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alt title(s): Quick Time Event 
All the buttons you need for a game like this, as illustrated by Cracked.com .
Meanwhile, you go back to Resident Evil 4, it's like, BITCH, THIS AIN'T A CUTSCENE! PRESS A! PRESS A! YOU DON'T GOT TIME TO SMOKE A BOWL! YOU STILL PLAYIN! JUMP, GYPSY! C'MON, JUMP!
Also known as a quick time event.
An event during a video game where you think you're watching a cinematic, but then a massive button pops up on screen, sometimes accompanied by a prompt like "Press X to dodge" or "Press B to avoid blades of death". Failure to do so results in damage or an alternate scene at best, or a Game Over at worst.
Originated in Dragons Lair, the gameplay of which consisted entirely of these; It was pretty much a cartoon where you had to press buttons at the right time for the story to continue. ( Exactly the right time. Not annoying at all.) The Sega Dreamcast games Berserk and Shenmue introduced them to the action genre.
Similar to but distinct from Action Commands (these happen during cutscenes, while those occur during gameplay), and third cousin once removed to But Thou Must.
Thanks to overuse, misuse, and generally being disliked by most players, this videogame trope is rapidly becoming a Discredited Trope. Contrast Press X To Die.
Examples:
- The defining characteristic of God Of War.
- The very first Soul Series game, Soul Edge (or Soul Blade) had these for endings: if you didn't do...something at a certain point, you'd almost always get a bad ending. The later games didn't do this.
- In addition to Soul Edge, Soul Calibur III was a big fan of these. In addition to affecting which ending the player would get, there were several cut scenes midgame where failing would result in starting the next battle at a disadvantage. Particularly annoying in Seong Mi-Na's ending where you apparently are supposed to have the response time of, as Yahtzee puts it, "a paranoid gnat".
- At least in SC3, it's possible to replay an ending over and over until you get it, without having to beat the game with the character multiple times. And Seong Mi-Na's "good" ending was not worth the effort.
- Resident Evil 4 was chock full of them, often resulting in player death if you didn't pull it off in time. mc chris referred to this in a routine as "Bitch, this Ain't a Cutscene! Press A!"
- This is especially frustrating when the player defeats El Lago and a cutscene comes up. About ten seconds into the cutscene, the player must rapidly press A or drown which can be very annoying when this happens while celebrating your victory.
- The Game Cube version even randomized the button(s!) you had to press, so you had to wait for the prompt.
- Quick Time Events return in full style for Resident Evil 5 where failing a button prompt during a cutscene results in instant death and failing a button prompt during a boss fight results in significant damage on Veteran and Professional.
- RE5's Professional mode makes button prompts even more deadly. On the other difficulty levels you can fumble around with the buttons as much as you want until you realize which ones a cutscene wants you to press, as long as you press it in time. On Professional, the first mistake you make will be your last.
- Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary use this.
- In Underworld they finally got the hint and stopped using them.
- Mario Party 3 had a mild version of this: Losing the Action Time microgame would just put you at a predetermined space.
- It does give you some warning in advance so you know it's not just a cinematic, plus intentionally failing Action Time to get yourself moved is actually a viable strategy.
- Heavenly Sword, what with being God Of War in ancient Asia.
- "Clive Barker's Jericho" has them, with the tiny black button indicators being almost invisible against brown environments.
- In the PS 3 version, the indicators are much more visible.
- The Bourne Conspiracy randomizes which buttons you need to press each time, to prevent you from just memorizing them. Get even one wrong, and you're usually sent straight to the Mission Failed screen.
- During action sequences, the above is true. It's also possible to build up adrenaline and unleash a multi-mook takedown manuever, which also requires button pushes. Failure during these sequences means that you lose the adrenaline and any mook you haven't taken down gets a free hit.
- The final battle between Turok and Kane in 2008's Turok was like this. Somewhat justified in that it was an extension of the game's previous Action Commands gameplay, and not a last minute Genre Change completely out of left field. Also, missing a Press X To Not Die prompt often didn't kill you, but merely changed the course of the fight to one less advantageous to you (you had to lose multiple prompts in a row to actually die).
- Happens once (and only once) in Mirror's Edge.
- Both versions of Sonic Unleashed have a few of these as well. In the earlier daytime stages, missing a prompt will cause you to take a less efficient path. Mandatory nighttime QTEs are limited to two bosses, the Dark Gaia Phoenix and the Egg Dragoon. Otherwise, it simply helped to gain extra points. Eggmanland in the PS 3/360 version, on the other hand, are positively full of the mandatory types.
