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Konami's Lifeline Goes Voice All The Way
Mechanik writes "A new CNN article details Konami's new PlayStation 2 game LifeLine, which has a very interesting twist on control schemes. The piece explains: 'Unlike some other games, voice commands in 'LifeLine' are not optional -- they're the only way to control the action. With the help of a USB headset... you talk to characters and they respond by following your commands and/or answering your questions.' Apparently, the developers know just how we gamer geeks think too... 'Of course, if you have a virtual hottie like Rio at the center of an action game, some players will try to command her to do more than just run and shoot. 'I love you,' 'Take your clothes off,' 'What's your sign?' We have responses for most of those,' [the developer] says'." This title has only had a couple of reviews thus far, although they seem to paint it as a flawed experiment.
how well will this game work for someone with a heavy accent, speech impediments, stuttering, etc? it'd be interesting if they programmed for this scenario...
I imagine that you'd have to go through a period of training in order to get the girl to respond to your particular voice. However, trying to get Rio to take her clothes off seems a little self defeating. She's awfully ugly.
I have been pwned because my
Okay, so this one's probably a stinker. But it's a cool idea, more so than you may realize. It's a video game that requires no hands. No hands, understand? ...
Okay, maybe it's not obvious yet. But just remember, every new technology is driven by porn.
Ahhhh, now you see.
My deviantArt site
Did anyone ever play the voice-controlled DC game "Seaman"? That was voice controlled - you had to make an fish-type creature evolve.
Seems to me that having a game controlled solely by voice, though interesting, might be somewhat restricting in that it would not allow for very precise control. I think it would have been a more practical approach to add voice-enabled commands that could be customized macro-style. This could prove to be a far more intuitive use of voice control as you would have the precision of an analogue joystick for movement while the voice commands could execute combination style commands without having to memorize/execute complex controller manoeuvres.
Check out IGN's hands (or maybe "lips?")-on video demos of the game, and their review.
"Each time you smile, it'll only last awhile. Life may be scary, but it's only temporary."
Maybe now we can get a game like Police Quest, and instead of typing 'Open Door', we can just say it.
The Sierra games really went downhill when they changed from the text-input control to the icons, and this seems like it would be the best of both worlds (assuming it works properly).
In the past, you had to type out exactly what you want the character to do, like 'open can using axe'. This seems to be a rather similar type, except that instead of typing, you're talking instead. I'd think that this would better suit those adventure games of old, and most definately not action packed games. (the only exception I'd think would be games with AI involved, in which you give commands to direct the action, not control them)
If theres anything Sierra adventure games have taught me in the past, its that adventure games gets infinitismly more difficult to get through as more words are put into it. I think it would've been better if Konami included a list of key phrases or words players were to use instead of having them guess what the name of a certain item was.
There's this clerical spell in D&D that's called 'Command'. If successfully cast on an opponent they will do whatever your command was for 1 round. The command could only be one word and it had to be a verb. The most common use was 'die', which was specifically addressed in the rules - the affected 'monster' would just fall down in a coma for one round and be able to get up the next round and re-commence beating the crap out of you.
Being able to take an opponent out of the battle for one round is a good thing, but you'd like to do more. Eventually, I came up with a better one: 'Undress!'. A fighter with plate mail: drop the sword, drop the shield, start undoing a bunch of leather straps, etc. When the round was over he had to put his armor back on or his AC wouldn't be as good as it was. So you might take him out of the fight for two rounds (or more - it often takes longer to put stuff back on than it does to take off.)
So then if you know you're gonna be fighting 'the big-breasted babe from Bouncytown' the next day, you ask for all the command spells you can remember (clerical spells are granted by your god), then sit in the back of the party and just 'Undress!' until you run out. This, of course, led to someone eventually switching to: 'Masturbate!'. The first time somebody did that we were all rolling on the floor.
Needless to say, DM interpretation of events varied widely. Points to remember: You don't ever want to tell a dragn to 'Masturbate' (depending on the DM, self-gratification to a dragon may not be exactly what you'd pictured), and you really, really don't want to lose a fight to someone who was forced to diddle themselves in public. Believe me, there are worse things to be impaled on a pike than your head, if you're still alive to... uh, 'enjoy' the experience.
Playing Lifeline is like trying to play a text adventure with a malfunctioning keyboard - Gamespy
Seems to me like a very true statement.
It's a nifty idea, but I think the developers didn't think this one out completely.
you'll realize the fights boil down you yelling a set of commands, "Shoot, shoot, shoot!" "left" "dodge" and "reload" a whole lot.
This is stupid. Voice is a much more symbolic control scheme then a control pad. If this is the majority of the voice commands, then leave the controls on the pad.
