Context Sensitive

A game I recently picked up was "Beyond Good and Evil". I heard about a potential sequel for the game and decided to look back on the original. All the reviews said it was a very good adventure game that was unfairly overlooked. Steam carried it, I bought. I'll give it a full look later, but I am impressed. Its got good characters and apart from some graphics tearing plays very well. But it has a feature I really like: context sensitive inputs.

I didn't get the HD version.

On the computer, there are a lot more buttons available for input than on most controllers. But having available buttons hasn't stopped us from pretty much sticking with the mouse and WASD buttons. That's because we don't like having to think about what buttons to push. BGAE works almost entirely off of one button: left mouse click or the bottom button of a controller pad. You use this one button to talk to people, interact with objects, climb, attack etc. But what makes it work so well is that these actions only occur when they are relevant. You only attack when there are enemies nearby, you only interact when there is something to interact with. THIS FEELS WONDERFUL. I want to do something, I left click.

As a counter example, lets look at Batman: Arkham City. Its a wonderful game, with a lot more to it than the original. But that actually hurts it. The flowing combat system gives you the option of mixing in pretty much every single gadget batman has for combo multipliers. While this works OK, the shear number of potential gadgets makes it difficult to remember which buttons activate which gadget in the middle of a fight scenario. This is especially true when playing on the computer since many of the gadget buttons have no real use outside of that one gadget.

Aside from the one main action button, BGAE also has context sensitive platforming. You can't make Jade jump unless she comes to a ledge or a box, much like legend of Zelda. This may sound restrictive, but for the most part having the ability to jump whenever you want is unnecessary. Why would you want to jump when wandering around town?

Contextual actions have long been a part of games, but playing BGAE helped me realize the genesis of the mechanic. It came about with 3-D adventure games when developers realized that they had more actions than buttons. And rather than make annoying combinations, they adjusted one button to do more things. And I take my hat off to those designers. *Salute*.