How Irritating Button Mapping Led to a Humanitarian Disaster

Like the rest of the UK gaming population, I’ve been playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

It’s rather a good game (I’m especially fond of the slightly dated black and gold colour palette which really reminds me of another game which I am hugely frustrated that I can’t place. Any ideas?) but I keep finding myself falling foul of the button mapping which feels oddly unfamiliar.

The main action button is X rather than A on the Xbox pad which keeps catching me out when I return to the game for another session. I’ve had many an awkward pause as the person chatting to me waits for me to stop pressing A and actually respond. The worst offender, though, is ‘unequip’.

My unequip problems came to a head in a scene which saw me [SPOILERS] having to disarm a bomb.

I succeeded because I am awesome and then decided to chill out and have a chat with my newly saved hostage chums.

One gentleman blathered on about how his wife was still in grave danger. I listened sympathetically and then explained that nothing in this life was certain and I most certainly would not be going out of my way to try to help her out. As it goes, I later located the wife and (true to my word) made zero effort to keep her from joining the grim reaper for a dinner date. Outside I met up with her now-bereaved husband for another chat. I must say, he was quite snippy with me. Rude, even.

Anyway, I digress. The next hostage I spoke to was a woman. She seemed a little on edge and told me off for waving a tranquilizer gun in her face. I figured ‘Well, maybe I’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar’ (because I talk to myself in old school proverbs) and put the gun away. Well. That’s what I would have done if B had sensibly been the unequip button.

Sadly, in Deus Ex, tapping B gets your character to perform a brutal takedown of whoever he happens to be standing in front of and so it was that I accidentally punched the hostage in the face and knocked her out cold. Awkward.

Sensing that her fellow hostages, and presumably colleagues, were growing rather cool towards me on the back of this unintentional assault I went to sheath my weapon once and for all. By pressing RB.

RB is also not the unequip button. It is, infact the button that, if playing with a non-fatal loadout, chucks a concussion mine into the middle of the floor, right next to the bomb which then detonates and, despite normally being non-lethal, kills every last one of the remaining hostages and yourself.

And that’s how unintuitive button mapping led to a humanitarian disaster.

Also Y is unequip.