You know that guy that watches you playing games and yells out what buttons to press. PRESS X, NO, NO NOT Y YOU IDIOT I SAID X, OH, SEE YOU PRESSED IT TOO LATE, NOW YOU'RE DEAD... well that prick has found his way into a bunch of games and it seems he aint leaving... well someone needs to kick his ass out..
Developers like quick-time events because they can show the main character doing some cool stuff without having to program complex animations and the connections between them. Just pre-canned fail & success conditions while giving the player an illusion of control, yes you have some control but about as much as you do over a bloody DVD. So far It's the closest they've gotten to an interactive (action) cut scene, but it
My solution is simple but requires a little more work on the Developers part.
1st Don't tell me what to press. flashing a big blue x on the screen makes me want to throw the controller at the screen more than it makes me want to press x before my 2 milliseconds is up. It ruins immersion as far as I'm concerned and I never want to be reminded that all I'm really doing is pressing buttons to make my avatar pull off crazy stunts. I should be able to press any button i want and my character should do something that correlates to what that button does in the rest of the game (only cooler) and fits in the context of the current situation. If it's a dumb idea I should fail , if it was a wise choice I should kick some serious assage. so their should be multiple success conditions and multiple failure conditions. The player should never think "Crap I pressed Y when I should have pressed X" he should think "Why the hell did I try to punch that flying taxi, I should have ducked instead"
2nd Give me enough time to make my decision, and give a brother a hint. Time should slow down (of course) and there should be an rhythm based 1, 2, 3 count (don't display the numbers) a simple warped sound effect and camera focus(and pause) on the immediate danger on the first two beats then on the third beat you press your button (or direction) or fail.
Example: Boss throws a Bus (sideways) at you while you run towards it....
Time slows down, the Rhythm count starts, the first beat pauses for a split second and the camera focuses just below the bus (enough room to slide under) ; on the second Beat the camera focuses on the blown out windows of the bus (you may be able to Jump through it); on the third beat you need to press either Jump (which makes you dive through the windows) or crouch (which in this case turns into slide) or get squashed by a bus. if you chose correctly you see one of the two awesome cinematics (added bonus if you hold fire while doing it) if not you see an idiot trying to punch/kick or shoot a flying bus.. i think that's a win-win situation.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Good read, especially the 2nd idea sounds nice, if someone pulled it off.
Now, most QTEs suck. Sorry to say that since I am sure there is at aleast one person somewhere who has the hots for them, but that's what I and a lot of other people think.
You pretty much summed up all the things bad abou them and I'd like to add something to your suggestions.
If you played ShenMue - often mistaken as the grandfather of QTEs - you might remember a certain chase sequence. It was a truckload of quick QTEs about you running after some guy. If you got him, good for you. If you didn't... the game went on. Not the RE4 way, i.e. "Now you press another button fast to run from that big rock", but in a way that opened another part of the game. Due to you f'cking up, you now had to do some detective work to find the clues that guy would have "given" you.
Now, that might not *solve* QTEs (if you can do such a thing...), but it at least gave them a meaning. Not just button mashing, but opening up a whole branch of the story.
- - -[NOTE: If my mind just makes this scene up due to gloryfiing this masterpiece, feel free to correct me] - - -
Your 2nd idea would also make for some epic movie/cartoon like experiences. Why movie like? When you succed, freeze the frame, open a new window (think of the splitscreens in MGS4) where the action goes on. You could even continue from the last successfull one in case you f'ck one up.
Why cartoon like? Pretty much the same as above, but make the windows overlap, like pictures laying on another. Just some ideas.
But, alas, I don't think we will see something like that soon (Heavy Rain might contain something new, who knows). The common pattern "Hit button X quick enough or die trying" is... well, common, and most devs rather use that template instead of spending time on something creative.
Let's hope someone grows the balls to try something different someday, something that breaks the mold of trial and error sequences.
resi 4 and gow does it perfectly and it's amazing
in some games,they seems a bit annoying
good subject man