10 Video Games Designed To Totally Screw With You
3. Shenmue II Wants You To Fail QTES
Quick time events are just about the laziest way to add drama, because pressing A within a set time limit is about as exciting as… Actually, there’s nothing less exciting than pressing A within a time limit.
In Shenmue and its sequel, QTEs are a mainstay mechanic, typically when chasing down enemies, so over time the primes players to act fast. It happens so often, you probably end up hitting the corresponding button without even thinking about it. All that changes in Shenmue II, when you visit a mysterious barber who can aid you in your quest.
Stay calm, he says, drawing a cut-throat razor.
Then the familiar, frantic beep sounds, and the A-button icon flashes in the centre of the screen. So you do what you’ve done a hundred times before. Press A as quickly as you can. And fail even faster.
The game never explains why – although if you listen to the barber, you can figure out that you need to keep cool and don’t move a muscle – so we ended up thinking we weren’t hitting the button quick enough. Now that’s just cruel.
Shenmue II wasn’t the only game to screw with players like this. In a similar scene in Fahrenheit, constant QTEs flashed while police interrogated you – and the only way to proceed was to flat-out ignore them.