10 Times Video Game Button Prompts Got WEIRD

There's far more to modern game controls than fire, jump, crouch, and reload.

By Brian Knowler /

In-game prompts are an unavoidable part of modern gaming. As control schemes have become more and more complex, the necessity to create separate commands for specific events in the game has become inevitable.

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Sometimes, these prompts make perfect sense - press a switch, search a chest, or build a fire. Game mechanics have to include these as routine parts of gameplay, and with the endless interactivity of many seventh and eighth generation games it would be impossible to give every specific thing you can do its own button.

Occasionally, though, these prompts take a sharp left turn and you end up pressing the X button on the controller or E on your keyboard to do some truly strange things; things that just don't fit into what we have come to accept as normal video game activity.

This list includes some of the oddest, funniest, or outright bizarre selections of these things ever undertaken in gaming. We have come lightyears from pressing that big orange button on the Atari controller, but that doesn't mean things have got any less crazy.

10. Push L3 + R3 To Gouge - God Of War 3

The God of War games have never shied away from violence. Quite the opposite, in fact; they embrace it.

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This has seldom been more evident than in God of War 3 during the massive and time-consuming battle against the sea god Poseidon.

The fight is violent, bloody, and brutal, even if it is more of a cut scene with quick-time events than any real challenge of your fighting ability. Kratos throws Poseidon from one end of a mountain top to other, leading to a pathetic scene where the sea god, knowing he is beaten, attempts to slither to safety over a cliff.

Kratos, who is having none of that, drags Poseidon away from the cliff's edge and you end up with the prompt to hit L3 and R3 at the same time.

At which point Kratos jams his thumbs into your eyes, making the screen go black.

See, that's the other part. You're witnessing all of this from Poseidon's point of view, meaning you don't just see Kratos' thumbs jam into your eyes, you experience it, horrible squelching noise and all.

It's not that this is a bad or ridiculous prompt, it's just...visceral.

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