Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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 a games developer, we got a Japanese import of the game when it was released, for urm, research purposes. Unfortunately, none of us could read Japanese, so the manual and on-screen instructions were muddled through by trial and error.
The voice control was a bit disappointing. The microphone sat on a short stalk, plugged into a memory card slot on the controller, if I recall. Our Seaman wasn't progressing much, even with plenty of vocal encouragement - "Hello little fishy! How are you today? Who's my fishy-wishy?". It then occurred to us that being a Japanese import, it probably only understood Japanese. Cue many awful impressions of kung-fu film inspired Japanese speech. That didn't work, either, but it provided an afternoon's entertainment.