8 Most Stressful QTE's In Video Game History

Ah, the video game Quick-Time Event, what a wonderful and utterly horrible gaming trope you are.

Hitting players without warning, these moments teach you to never, under any circumstances put down your controller and enjoy cutscenes playing out in front of you.

Death, it turns out, can come in many forms and at any time.

As you can imagine, this insistence to always be in a perpetual state of tension has led many players to decry the use of this mechanic, with some going so far as to request it be deleted from gaming permanently.

While there is certainly a time and place for such moments, you can't deny that it's not utterly horrifying to be hit with a Game Over you couldn't have possibly seen coming - especially if said prompt was before a lengthy boss introduction cutscene or a laborious section.

So let's take a look at times where our blood pressure spiked through the roof and QTE's impaled us for nothing more than the developer's own pleasure.

Dogs. You've gotta love 'em.

Man's best friend truly is a loyal companion and video games have, in no short order, conveyed this bond between human and huggable best friend expertly well.

Dogmeat from Fallout and the helpful hound from Fable 2 spring to mind, but amidst all of these doting Dobermans and loveable Labs is an absolute Shitzu of a mutt that takes the form of the insta-kill QTE in the Call Of Duty Franchise.

First popping up in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, these attack dogs leap up onto the player but instead of licking your face, their intent is to tear it clean off. This, as you can imagine, creates a very stressful moment in which the player has but a fraction of a second to press the button on-screen and "OI' Yella" their way out of things.

Making matters worse is the fact that these dogs can appear in the middle of a firefight, and with all the bullets clattering around the place, you might not hear their scampering paws bearing down on you.

It never fails to be a shock when out of nowhere you're wrestled to the ground and treated like the world's biggest chew toy.