The slow walk....

[Nooners]

I actually didn't mind it in Arkham Asylum. I wouldn't say that it is done "right" in there, but I wouldn't say it is done "bad" either. The only way I could imagine it being 'done right' is if running itself was the only thing that didn't work. Many games (Arkham included) also remove the ability to jump, interact with objects, and attack along with running. SO basically you can walk, maybe open a menu, or pause. That annoys me. I actually don't mind if you make me slow walk and I can still do stuff even if it is just "attack the air". But more importantly, I would like to be able to open doors or jump up to a ledge.

I remember a number of the Oracle calls slowing things down for a moment, along with Bats limping along right before meeting Talia al'Ghul. But the Oracle things never lasted too long, and for the latter, well...Bruce wasn't feeling too good right then.

But the other scene I remember was in Arkham City when breaking into Joker's factory the first time. You're sneaking through the vents while the goons and giant Hammer-man are terrorizing a nurse. I didn't feel slowed or helpless because I was still moving through the vents at a regular pace, and there was a great tension as I was trying to get to that nurse in time. It turns out that you can't get there in time, but Harley Quinn saves her anyway. It might not be exactly the same as most others listed here, but it was a state of "controllable helpless-ness" that actually didn't change the gameplay at all.

 

[SKBPinkie]

I would much, much rather they just give me a cutscene instead of taking 90% of the controls from you.

I hate it when games do this. You're not presenting the story through gameplay here, you're just making me push the stick forward. It barely involves me as the player.

 

[bliebblob]

Snip

Snop

Snap

Spoiler: Even more bastion spoilers hooo!

It gets so much better/worse too when you realize the music playing if you carry him is Zulf's theme. Going by what you learn about his life by doing the monster waves in the bastion, the lines of that song very likely refer to how he must have felt all his life, even before the calamity. Which in turns clues you in on how he must feel now, after being turned on by his kinsmen. "I'm welcome home, sweet home..."? Ouch! It made me feel even more sorry for him, and in turn even better about helping him.

God I love games where everything comes together like this...

 

[sageoftruth]

Gears of War 2 had an amusing way of dealing with it. There were all those moments when Marcus would suddenly stop running and start walking slowly with his hand on his earpiece while he got briefed on something. Amusingly, if you pushed Select, he'd say something like, "Yeah, I get it!" or "Alright! Shut up!" and then you could go back to running.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Gears of War 2 had an amusing way of dealing with it. There were all those moments when Marcus would suddenly stop running and start walking slowly with his hand on his earpiece while he got briefed on something. Amusingly, if you pushed Select, he'd say something like, "Yeah, I get it!" or "Alright! Shut up!" and then you could go back to running.

Holy shit REALLY?!? I totally missed that option.

 

[sageoftruth]

Gears of War 2 had an amusing way of dealing with it. There were all those moments when Marcus would suddenly stop running and start walking slowly with his hand on his earpiece while he got briefed on something. Amusingly, if you pushed Select, he'd say something like, "Yeah, I get it!" or "Alright! Shut up!" and then you could go back to running.

Holy shit REALLY?!? I totally missed that option.

It may only work if you've heard the briefing before. I'm not sure.

 

[theSovietConnection]

I have yet to see a game do this right, as you put it. I really think, since the game has taken all other control from you at this point, it may as well just be a cutscene.

I don't know if Modern Warfare counts - you know the scene. If it does, that was done right, I think.

You are right, that scene had slipped my mind. I do agree, that was a well done use of the idea.

 

[lechat]

now i feel bad because when i wrote the OP the only scene i had in mind was bastion for which the only part of the game i still remember after all these years from the game was the slow walk but after a quick check on youtube i quickly dismissed it as another boring slow walk.

so guess i have to go and replay bastion to see if the scene still holds the same weight as it did the first time i seen it.