- The portions of the final boss where you control the Gaia Colossus against Dark Gaia plays out through these in the PS 3/360 version. Hit the button right, and you slug the monster right in the face. The Wii/PS2 version dispenses with them in that part, allowing you to really slug the guy in the face, Punch Out style.
- In Sonic and the Black Knight, you gain followers (who may give you goodies as well) by pressing the right button/button combinations shown on screen before the meter depletes. Rather arbitrary, but mercifully, screwing up won't kill you, subverting the "To Not Die" part of this trope's title.
- Mercenaries 2 does this every time you try to hijack an enemy vehicle.
- In The Force Unleashed, you'd think that after draining the bosses health to zero, you're done, right? Wrong. You still have to go through a Quick Time Event while watching the now scripted duel take place. Messing up results in taking damage and starting the whole sequence all over.
- Um, no. You can straight-out kill the bosses. The "interactive cinematic" kicks in at 10-25% and allows for a takedown without more pointless dodging, slashing, and Force-using.
- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has a similar mechanic, forcing you to draw the proper pattern on the touch-screen to kill a boss once it reached 0 health. Fail, and the boss regains 25% of its life. Made a lot less irritating by how you always know what pattern you need (it opens the door to the room), and are allowed to practice the patterns beforehand (or even during the fight) until they become second nature.
- Madworld does a similar version to the above, but cooler (and more forgiving).
- That said, the Wiimote sometimes has trouble registering which direction you're swinging it, especially left or right, which makes some fights (the Shamans in particular) a rough time.
- Far Cry 2 has a literal version of this trope. If your health drops below 20%, it will continue to fall until you die, unless you push the "restore health" button, which results in the character patching up a serious wound to bring you back to 40% health. If you don't push the button, or you're continually interrupted while trying to heal, then you die.
- The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game on the Sega CD was literally nothing but this trope: All you did in the game was tap the buttons on the screen while watching a random mishmash of action scenes from the series in the background, and the scene is always the same, regardless of how well you're doing: As The Spoony One puts it, the game was so lousy that it actually wore out a crappy gaming fad a good decade before that fad was even invented.
- The 2008 version of Prince Of Persia uses those whenever the character is on the verge of being defeated (since you cannot die, failing the events causes the enemy to regain health). Certain bosses also use these to deal the killing blow.
- Dead Space uses a similar system where if a Necromorph grabs a hold of you, a prompt will appear to press a certain key repeatedly to try to wrestle out of their grip. If you fail to do so in time (or at all) you will end up being killed in one of many possible gruesome death scenes, if you succeed in breaking away you will push the Necromorph far enough away to use your weapon to kill it.
- Or for the smaller enemies, you get to watch Isaac brutally kill them with his bare hands like a frantic, terrified, space mechanic. Worth letting them grab you once just to see it.
- Spider-Man 3 was filled with these, usually unexpectedly popping up during a dramatic cut-scene after the button flashes for a 1-0.5 sec warning. Or between twitchroid Simon-says exercises, just when enough action has passed that you can believe it's over and you can just enjoy the rest of the show—whoop, there's another one! Fortunately you don't die, you simply reload to slog through the prior crap for another iteration.
- An even more forgiving version appears in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, where they're only used at the very end of boss battles (so you know when to expect them), keep the same sequences, and if you fail, you just restart the button sequence.
- In Silent Hill Origins, almost all of the monsters have a special attack that does extra harm to Travis should you mess up the quick time event. It's only instantly fatal in the case of one enemy (the Ariels, when they hang from the ceiling), but it's still annoying.
- KH2 is full of these, called "Reaction Commands". There's not much point to them as it's very forgiving and always makes you press triangle.
- To be fair, you can just repeatedly mash triangle during these and succeed. Doing so makes it impossible to fail Reaction Commands.
- The last stage of the final boss fight in Kingdom Hearts II consists of running two of these... at the same time, repeatedly, and messing up either one of them results in taking massive damage. It can take you by surprise, since all other Reactions only use triangle, so having to mash triangle AND X might not be immediately clear.
- Major exception: Bonus Boss Sephiroth. The battle starts and you have about half a second to hit triangle or you are dead. He will also use the same move every so often during the fight. Hopefully you're not mid-air when he starts it, because then you can't block it.
- Another exception: In the first fight against Xemnas there are times where he teleports to the top of a tower and a cutscene is initiated where Sora starts running up the side of the tower. When Sora gets close to Xemnas, a reaction command becomes available. The ideal way to handle the cutscene is to ignore that reaction command... and the one after it. Waiting for the third reaction command will deal damage to Xemnas and stun him.
