Button Config pt. R2

OK. Just played the Vanquish demo. Good game over all, like Gears of War, blah, blah , blah... I don't want to talk about that. I want to discuss, yet again, an example of currently released games plagued with god-awful button layouts.

To simplify things I will give aliases to the buttons on an XBox/PS3 controller:

XBox / PS3: Alias
A / Cross: bottom
X / Square: left
B / Circle: right
Y / Triangle: top
LB / L1: L1
LT / L2: L2
RB / R1: R1
RT / R2: R2

OK, check this out. You played Gears of War, Uncharted, or games similar to them; the ones with this new cover system that every game has now a days. You got Gears that uses the bottom button to evade in any direction and also take cover if you are near a wall. So two similar functions for ONE button, makes sense. Similarly, Uncharted, since you can jump in that game, the bottom button jumps, and the right button evades and takes cover. OK, that works.

So lets look at Vanquish. The bottom button evades. OK thats fair enough. But, wait... take cover with the LEFT button?! Why do we need to break up these two functions into 2 separate buttons? When would you ever evade by diving into a wall? Why can you just hold the bottom button to take cover and tap it to evade? To make matters worse, in order to jump over a hiding place, like a sandbag, you press up on the analog and the LEFT button! So if you're used to evading normally with bottom button, similar to jumping, you will automatically assume that you jump over a sandbag with the same button. But NO. You press the button you TAKE COVER with!

The insanity doesn't end there. Take an old school side-scroller like Ninja Gaiden or Double Dragon, and you have an NES controller in your hand. In most cases, the left face button (B) attacks and the right face button (A) jumps. Now lets fast-forward to a game like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta with a current-gen controller. The left button attacks and the bottom button jumps. We are all used to that. Even Uncharted uses left button to melee and bottom to jump.

Now to Vanquish. How do you melee? The left button? No, the left button already takes cover. You gotta press the RIGHT button! Goes against what we are all used to. If evade and take cover were consolidated into one button, we could have had the left button as melee...

It continues. In Vanquish, you will come across these boxes that have ammo, guns, health, etc. You gotta kick the box open an then grab the item. So from the current knowledge that you melee with the right button, guess which button you use to KICK the box open. Right? Nope. Top? Nope, that throws a grenade. Left? Yup. the button you take cover with! Why cant it be the melee button or the top button?

OK... now you have a gun laying on the ground ready for you to pick up. What do you press? The take cover button? Wrong! It's R2???!!! So when I approach an item box, I gotta press two different buttons in sequence, the left button, then R2. Why can't it just be one button, preferably a face button, like the top button. Grenades should be on L2.

Also the game has this Max Paine effect where you go into slow motion. It is triggered by aiming with L1 and evading. How does this make any since? Why cant it just be one button? Like the Left analog button?

Here is my revised button layout of what it should go like:

Bottom: Evade/Take-cover
Left: Melee
Top: Interact/Pick-up Items/Open Doors/Open Boxes/Revive Allies
Right: Boost Slide

L1: Aim
L2: Grenade
R1: Shoot
R2: Reload (only)

Left analog button: Slow-motion mode

There is a button config option, but all it does is swap the front and back shoulder buttons. Big deal... Why not enable the user to edit the entire layout?

Sigh, I was really interested in this game, but unfortunately I can't justify purchasing another game with such poor button configuration.