Trigger Happy
the sudden appearance of grenades flying toward us in Time Crisis 2, and we “duck” by lifting our foot off a pedal before they hit. The expansive exploration game Shenmue, meanwhile, utilizes a “Quick-Time Event” system for certain periods of gameplay, which in contrast to the game’s breathtaking visual sophistication is a revealingly crude instance of symbol manipulation through time. This occurs, for instance, when the hero is pursuing another character down a crowded Hong Kong market street. At regular intervals a symbol corresponding to one of the console buttons will flash on the screen; if the player fails to hit the corresponding control very quickly, his character will trip over a cart of tomatoes and thus lose his quarry.
As the period of time in question expands from tenths of a second to whole seconds, tactical timing bleeds slowly into a second component of videogame rhythm: strategic timing. A classic example of this is in the shoot-’em-up Defender. The player’s basic weapon is a laser. To shoot down alien craft and swoop to rescue falling humans is a question of tactical timing. But you also have a limited supply of “smart bombs,” which instantly destroy everything in the screen area. Now as you only have three of these precious devices
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