Voice and words are a much more symbolic medium then clicks and button presses; we call it "point and grunt" for a reason. Converting the "grunt" into a word is not progress. What you really need is something more like the old Infocom games, which was a "native" word game. You never/rarely said "Walk forward six inches"; instead it was "Put the lamp on the oven".
The best use of this technology is to bring back the adventure game on the console with the rich verb set of the old Infocom games, without requiring any typing which puts off anybody who can speak more quickly then they type. The worst use of this technology is to convert button presses into voice commands. Sounds like this title did a little of both, but the latter can rapidly overwhelm the former.
what purpose could this have? it was probably a good idea on paper, but once it got going, i thought Konami would realize the absurdity of their idea. Is voice controlling fun? Does someone have some kind of twisted sense of humor. I know what i would do if i had voice control - the electric slide.
::leon::
You: "Take off your clothes."
Rio: "You can't possibly mean that."
You: "Oh, I do."
Rio: "What do you do?"
You: "Just take them off. It's the only reason I bought the damn game."
Rio: "I'm not going to do that, sir."
You: "Fine. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start."
Rio:
You: "Woot! It still works!"
As some other people have pointed out, this technology has been tried before (Seaman). But the post further gets it wrong with the idea that it's a "new" game -- as the article mentions, Lifeline is the US localization of an existing Japanese game.
The original game was called "Operator's Side" and was released over a year ago in Japan, where it did well enough to go to a "PlayStation 2 the Best" Release within 8 months.
Linguistically speaking, voice-rec may be easier to do in Japanese. Japanese has a very regular syllabic structure, consisting almost entirely of open syllables, with long syllables composed of shorter ones.
Japanese cellular phones have had voice recognition based on breaking down words for a long time, and it was only natural that the tech find its way into games. For example, if you input the word "sakura", it would be parsed as "sa" "ku" "ra", instead of compared outright to the waveform of entire words.
Now what would be really interesting to see this sort of game software used in a language learning environment... It would also be interesting to play a Japanese game that for once requires spoken fluency in Japanese instead of written!!
In the screenshots I've seen, objects that Rio can interact with have "tooltip" windows that appear. This will help the player find the right word to use, although Konami says they do have some synonyms built into the system.
Sound
Technically, Lifeline offers little. It doesn't support Dolby Digital or Dolby Pro Logic II, and it's not supported with widescreen or progressive scan (though those last two don't have much to do with sound).
Mind you the "Sound" part of the review immediately follows the "Graphics" section. Was it to hard to move the "widescreen and progressive scan" note up a couple paragraphs? They know it is in the wrong place and COMMENT on it... what gives?
Perhaps IGN lacks "cutting and pasting" technology and is solely written in stream of consciousness. Actually, viewed in that light, IGN reviews read a lot better.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
You: Shout Rio doesn't move You: Shout Rio rolls You: Shout Rio finally manages to shoot but gets shot before she could fire How accurate can it be?
-Tony
tonyville dot org
I played about 5 hours into the game now and the voice recognition works in some parts better than i expected but in other it can sometimes be REALLY frustrating when you try to solve puzzles in the game. (computerterminal:"please say the voice password", Me:"password", Computer:"beep - wrong" Me:*hmm... did i solve the puzzle incorrectly or was my pronounciation bad...?") As for accents... i got stuck around 5 times where i had trouble to pronounciate words correctly (I'm german) but in general i could play pretty much fluently.
The main drawback behind it is Seaman requires a lot of time. Seriously, it sounds stupid, but... it does. If you don't clean Seaman's tank (forget what you exactly do), it fogs up and causes the Seaman to die or get sick. You have to grow weird bugs in a seperate tank to feed him, so you have to worry about them. Plus, he becomes angry with you if you neglect him too long. You have to check up on him every day, two days at the most, or else the problems become severe.
One way around this is adjusting the internal clock. Many a time if I forgot Seaman before school in the morning, and didn't have time until a couple days later to check on him, and knowing his tank would be a mess, the bugs dead, and Seaman angry, I would just turn back the clock a few days. Then, get everything cleaned up, feed him, talk to him, and then save and turn off. Another adjustment of the clock to the next day, talk to him, feed him some more, clean up... Lather rinse repeat.
10-20 minutes a day is a minimum, I'd say. It's meant to be very realistic, like a real talking amphibian in a tank. Eventually Seaman escapes the tank or something of the like, but you still have him around to talk to, I think.
I can't believe no one mentioned the best part of Seaman... Leonard Nimoy does the narrating before you go to Seaman! Not just a one time thing, either. He talks every time you check it. Quite cool.