Picture the scene. You lead your character through ancient and decrepit passageways the fire from his torch occasionally consuming one of the countless cobwebs that hangs from the rock ceiling like the remains of dainty and torn curtains. Suddenly you lift your thumbs from the control pad and your protagonist stops dead in his tracks. Is that… yes, the sound of rushing water comes clearly to you now. You resume your journey with haste knowing that your objective is nearby when without warning a large neon “X” flashes on the screen and before you have time to even register what you’re seeing a giant stone block drops from above killing the hero of the story instantly. The gameplay mechanic that led to your protagonists’ death my friends, is what we have come to call a “Quick Time Event” although you must always spit after uttering the term. Even on your mum’s brand new carpet.

Quick Time Events that tell you to press two different buttons are even more insidious.

Quick Time Events seem to have snuck up on the contently sleeping form of gameplay like some rogue in the night and began suffocating the poor sod with a pillow before anyone could say the word “trend”. At least that’s how recognition of the beast came to my consciousness. One minute a couple of games were noted for containing Quick Time Events and then the next, games were being praised for managing to avoid them. So what is the reason for the existence of Quick Time Events and why must they be shunned like the plague they are?

Consider this example from my time playing Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings on the Nintendo Wii. I had led Dr Jones into a subterranean cavern in which floated a centuries old ship just like in the conclusion of The Goonies. Upon exiting a rotted cabin and walking on deck, an unskippable cutscene was triggered at the end of which a villain lit the fuse of a cannon resulting in a Quick Time Event. If I reacted quickly enough and pressed the correct button within a split second then Indy dived out of the way of the cannon ball and the ensuing explosion. If not then he perished and I had to restart from inside the cabin to try again. This one instance illustrates many elements commonly found in Quick Time Events and reasons that they are a blight upon gaming.

Why couldn’t I just have used the regular control scheme to leap or roll out of harms way myself? Why was a Quick Time Event necessary? Well in the case of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings the answer is simple, Indy can neither jump nor roll in the game. The most thrilling method of escape the regular controls are capable of is running and this I believe sums up the reason that Quick Time Events have become so common. It’s far easier for a developer to have an action packed cutscene triggered by the press of a single button than it is for them to implement control methods that deal with the challenges presented by the game in a way that is both user friendly and exciting. In other words, Quick Time Events have become an alternative to good gameplay.

Live the adventure and press "X" to watch the action.

As was the case in my Indiana Jones example, the penalty for failing a Quick Time Event is rarely severe. In the majority of cases it merely results in the player being set back a few minutes earlier except that of course he now knows what to expect and is highly unlikely to fail a second time. There are two points to be made here. The first is that the reason the price for missing a Quick Time Event is usually so inconsequential is that developers know damn well that the likelihood of players overcoming them on their first time playing is slim. It’s a generous game indeed that gives you some kind of warning that a Quick Time Event is about to manifest. The second is that this is what is called “trial and error gameplay”, something that was very common in the games of the eighties and early nineties and something that is universally regarded as bad game design. As I have stated before, if a player is skilled enough he or she should be able to play a game from beginning to end without dying once. Never should death come with absolutely no warning and with no hope of being avoided even on the first play through. No-one can tell me that a letter that flashes randomly onscreen and results in instant death if not responded to constitutes a fair challenge.

The final issue I have with Quick Time Events is that they break immersion firstly by having a symbol obnoxiously flash up on the screen and secondly by defying the control scheme that the player normally uses to be the character in hand. Every gamer understands how after playing a game for a good length of time you cease to even think about the buttons you’re pressing. It becomes second nature. As far as you’re concerned you are the hero of the game world and if someone was to stop you and ask what a specific button does, you’d have to think about it for a moment because consciously you’ve already forgotten. It has been consigned to muscle memory and become instinctive. What Quick Time Events do is suspend this immersion and allow any given button to suddenly perform any action the developer has in mind but failed to otherwise allow.

They were a bad idea then, and they're a bad idea now.

Recently I reviewed Aliens vs. Predator, a game which I’m sure everyone reading this article is at least vaguely familiar with. Now imagine that I as the marine am running down a corridor when suddenly everything slows down as a Xenomorph pounces from an unseen hiding place and a Quick Time Event appears as the means by which I dodge its attack. If Rebellion had done this, there would have been an outcry for obvious reasons. It would be like a bad joke. Now think about all the games that you’ve played, even if you enjoyed them, that contain Quick Time Events and ask yourself “why is this any less terrible?” The truth my friends, is that it isn’t. The sole reason you never objected to those Quick Time Events is that you’ve never known the game to be any other way. You have become accustomed to a practise that is on the face of it bad game design.

In conclusion, what Quick Time Events do is lower games to the status of interactive movies and I use the word “lower” intentionally because guess what? We’ve been there before in gaming most infamously in the days of the first CD based consoles and it’s a time that gamers would rather forget because it was awful. The fact that we have prettier graphics and better quality sound in the present day doesn’t change a damn thing. We’re talking about the means by which a player interacts with a fictional world and the bottom line is, Quick Time Events are the most minimally interactive control methods possible. You might as well play some shitty DVD quiz game.

Agree with me so much you’ll pay for an operation so I can have your babies? Disagree so much you’re going to talk Satan into building a new circle of hell for me? Either way comment below and let me know what you think.