What is it with the hate towards Quick Time Events?

[Lord_Jaroh]

I dislike QTE in almost everything but God of War. Most do "do or die" situations, and don't offer an alternative. Drake's Fortune was bad for that, especially when there's hardly any of the damn things so you never expect them, and have to do the same cutscene again.

If you are going to have a "do or die" situation, you should handle it like Herc's Adventures (an old PS1 game which was phenominal). When you died, you had to fight your way out of Hades' domain. Everytime you died, it got longer and harder to do so. Having QTE take you to an alternate route that is harder if you fail or some such thing, instead of instant death is far better.

God of War does it right because if you fail the QTE, you have a chance to do it again. |The other games don't do that, and that is where they fail. Not only that, God of War does it in areas that you expect them to happen, and give you a little more leeway in order to get to doing them, rather than your combat mode. Other games stick them in almost everywhere and they fail for it.

 

[clicklick]

Prince of Persia.

What a horrible repetative game with the worst combat i have experienced ! The QTE suck ass. They feel insulting.

Personally, I only like one or two QTE in a game max just to mix things up a little and only if it doesn't break the flow the game.

Else don't bother.

 

[Darkintent]

I dont mind them i just think that sometimes thier just thown in at the last minate jsut because other popular games have them. I mean God of War and Resident Evil 4 made it work really well but when its randomly thrown in like in Gears of War and recently the COD games (dogs and banzai's) it just breaks gameplay and ruins it for me.

 

[Deacon Cole]

Well i'll repeat myself, say your walking down a street, a car comes out of a turn and you dodge it, you have that mili-second to dodge, or if you fail, you get hit and maybe will die. and say im playing RE5 or 4, or God of War or anything of that accord danger lurks freakin' everywhere, so you would be on edge and very alert.

Yeah I read that before. I just didn't bother responding to it because it didn't seem worth it. Mostly because that's not how it works in my experience. I'm not paying attention to anything except the little indicator that tells me when to press the button to not die. So, either I pay attention to what's going on and die because I missed the stupid button pressing thing or I keep focused on the button pressing thing and don't pay attention to the exposition that's usually given in these things.

And I'm not on the edge of my seat. I'm bored and annoyed. So I simply disagree with your thesis. You can repeat it again if you like, but it will only fail to convince again.

 

[timmytom1]

I agree with most of the posters , done right their a great way to enhance the action (see re4,5 in the wesker fight or the krauser ripoff fight whatever you want to call it) done badly their just annoying (COD4 dogs anyone?)

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

Usually their annoying, cliche and unnecessary. I don't mind them in Resident Evil and I love the chainsaw duels in Gears of War 2. Besides those games, quick time events could go fuck themselves.

 

[RedDiablo]

QTE's aren't that bad, it's just that they are so overdone these days it's just annoying. If you use them in short bursts, they are fun, but making the game a practical DDR game is just being lazy.

 

[Destroy Gundam]

Pretty much because it's annoying and can make a good game annoying at critical points, like the knife fight with Krauser in RE4. I liked the game, but I hated that you couldn't skip that scene, even if you tried a number of times, and that the game would kill you simply because you couldn't press a button fast enough.

Like Yahtzee said, if it's reasonably possible to get through them first time, fine. But if they're so long and complex that it takes more than a handful of times, then it gets frustrating that you can't progress past this certain point not because you don't have enough skill in playing the game, but because you can't mash a button fast enough before the game decides to kill you, even if you could've avoided the attack in actual gameplay.

 

[Zanzer]

"DDR Now with Quick Time events!"

 

[SithLibrarian]

I have grown somewhat tired of QTE. They were great in God of War because it was something fairly new-ish and boosted the cinematic feel of the game. Then everyone started doing it, just like everyone started creating free-roaming sandbox titles. Most of the time, the QTE sequences were lazy and felt tacked on.

The absolute worse use of QTE has to be in Heavenly Sword. If you fail an event, the boss actually regains his/her health, thus protracting an already frustrating and lengthy fight. Oh, the Indigo Prophecy/Farenheit QTEs were hilarious, especially the last action spazzes out, causes the button indicators to go wild, telling you to move in all directions and push every button.

The QTE in Force Unleashed wasn't too bad, since there was no severe penalty for failure. it was also handled well in Bourne Conspiracy, since there was always an audible cue. There's nothing I hate more than QTEs that just pop up out of nowhere.

 

[hopeneverdies]

Cutscenes should be short and to the point and get the message they want across like some story development. However if I'm watching a cutscene I want to chillax while I do it, especially if something hard came right before it and I need to take a deep breath, not feel pressured to do work on something that acts as a break

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'm going to quote another Escapist luminary, Shamus Young.

"Successfully completing a QTE has the same payoff as not pressing the rewind button when you're watching a movie."

Don't get me wrong, quicktime events can be done well. I've never played God of War, but I've seen video of some of the boss battles, and the way it's handled there seems to have several hallmarks: It's brief, failing doesn't instantly end the game/make the scenario impassible, and the reward for completing it is easy to discern. Sadly, the vast majority of these games prefer the Dragon's Lair route- one foul-up and you just start over from the beginning of the sequence.

Now, others have mentioned the knife fight against Krauser in RE4. I'm sorry to say that that's where my playing of that game ended. Considering that RE is a franchise that rewards limited saves/deaths, putting an entire sequence of, yes, "Press X (and Y, really really fast) to not die" conditions smacks of artificial difficulty. It's binary gameplay- you win, and move on to the NEXT quicktime sequence, or you lose, and have to start all over. I don't like binary gameplay.

Seriously. I have Dragon's Lair on CD-ROM. If I wanted to play it in some fashion, I would actually play it, not look for its ilk in a third-person action horror title.

 

[Kellerb]

its just that companies are using them to be lazy in with the combat...
just grinds my gears ^^

 

[Zeke109]

They just plain old suck. A brain-dead chimpanzee who is being electrically shocked could do it. It's not challenging at all, and is only challenging if you're trying to eat Cheetos at the same time.

 

[SquirrelPants]

Gears 2 had a quick time event? The closest thing I can remember to that was the chainsaw fight with Skurge or whatever the crap his name was...Which actually fit in quite well, because you probably had done a chainsaw fight at least once before that point.

 

[Spirultima]

and is only challenging if you're trying to eat Cheetos at the same time.

Bah! you coward!

Just Cheetos!? i completed one on RE5 (i think it was the wesker one near the end), drinking my coke and eating a pizza, its slightly more of a challege and very rewarding ^^

 

[Spirultima]

Heavenly sword did QTE very well, most of them, if you failed there was another one after you failed the previous to give you a second chance. Believe me, if they weren't there, my brother would have failed BIG time.