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance uses these a lot for giant bosses, and it gets rather annoying as you will often have to use them repeatedly to kill them. And they never change. And the cutscene is exactly the same each time. Vicarious Visons removed them entirely for the sequel.
- Despite Shenmue being rightly placed at the top of this page, there was one notable inversion within that same game. The example pointed to is that of a barber who was trying to intimidate the player character into making a wrong move by holding a razor to his neck during what looked like a routine haircut. If the player followed the normal Quick Time Event prompt, the scene ended in failure; the trick was to ignore the button prompt and not press anything.
- Cruelly inverted in The Impossible Quiz. One of the questions tells you to press the Tab key 50 times and gives you a short time limit. However, pressing the Tab key at any point in the quiz immediately causes a Game Over. What you are supposed to do is ignore the instruction, and after a few seconds, the game tells you "Actually, don't do that, you'll die!" and moves on to the next question without a hitch.
- Super Adventure Rockman was a Japan-only Mega Man game released in the mid-nineties. It was an animated adventure that gave the player Choose Your Own Adventure style choices that would guide the cutscenes. Every once in a while, in the middle of a cutscene, arrows would flash on the screen and you'd have one second to choose a direction, hit the D-Pad, and dodge a surprise attack.
- Indigo Prophecy is about 75-80% this trope. Irritating if you're one of those that tries to watch the action at the same time as the button prompts.
- Ninja Blade has a
few lot of these; a mini-boss as early as the second mission pulled out a cutscene that involved one of these about once a minute. In a surprisingly obvious move to reduce frustration, when the consequence of getting the press wrong is, in fact, death, rather than a standard Game Over, it rewinds the sequence a bit and gives you an opportunity to retry from there.
- Call Of Duty 4 had a very annoying recurring 'Press V not to die' in which you need to melee a dog that is attacking you, but you only get roughly a second to press it. Too early, you die, too late, you die. Oh, and did I mention that the default melee button is 'V'; just far enough from WASD to be hard to press without looking. By which time you have died from a dog to the throat.
- Returns in the sequel much to the annoyance of many. Endgame also features you pulling a knife out of your gut and sticking it into the poor shmuck's forehead.
- Similarly, the "Throw back grenade" button, which although great if you get it right, it was very common to get it wrong and lob the grenade into the nearest wall, whereupon it bounced back at you, eliciting a cry of "Oh Sh-"
- The dogs are coupled with fanatic Japanese soldiers using bayonets instead of biting you in Call Of Duty: World at War. They seem to be easily stopped by just mashing the melee button instead of pressing it at the right time though.
- The animation for killing them when you're down is a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, and you are invisible to other enemies in the mean time, so sometimes...yeah
- In Call of Duty 3, hand-to-hand combat is executed by these types of sequences.
- Modern Warfare 2 has a more straightforward example in the mission "Endgame", where you must press buttons according to the onscreen prompts. If you fail, though, an ally dies instead of your character.
- in the 4th mission (3rd if you skip the "No Russian" mission), you have to press the stance button (B on the X360) or else you'll get shot straight in the head while in the passenger seat of the vehicle. There is a good chance you won't know you can even do this the first time around, even with Soap screaming to get down.
- GHOST Squad has Hand-to-Hand Combat scenes in which you must line up your aiming cursor with targets on your opponent and hit the Action button to block his attacks. Completing a scene will show a cutscene of your character beating the crap out of his opponent, while failing a scene (from taking too long to hit targets) will, in addition to taking off health, will show your character getting his ass kicked instead.
- Attempts to do this on the highest difficulty level (lv. 20) will almost always be met with failure, as while the number of simultaneous targets go BACK down to 1, the timing window for that one target suddenly becomes comparable to Gambol on Another. Carefully planning your route through the missions to avoid these confrontations suddenly becomes a good idea. oh, and did we forget to mention that PERMANENT EXP is obtained from successfully doing "missions" IF the level is cleared (boss is properly defeated)? and the best route for this always goes through at least ONE of these scenes? FUCK!
- Die Hard Arcade might be one of the earliest games to do this. Failure meant extra enemies to fight, or taking a bit of damage.
- Occasionally the target is knocked out of the next fight too, if it involves you in physical-contact range with a mook.
- Considering that dungeon crawling in Riviera: The Promised Land is composed almost entirely of Quick Time Events, it's not too surprising when a trap throws one of these at you.
- The Wii version of Pirates Of The Caribbean, being a licensed game, is fairly awful, and includes a lot of these. The required ones, fortunately, just start again if you miss a button (or Wiimote waggle), but lots of sidequest ones become Lost Forever if failed.
