I think it’s about time I actually directed some unmitigated bile towards quite possibly the biggest pet peeve in gaming today, excluding prepubescent american inbreds calling me a “douche” on Xbox Live and that is Quick Time Events or QTEs.

Dragons' Lair started all this QTE nonsense. Dirk this is all your fault!

I don’t think I’ve ever actually read a review which praised the idea of pressing a button in time to what’s on screen as an excellent dimension of game dynamic. I’m not talking about Guitar Hero whereby you’re reacting to what comes up on the screen, I’m talking about lengthy cut scenes which are somehow attempting to cinematic yet interactive by placing emphasis on mimicking button press actions as they appear. It’s crap and it’s utterly stupid.

Whether it involves wildly rotating an analog stick because you’ve been acosted by some enemy from behind to mashing a button to run away from an Indiana Jones style boulder sequence, QTEs always manage to piss me off everytime I see them in a game. I mean it’s the sure fire way of breaking a controller without throwing it and Mr Microsoft charges you £27 a pop everytime you need to buy a new one. And that’s excluding the play & charge kit!

But the fact of the matter is, throughout all the game reviews and forums I’ve read in the past, not a single gamer out there has vocally proclaimed their love and enjoyment of conforming to pressing a series of buttons because they jump out the screen and cockslap you. Resident Evil 5 is the game I’ve played most recently which has events in the game which entail that you pretty much have to play Moonlight Sonata on a joypad in order to progress under the mask of a cut scene and to be honest really bores the shit out of me. Its almost on par with large section of dialogue in a game and in order to progress the conversation otherwise the dumbfounded NPC will sit there staring into space like Gerard Houllier in a reverie until you’re forced to interact. What are we? Single fingered beings trying to imitate the mating cry of a hummingbird on an untuned piano?

For me, the constant introduction of QTEs into a game is just a sign of lazy game design from developers and acts as a substitute for actually implementing something potentially creative. Yes we’re all creating friction in our respective trousers over the stunning graphics and how well the writing team have done, but this goes out the window when in the middle of marvelling at the aforementioned, we have to play a reaction game to what shows up on the screen. Dear Game Developers, stop putting these shitty QTEs in games, it ruins them!