61 Frames Per Second : lara croft

In Defense of the QTE: Ninja Blade

John Constantine — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Now that the man’s winding down his career, let us honor Yu Suzuki for his most important contribution to game design: the QTE. Hey now. I can hear you rolling your eyes. We might be sick of pressing the X button every single time Crystal Dynamics wants Lara Croft to kick a tiger with style, but the quick time event provides us with some of videogames’ most satisfying thrills. They aren’t inherently bad. They’re just implemented very, very poorly. This week, you’ll be able to walk out into the world and pick up a copy of From Software’s Ninja Blade. Hell, you can go home right now and download a demo of Ninja Blade just to have a taste. One level is all you need to exemplify just how good quick time events can be in a game.

Here’s why.

First, a definition. In God of War’s wake, “quick time event” has transformed from a noun into a sort of critics’ short hand. It’s a blanket term to describe when, in a game where you have direct control of a character, the normal control is taken away and you watch a unique or atypical animation. While the animation plays, you must press a specific button as prompted on the screen. If you don’t, you’ll have to replay the sequence. Now, there are many parts of modern games that can be described this way and not all of them are quick time events. For example, in action games like MadWorld and Yakuza 2, you’re prompted with special inputs — press X next to a car, swing the Wiimote down — to finish off enemies. The most colorful finishing moves have you stringing these inputs together. These are not quick time events. They’re contextual actions. A quick time event is a choreographed, dramatic sequence where prompts imitate an action that you do not have direct control over. Resident Evil 4 has some classic examples. You, the player, steer Leon to the top of a hill and move forward. The game then shifts the camera to a group of enemies on a cliff above you. They push a boulder off said cliff that chases you and to escape you repeatedly press a button, which keeps Leon running. That button has nothing to do with movement during regular play. If you don’t press it here, the game ends. That’s a quick time event. They can, and have, enrich games with emotionally charged moments the game wouldn’t have otherwise.

The chief argument against quick time events is that they pull you out of a game by stripping away control, if only partially. They’re gaudy cheats to mask the passive storytelling devices of film instead of relying on a game’s interactivity to inform its drama and incident. It’s a valid argument against bad quick time events. The most recent games starring the aforementioned Lara Croft, particularly Tomb Raider Legend, have terrible quick time events made up of sixty second cinematics halved by a single, easy to miss button press. When implemented well, though, a quick time event is anything but a mask for inactive game sequences, as in Quantic Dream’s Indigo Prophecy. The game allows you limited sequences of full character control, relying on quick time events with inputs that imply the action to make up most of the play. Lucas Kane is running from police officers and needs to dodge left so you’re prompted to press both analog sticks in that direction. You aren’t moving Lucas, but the movement of both sticks translates as urgency, and agency, for you. These QTEs are fast to match the pace of the game and end up making for affecting play because of their speed and mimicry of the action. That’s the key to QTE success; tying your input as close to possible to dramatic actions that are impossible to depict, or make interactive, in the game itself.

Ninja Blade’s first level is about half quick time events and they are incredible spectacles. The level ends with a fight against a giant, grotesque spider on top of a skyscraper. The first part of the fight is familiar three-dimensional action; you move around with the level analog stick and press X, Y, and B buttons on the Xbox 360 controller to slice and stab with a sword. The second part, after whittling down the spider’s defenses, has you riding the spider up a skyscraper before riding a wrecking ball across the night sky, and then crushing the spider with it. There isn’t a way in games to make this one-hundred percent interactive and retain its presentation. Not yet at least. So sequence is a quick time event, and through a mixture of rumble in the control, speed of button prompts, and inputs that approximate other actions in the normal game, it’s completely engaging.

Like I said, QTEs don’t damn a game. They’re just another tool. Quality depends on the craftsmen.

Related links:

Love-Hate: In Defense of the Cutscene
Overpowering the Flavor: Cooking Mama World Kitchen and Cutscene Clutter
Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone
Sonic Unleased: Worse Than Syphilis
Sega's Yu Suzuki Steps Down
Where is Yu Suzuki?

