Button-mashers get a lot of hate, and for good reason — they hurt your hand! Well, they can also be frustrating and lack much strategy, but not all button-mashers are bad. Some are a lot of fun, but they do require strategy to hit the button just right to score points or land hits when you need to. Others employ the mechanic because the devs couldn’t come up with anything better to do, and those aren’t the best games in the world. We looked through the archives and came up with five of the best and five of the worst button-mashers in gaming history, and arranged them in no particular order.
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Best) God of War
The original God of War and, to some extent, its sequels often feature tons of button-mashing at various points. There’s a lot of strategy involved in how you attack enemies, but on the lowest difficulty setting, players can go to town on their controllers, mashing away as they tear through mobs regardless of how they attack. When it comes time for a QuickTime event, the real button-mashing begins. There are moments when you have to press O like your life depends on it (because it pretty much does), and you’re rewarded with the killing of a god or some sort of massive mythological creature.
Worst) Star Fox Adventures
While Star Fox Adventures isn’t a bad game, it does feature a moment of button-mashing that drives plenty of players crazy while killing their hand strength for a bit. The test of strength comes up, and there’s little you can do but button-mash, as that’s the mechanic needed to get through the sequence. For many players, this is physically demanding to the point of being impossible (or requiring a turbo controller). Advice online for how to get through the test of strength is best summed up as “Press A as fast as you can” because that’s the only way to get through the sequence, so be prepared to kill your thumb.
Best) Hades
Hades and Hades II are two of the best indie games to come out in the 2020s, and they’re both fairly dependent on button-mashing. That said, there’s plenty of strategy to how you play, and you don’t necessarily need to spam your buttons like they’re going out of style, though when you’re mobbed by a ton of enemies, it’s not the worst idea in the world. The starting weapon can be used by simply holding down the attack button, but as you upgrade, you’ll need to keep pressing the button to keep registering hits, and the fast-paced gameplay pretty much demands mashing the hell out of it.
Worst) Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
There’s one thing you can go into most Metal Gear games knowing, and it’s that Hideo Kojima has thrown a button-mashing scene into the game at some point. Most players don’t like these, but the legendary designer kept them in throughout his tenure at Konami. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, during Mission 20’s Torture Chamber Escape, you have to mash the button until you pass out from exhaustion, and then you have to keep mashing it some more. It’s incredibly difficult, and few players can get through it on the first attempt, as it’s physically demanding, repetitive, and pretty painful.
Best) Batman: Arkham Series
For this entry, the entire Batman: Arkham series is being lumped into one, as they all utilize similar combat mechanics. Depending on how you play, you might go into a fight using intense strategy, requiring a specific set of moves, while others mindlessly smash buttons, hoping to beat the snot out of enemies until they’re lying still on the ground. These games are interesting in that combat really can go both ways — one player can tackle combat through a nuanced approach of counters and parries with gadgets, while others might just go nuts on their controllers, hoping for a good outcome. Either way, the games are fantastic, but button-mashers are likely to tire quickly.
Worst) Track & Field
Track & Field is an arcade game from the early 1980s that went on to influence a slew of similar games. Players compete against one another or the computer to score points and take the lead in races. To do so, especially in a race, you have to repeatedly smash the L and R run buttons, one after the other. Think of the L button as representing the left foot hitting the ground and the R button being the right foot. The faster you hit the buttons, the faster you run. Track & Field is the very definition of a button-masher, as the mechanic is designed into its gameplay, and it can wear out your hand pretty quickly.
Best) Guitar Hero
The Guitar Hero franchise is not a typical button-masher, as you must hit the right buttons at precisely the correct time or your notes won’t register. In that regard, normal play is entirely antithetical to button-mashing. That said, the game’s difficulty spikes pretty high, even on the easiest songs. If you attempt a song on expert, there are moments when there’s little to do but button-mash the frets when hit with a wall of notes, strumming at nearly everything while trying to hit the right timing. It’s difficult, but still a ton of fun. There are also those moments when you’re encouraged to hit every note and strum as much as possible to score points, which is also a lot of fun, regardless of the difficulty setting.
Worst) Mario Party
All Mario Party titles include minigames that require some button-mashing, including Mario Party 5, which features a minigame called Button Mashers. In Mario Party 4, there’s a button-mashing minigame that’s so intense, one player once broke the game. In the minigame Domination, a player named Ahgren mashed the button so hard that he literally broke the game, causing it to crash due to the number of hits he registered. In the first Mario Party game, three minigames require such intense button-mashing and analog-stick movement that they actually damage the controller, prompting Nintendo to remove them from future titles.
Best) Tekken
Button-mashing is absolutely despised in the fighting game genre, as its use by players is seen as … bad form. What’s interesting about the Tekken franchise is that the games are actually designed with button-mashing in mind. When the first game was being designed, the goal was to create something that could be picked up by people who’d never played a fighting game before, so button-mashing was encouraged. This never really went away as the franchise continued, though it’s not as prevalent in later titles. Still, in the beginning, button-mashing could take a player pretty far in Tekken, which is precisely how it was meant to be played.
Worst) Banjo-Tooie
First off, Banjo-Tooie is a great game, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a moment that drives some players bonkers. In the game, you have to race against Canary Mary, and the only way to do it is to button-mash. This can trip up some players, as it’s not easy to do, and you have to mash away until you come up to the same position with her. You must then employ a strategy to keep up with her, but not overtake her by too much, mashing your buttons the whole time. The races are about the only painful part of the game, but they’ve pushed some players to rage-quit Banjo-Tooie, as they can be challenging.
What’s your most hated and most loved button-masher? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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