch. (For first-person shooters, yes, melee on the bumper button makes sense. I don’t make the rules, sorry!) Smashing RB over and over again eventually leads to those bumpers getting sticky, not registering inputs, or otherwise degrading. Games aren’t getting any cheaper. Neither is the hardware. No one wants to have to replace this stuff.
But I also just… like the way the face buttons feel? I’m sure there’s some analysis out there claiming that using the bumpers and triggers for attacks means you can keep your thumbs on the joysticks, thereby maximizing your ability to react with speed and precision in combat. That makes your reactions improve by, what, 0.5 seconds? 0.6? I could see how that matters to professional gamers. Look. I am not playing Godfall or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Immortals Fenyx Rising professionally. I just want to push the buttons. (On a similar note, one could argue bumpers and triggers aren’t technically “buttons.” You can’t button-mash if you’re not pressing buttons!)
At the end of the day, it comes down to an evolutionary maxim. We were given thumbs for a reason. Let’s use them.