- The first Dark Cloud employs a unique version in its mini-boss battles: It warns you ahead of time that you're about to enter a quick-time event, then the buttons you need to press scroll by the bottom of the screen in an interface reminiscent of Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution.
- Used a lot in the movie game for Kung Fu Panda, making up the majority of the fights vs. Tai Lung. Most are just hard enough that you may not succeed the first time you play them, but not so hard that you have to replay the sequence a ton of times after to get through.
- This appears in the licensed game for the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. Losing all your health results in your character falling on one knee. Here you have to repeatedly hit the button that shows up onscreen to save him. If you're playing in a level where the Turtle is solo, this helps him slowly get back up - once he does, his health is restored. If it's a level where the other Turtles are in reserve, one appears when your Turtle falls and starts to help him up. Once successful, he replaces the injured Turtle in battle. Doing nothing in either case causes the afflicted Turtle to collapse and die, to reappear at the last checkpoint.
- Interestingly, there is a point in the game where your character is supposed to be knocked out, for plot purposes. He falls and you get the cue to button-mash, but he collapses anyway and the screen fades to black for some relevant voice-overs.
- Final Fantasy VI sometimes throws directional choices at you during what looks like a travel cutscene. Failing won't kill you, but it'll stick you with more battles.
- Oddly enough, picking one set of options is the only way to obtain Hundred Percent Completion later on. Not an absolute adherence to this trope, but certainly annoying.
- Final Fantasy VIII had a couple, too, where you had to move Squall just the right way to get to safety or rescue Rinoa, and it wasn't immediately obvious in either case that you COULD move yourself, much less that you had to. Made particularly frustrating in the one where you have to move Squall to safety; there are two ways to go, and it's not immediately obvious which was the right one. Pick wrong? Game over.
- Quite a few laserdisc games are built around this. [=~Dragon's Lair=~] (both of them, as mentionned above), Space Ace, Road Blaster, Super Don Quix-ote, Badlands, and Esh's Aurunmilla all fall under this, with Road Blaster being the only one to actually require you to aim at times.
- Gears of War 2 multiplayer. If you have a lancer and an enemy tries to chainsaw you from the front, and you do not immediately begin hammering B, you will die. Often you'll die anyways - it's usually a question of who starts hammering first, and since you need to use your finger rather than your thumb to get maximum speed, this is often a tricky situation.
- Subverted in Batman Arkham Asylum where an Interface Screw claims you were supposed to push X not to die, but when you select to retry Batman instead rises from his own grave as a zombie and continues his fear gas induced hallucination where it left off
- The fact that you're told to use the Middle Stick to avoid Joker's gun should tip you off.
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has one and precisely one such event, which also winds up being one of the most emotionally loaded events in the entire game: Press Square To Kill Boss.
- Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 also have these done horribly wrong; as in, mash X until your fingers fall off not to die. At least MGS gave an opt-out leading to an alternate ending.
- The exact same set up was in Metal Gear Solid 4, but it was so organic that most players don't realize they're in the "torture scene" until well after it's done.
- In a series that's been otherwise free of them, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption introduces one in the form of "Phazon overload," which you have to burn off by frantic mashing of the firing button. Not doing so fast enough earns you a Nonstandard Game Over. The first and last time it happens, it's a Press A To Not Die; in all other instances it takes the form of an Action Command. Usually overload works in your favor as it's basically a free Hypermode, but it can be overdone to cruel effect on the hardest difficulty setting.
- Actually, overload just makes your Hypermode last longer, and your Hypermode drains your health. It's in no way free.
- Only if you willingly activated Hyper Mode. If one of the Space Pirates throws a bomb on you and forces you into it, you don't lose the health (according to Nintendo anyway).
- The Legend Of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon features several, both in the form of "Press X To Not Die" and "Button Mash X To Not Die." Some of them come during boss fights, meaning if you fail, you'll have to do a portion of the boss all over again.
- Sewer Shark on the Sega CD has one of the most patently unfair examples: In one cutscene your player character commands you to fire your gatling gun...and the game expects you to hit the fire button exactly then, with no button prompt or any other indication for actual interactivity. And if you don't fire on his mark, it's an instant Game Over and you have to start all over.
- In Sky Gunner, when your plane is knocked off balance, you're given a set of buttons that you must press repeatedly to recover control before you crash. Fortunately, you can press them in any sequence (as long as you press them all;) unfortunately, the more damage you take, the more presses you have to make and the less time you're allowed.
- Trope Namer is Yahtzee, who uses these exact words every time he comes across one in a game he's reviewing and even sometimes when he doesn't.
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