QTEs Quicktime Events = RAGE

[AzureBlaze]

Does ANYONE like quicktime events?
I've not heard of anyone who does and I am having like 17 rages right now. Yhatzee of ZeroPunctuation (offensive but HILARIOUS animated game reviews) calls them "Press X to not die" and that's about right.

They first appeared in like Dragons Lair or something which is a billion years old and made you memorize the entire game. (so thats fun how?)

BUT.
Sonic Unleashed Ps3. Spagonia. A gap in the rooftops. There's this GIANT button sequence that comes up and if you miss 1 or you do it too slow you insta die for no damm reason. And they decided to get "Cute" and randomize the sequence so it's diff every time and you can't possibly memorize it OR practice it in any way.

So there's no mid-point in this stage.
The QTE is at like the 3/4 to end part so now I played this stage like 203975 times cause I die on that krappy event always and have to replay it
I hate the stage it is full of stupid BSery things too AND another (but diff) button sequence

The QTE doesnt even make sense. It's not like you're 'helping him' across some unholy gap either he flies across gaps 900x bigger without you having to do anything. I could even understand if it was like a COMBO where he had to shoot a hadoken on somebody to jump off them and make it across but it's not! People are fine with combos I've played marvel vs capcom and that's fine.

I'm just like unexplainably BAD at these events!
They don't make sense in most places where they're put! (I can understand if you had to make your guy like push buttons rapidly to open a door or hax something, thats fine)
How can I pass it if I can't practice and it randomizes every time?
Is anyone else bad at these for no reason? (Like you're not a total butterfinger at all games, you don't send mario down the hole every time, you can combo ok in fighting games etc)

I have spent like 1.5 hours playing the same stage a pillion times just to get to the QTE and die. I am bored and want to cheat at it somehow but can't. Its also raging because it seems like anybody SHOULD be good at these things and it just gripes me that for some reason I botch it. I do everything else great but it's like mystically impossible this one.

[Weeaboolits]

I'll be honest, I don't mind them nearly as much as I do looking for those damn sailors.

[Kylie]

I hate them. They do nothing for me, and I'm waiting for that trend to die down. I mean, it seems like games are just throwing them in now; no matter how easy or cheap they are. If I die, I wanna die because I fucked up, not because I wasn't paying attention during a cut scene and got my head cut off.

[DreXxiN]

Unless I put my controller down, I have absolutely no problems with these. I love them TBH, even in Resident Evil 5 they were extremely sudden.

[Matic]

I don't remember a death QTE in Spagonia...it's been a while, though. As for QTEs in general, I guess I've just gotten better at them? The only ones I really hate are the "push a button 1000 times within a minute" kind.

[Akaimizu]

I believe QTEs have their place, but only when appropriate and only when it is listed as a major game feature, in the first place. QTEs are fine little things usually meant to try to keep the player interaction up for a long cutscene. It was sucessfully done in things like Shenmue, which didn't punish you that badly for missing them, just that you might have to redo that QTE. Dragon's Lair was all about that, but games based on memorization were actually still popular at the time. Even Pacman, and plenty of NES games could be mastered with memorization and technically beaten if you closed your eyes and learned the timing of said hand movements. Still, the great appeal of Dragon's Lair was Don Bluth's animation. It was like playing a movie that was low-cost to view, but it involved the player actions to move it along, giving the player a more intimate involvement in the scenes. (Half the time, the deaths (in all sort of different parts of the game) were just as if not more entertaining than the successes.)

For me, the worst ever game to do such a thing was Soul Calibur 3. I mean, what were they thinking? For one, Soul Calibur is not a series in which the gameplay is based on QTEs. It's completely not advertised to have QTEs. (It's more advertised to not have them) And 99% of the gameplay doesn't have QTEs. But the nerve of them throwing in random QTEs after the player has played 30+ minutes of complete fighting game engine, and choose the life or death of said character (or a bad ending), out of the blue, is plain criminal. At least God of War has it happen enough, on large enemies, that you expect it as a main aspect of gameplay. But not Soul Calibur. We'll give you complete game without QTEs and then just suddenly throw something at you. For most players, seeing a button flash on the screen, with no warning would leave them dumbfounded. For one, it takes more than a split second for the player to recognize such an *alien* prompt in their fighting game (who says a SC player or fighting game fan would've necessarily played a QTE game before), put it together in their mind that it is a QTE and be ready for the sudden change of genre, and then react by pressing said button to accomplish it. Give players some intro, or at least some time for that to sink in. Otherwise, that's just really bad design.