As for my worst slow walk i have to go with metroid: other M. there is a part in the game where they make you do a slow walk and all 3 times i played the game i couldn't find the one spot on the map where i had to go to trigger the next cutscene and spent 30 minuets slowly walking random corridors until i got so bored i had to google where to go.

 

[PsiChaos]

Does the ladder climb in MGS 3 count as a "slow walk?" I was going to say how silly it was to make a player climb that big-ass ladder for the entire duration of the Snake Eater theme, but thinking about it now, I realized I have never seen anyone climb back down after reaching the top. In a sense, it sorta drives home that it's "the point of no return" without the game explicitly telling you "you can't go back."

 

[Squilookle]

The Saboteur did it right. After a Nazi general murders your best friend at the start of the game, you join the French Resistance and embark on a roaring rampage of revenge through occupied Paris. After wrecking just about everything the General is trying to accomplish, he's at the end of his tether and you discover he and a few remaining generals have retreated to the Eiffel.

The game plonks you down at the other end of the Champs de Mars, facing the tower. All the fighting has died down. a smouldering Zeppelin burns quietly off to the side, and devastation is widespread. There are no enemies or threats nearby, just the tower in the distance where you know you must go. From the tower, an eerie, solemn pianist is playing a mournful tune, which echoes across the Champs, like this:


There is no restriction of movement. You can sprint up to the tower if you so desire.

But you don't.

You walk. You drink it all in, because the game has let you know that this is it. The final catharsis is within your grasp, and it will not be glorious, or a titanic struggle. But it is something that must be done.

THAT, is how a game uses a slow walk for dramatic effect.​

 

[MysticSlayer]

CoD4 had the scene that occurred right after the nuke went off. Forcing the player to walk slowly just gave the sense that they were genuinely injured in the helicopter crash and were holding on by a thread. Mass Effect 3 had a similar one towards the end, and while that one dragged on too long, I felt that it carried the same sense of being near death.

I'm not sure if MW2 really counts, but during "No Russian", the player is incapable of moving faster than a slow walk during the mass shooting section. I felt that the slowness gave a sense that everything was deliberate and relaxed, and that the people doing it felt safe in the knowledge that no one would fire back. In fact, when a firefight does break out, your movement speed goes back to normal. This all made it feel more twisted and sickening than if you would have been if we were moving at normal pace.

 

[kris40k]

Gears of War 2 had an amusing way of dealing with it. There were all those moments when Marcus would suddenly stop running and start walking slowly with his hand on his earpiece while he got briefed on something. Amusingly, if you pushed Select, he'd say something like, "Yeah, I get it!" or "Alright! Shut up!" and then you could go back to running.

Holy shit REALLY?!? I totally missed that option.

It may only work if you've heard the briefing before. I'm not sure.

Yeah, I was just thinking about Gears of War for this topic. The only game series that comes to my mind is the Arkham series, Gears, and Spacemarine, and I always thought it worked well for Gears. Spacemarine can be a bit annoying ("Oh, my mission is to kill the Xenos and burn the Heretics? I must have forgotten since the last time we talked about this."), but it didn't bother me really in Arkham.

I actually think its a good way for getting small amounts of info into the players mind without breaking stuff into cutscenes or jumping locations. I guess the important part to remember is "skippable".

 

[Maximum Bert]

Not something that tends to bother me to be honest there is rarely any stress or anything involved or an instant fail state so I suppose I tend to either think they are done well or at least not used in a harmful way and sparingly enough not to be a nuisance.

They can be annoying though same with any mechanic used poorly if they make you do a slow walk and then say theres an strong chance of you dying and repeating the slow walk that would annoy the hell out of me same thing with cut scenes no matter how brief if it goes cut scene ,die reload have to watch unskippable cut scene again it drives me to distraction especially if it happens more than once.

Oddly enough I cant think of any slow walks that have annoyed or impressed me.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm actually fine with the slow walk in cases where the player character is injured and they're using it to show that you're so messed up that you can barely walk.

