First up a thanks to veni-vidi-vici for my new banner and avatar. I love me some co-op PixelJunk Monsters, and thought it was time to stop being plain seeing as I've been here for over 2 years (time flies and all that jazz). I forgot to mention it in my last blog, but I will give thanks when it's due. Thank V, they look great.

I was thinking about rhythm games. Isn't it really the most boring gameplay you could ever conceive? Sure, you can customise your characters, but that isn't exactly gameplay. You don't get presented with moral dilemmas. You don't have to assess a situation and use various gameplay mechanics to provide a solution. There aren't any puzzles presented to you that feel so rewarding when you use your logic to solve them. You aren't using your spatial awareness or knowledge of the games physics to perform some great feat. You know what you are doing? Hitting a button at a precise time the game tells you to. You get no options of how to play the game. You can't try some other combination of buttons to see if it will provide a different result. You get booed off stage. I mean seriously, who wants to just hit a button when the game tells you to? There is a common name for those; quick time events.

I have no idea why the above occurred to me. For some reason it just hit me how close they are to quick time events. So why on earth are we buying bucket loads of games that are solely focused on quick time events when it seems gamers are getting tired of this particular mechanic? After some contemplation, I can only come up with one thing, and it's written right there on the box. Rhythm. You know, I don't even know what rhythm is precisely, it is one of those words that those of us who didn't study music have a vague idea what it means but could never explain it to another person. But it feels great when you are banging away on a drum set and you are hardly paying attention to the notes on the screen because you are approaching some sort of zen, you've made some sort of connection with the music and know what has to be played. Standard quick time events don't have any rhythm. They are based on response time, not rhythm.

I'm a bit over quick time events, but I'm having a blast playing Rock Band drums at the moment. I managed to beat the third set of songs on Hard without failing one (though came close), so I think I'm slowly improving. What do you think of rhythm games? Are they too close to quick time events for your liking? Or does the magic of the music make you forget you are just pressing a button when the game says you should?