[Delete]

Shenmue is the first game that comes to mind. Even though they could be kinda sudden, I thought it worked perfectly in that game. But I agree that it works with some games while it can be awful in others like Akaimizu explained about SC.

[Kent]

I hate them. They do nothing for me, and I'm waiting for that trend to die down. I mean, it seems like games are just throwing them in now; no matter how easy or cheap they are. If I die, I wanna die because I fucked up, not because I wasn't paying attention during a cut scene and got my head cut off.
What about the ones that come in during combat? I think context-based QTEs that pop up during certain situations in combat add a little dynamism to a game, which isn't really a bad thing... Unless they're just random.

QTEs during cutscenes... I can't help but think of "games" that were more like "interactive movies" than anything else. I'm not really a fan of those things - but I don't think that QTEs making a minor difference in the outcome of a situational cutscene is necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not really a fan of instant death ones, even if they are pretty easy to do (such as in RE5).

[SStrikerR]

I hate the ones where you die if you don't press a button 34543554745 times in a certain amount of time. Like in RE5, I hate being sheva during the final fight. Climbing up that one ledge is a fucking bitch. Fo'real mayne.

[DreXxiN]

I hate the ones where you die if you don't press a button 34543554745 times in a certain amount of time. Like in RE5, I hate being sheva during the final fight. Climbing up that one ledge is a fucking bitch. Fo'real mayne.

Actually I find the RE5 ones quite comical..specifically the motercycle one and the one at the end where you have to "hold on".

[Outrider]

I'm actually playing through RE4 on Wii at the moment, and I had forgotten how well the QTEs work in this game.

It's not something that always works - Akaimizu's Soulcalibur 3 example is one I remember hating - but there's definitely a time and a place for them.

I think the reason RE4 doesn't bother me at all is because of the "summer blockbuster" feel of the game. You always feel like you should be doing something balls-out crazy - whether it's fighting a dozen raging villagers or running from a ridiculous giant robot midget - and I think it works well with the style and tone of that game.

[Tetsaru]

Personally, I kinda like QTE's, but when it comes down to pressing a single button or rotating the joystick at near-turbo speed, I can't stand it... hurts my hands after a while. >_<

[amtalx]

They don't really bother me. As long as I'm paying attention, its pretty rare for me to die. I'm waiting for a developer to do something different with them though. Instead of insta-death, change the path the player takes through the game. Reward players for quick reaction time by giving them an easier path or access to a bonus item. Punish slow and oblivious players by a harder path, but don't kill them outright.

[Smidge204]

I remember when "Quicktime Events" were actually new and innovative...

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/4417/dragonslair.jpg

...now get off my lawn.
=Smidge=

[Kent]

They don't really bother me. As long as I'm paying attention, its pretty rare for me to die. I'm waiting for a developer to do something different with them though. Instead of insta-death, change the path the player takes through the game. Reward players for quick reaction time by giving them an easier path or access to a bonus item. Punish slow and oblivious players by a harder path, but don't kill them outright.
I could've sworn there was at least once instance like this in Shenmue.

[Delete]

I could've sworn there was at least once instance like this in Shenmue.

There were some where you would get rewarded with an extra cutscene or 2 like the bar one. You didn't have to do it, but it was there if you wanted. Not sure if this counts.

[Akaimizu]

It's funny that you mentioned the Home version of Dragon's Lair. What's really odd is that it took a very long time for us to actually get a Home version of the game that actually played as well as the old Laser Disc version. Somehow, being able to accurately receive timed inputs at the same time as playing good-quality animated video eluded our technology for years. CDs couldn't do it, DVDs couldn't do it.

Of course, our incredible increases of ram has a lot to do with it. (Funny enough, they faithfully got *all* of Space Ace into an Iphone, intact, and due to it being in memory, have the right reaction times for the inputs). Goes to show you how we have ram that vastly eclipses any larger data medium we used to deal with. Back then, nothing remotely needed a fraction of the amount of memory a Don Bluth game did.

Shenmue had a lot of extras. Especially Shenmue 2, which has one of the largest and longest easter eggs in the history of videogames. It actually takes you into a world of Shenmue that's a bit too fictional to be canon. It was definitely fun as heck to experience it.

[Outrider]

Actually, now that I think about it, the weird QTE sequences that occurred in Soulcalibur 3's story sequences didn't kill you if you failed. I think it merely changed who you fought in the following battle.

Still terrible and out of place, though.

[thunder-ray]

I love them :)