I liked that sequence from The Last of Us for example. (It being well animated helped.)

Otherwise, yeah, it can fuck right off.

 

[Evonisia]

Gears of War 2 had an amusing way of dealing with it. There were all those moments when Marcus would suddenly stop running and start walking slowly with his hand on his earpiece while he got briefed on something. Amusingly, if you pushed Select, he'd say something like, "Yeah, I get it!" or "Alright! Shut up!" and then you could go back to running.

Holy shit REALLY?!? I totally missed that option.

Yeah, helped me get through Gears of War 3's campaign many-a-time.

OT:

I actually think that Gears of War 1 did it quite well. Most of the game is so pre-occupied with having you run between covers and what not, and there are many quiet bits where you can run. However the few occasions where it does make you slow walk seem necessary.

The Stranded village is the best example. It not only lets you observe the residents of the village doing their thing and acting all spooky scary around you, it also makes sense that a fully armed soldier with body armour on not run around with their dangerous weapons in tentative territory. Plus it's only for like thirty seconds if you ignore the stuff you can look at. Gears 3 did it twice I think, but it felt much more forced in that game, to the point where stranded would just throw insults at you rather than closing their windows or turn away when you face them like in the first game.

 

[J Tyran]

I'm actually fine with the slow walk in cases where the player character is injured and they're using it to show that you're so messed up that you can barely walk.

I liked that sequence from The Last of Us for example. (It being well animated helped.)

Otherwise, yeah, it can fuck right off.

Halo 4 did that, a wounded and battered Master Chief flopped around on his hands and knees in a kind of first person semi interactive cutscene (not quite a QTE but a little more than "press F to pay respects"). It wasn't to bad and it was short, it didn't take the climactic scene out of first person for once either.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Gears of War 2 had an amusing way of dealing with it. There were all those moments when Marcus would suddenly stop running and start walking slowly with his hand on his earpiece while he got briefed on something. Amusingly, if you pushed Select, he'd say something like, "Yeah, I get it!" or "Alright! Shut up!" and then you could go back to running.

I was just gonna say Gears of War did it properly without breaking up the pace too much, short, meaningful, and not unloading a crapload of story on you at once in the middle of the action. But this just tops it off as done perfectly, just that most people might not know about it unless they start mashing every button on the gamepad out of frustration.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Half Life, tram intro is a very good one, no control limit you are merely riding a tram and that tram goes through all the scenery that gives you a very critical context to the world.
Otherwise again in no story sequence do you get limited controls, you simply move around characters that deliver story(if you want to listen of fuck around somewhere else that is on you), they are still missing a skip ahead function but they do not mess with your controls.

 

[barbzilla]

I honestly can't stand the slow walk period. Even in the games that supposedly did it right, I don't like it. Any narrative you intend to give to me, would be better served by a cut scene. And it isn't that I don't like story in games, in fact most of my favorite games are story based, and I typically go for games with a good story as a prerequisite (though some games have good enough game play with enough lore to bypass this rule, such as Dark Souls, Little Big Planet, or virtually any decent fighting game). That said, you are better off with a cut scene since it allows you to control the animation, the expressions, and add some visual context to the voice acting (especially with break away shots).

The slow walk may add some player agency to the cut scene in an attempt at making them more immersive, but what is the point. You are pretty well stuck waiting for the narrator, some disembodied voice, or a NPC to spew narrative at you anyway, so it isn't as though you are going to be able to do anything of any significance. The only way to add agency to it would be with quick time events, which only serve to break immersion again. So for god's sake give me a good cut scene, or make the story something that can be done while I'm playing the game in earnest, and stop disrupting my groove.

As for games that did it right... If there is some story reason that you would be walking slow anyway, I can understand it, but it would have to still allow you your other full range of actions that it wouldn't affect (I.E. broken ankle doesn't stop me from pulling my gun).