The Uncanny Valley: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Are Starting to Freak Me Out

John Constantine — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The world has seen a lot of Lara Croft. Back in the mid-90s, it was downright hard to avoid videogames’ so-called first sex symbol and even more difficult after the Angelina Jolie “films” started coming out in 2001. Lara as ridiculous-looking-game-character has always been more of an icon than Lara as actual-human-being. Of course, that hasn’t stopped Tomb Raider’s publisher Eidos from paying models to dress up like her from the beginning. It was pretty silly back in 1996; Lara Croft looked more like the freakish offspring of Barbie and a Dire Straits video than a woman. The only thing the model had in common with the character were guns and leotard. But as technology has advanced, and photos of models have gotten more photoshopped, over the past twelve years, the real and fake Lara’s have been getting more and more similar in appearance.

Frankly, it’s starting to freak me the hell out.

Let’s take a look at the eight Laras that coincide with the soon-to-be eight Tomb Raider games. See if it freaks you out too.

Here’s Katie Price in 1996 for Tomb Raider 1. Like I said, pretty silly.

Nathalie Cook in 1997 for Tomb Raider 2.

Rhona Mitra and Tomb Raider 3. Game character still looks scary but is losing the whole jagged edge thing.

Nell McAndrew on Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. Here’s where it’s starting to get a little freaky.

Lara Weller and Tomb Raider Chronicles. Lara Weller does not look like a real person.

Jill de Jong and the ill-fated Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. The crappiness of this first PS2 version of the series provides some respite from the uncanny valley because Jill de Jong looks like an attractive young woman in a costume and Lara Croft has got angles again.

Karima Adibebe in 2003 for Tomb Raider Legend. Lara’s a little bit more realistically rendered in the game (a little, mind you.) Karima looks a whole lot like the character though.

Alison Carroll. Tomb Raider Underworld. 2008. This is fucking terrifying.

Yeah. Well, now I don’t know what’s scarier. That real and imaginary sex symbols are converging, that I noticed this, or that I put the time together to write this. Sheesh.

Related links:

Feeling It: Social Versus Primitive Emotion in Videogames
Gamepro Mourns the Loss of Mammaries
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes – And Five That Weren’t So Great
Video of the Day: Judah Friedlander Explains the Uncanny Valley

Gamepro Feature Mourns The Loss Of Mammaries

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:28:00 GMT

"Top __________ Whatevers" lists are the lifeblood of games journalism, so Gamepro's decision to squeeze out a roster of the Eight Worst Game Character Remakes is not surprising.

Some of the entries are pretty expected, too. Maskless Scorpion from Mortal Kombat 3 is a no-brainer, and I'm sure a few psychologists would have a field day analysing Bomberman's re-design for Bomberman: Act Zero.

I'm not as impressed with some of the other selections. In fact, their write-up for Tomb Raider's Lara Croft gave me a big frowny face. I'm afraid I'm going to have to be one of "those" women for a second.

From the feature:

"To prove that Tomb Raider's iconic female archaeologist is more than just a top heavy Englishwoman in hiking boots, the series' developers forced their lovely protagonist to undergo a drastic surgical procedure. In Tomb Raider Legend, Lara emerged equipped with what could be compared to tangerines in place of what was once more akin to honeydews. But the game was good, and that's all that matters... right?"

Oh yeah, of course.

I know games journalists (my lumbering self included) aren't exactly one tier away from writing for the New York Times, but come on. If you'll allow me to sound like a teenager for a second, how juvenile can you possibly get? Lara Croft II, despite her wasp-waist and perfect figure, looks like she might actually pass as a female member of the human race. Do you know what Lara would be doing if she was a real woman with PSOne-era barbell boobs? Not a whole lot, thanks to chronic back pain and shortness of breath.

Maybe I'm a poor judge of girls, but how could anyone find PSOne Lara Croft sexy compared to Tomb Raider Legend Lara? Are that many guys so desperately infatuated with breasts that they can't appreciate a well-rounded package (to say nothing of the fact that Lara II's eyes actually have the expression of a living thing and not a dead fish)? I don't know what to say except keep wishing hard enough and maybe science will genetically engineer a woman who's composed of ten tits protruding from a faceless orb.

I don't ask for much out of other people, but I like folks who try to remember that games are a hobby for both sexes.

Grr, snort, etc.

Related Links:

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes--And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 1
A Letter to the Industry: How To Destroy the Female Gender Barricade