New video game uses voice technology

[DarkPhenyx]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/03/03/hln.game.lifeline/index.html

Let's face it: We've always talked to our video games. We yelled at Frogger to watch out for traffic. We uttered our best Schwarzenegger-esque kiss-off lines before blowing away aliens in "Doom" -- ("Hasta la vista, E.T.!"). And I may have silently proposed to Lara Croft once or twice over the years.

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That story is a familiar one. Think of "LifeLine" as "Die Hard In Space." The futuristic saga unfolds on a space station that's attacked by aliens. You're trapped in a control room and your only contact with the outside is another survivor, a woman named Rio.

Communicating via your headset and microphone, you guide Rio through the station as she looks for your lost friends, finds out who (or what) attacked the station, and dispenses some futuristic payback along the way.

As it turns out, Rio is a great listener. "LifeLine" recognizes more than 5,000 words and 100,000 phrases such as "Run," "Walk," "Open door," "Go to this room," etc. During firefights, you have to tell her to where, when and whom to shoot.

[BearFlagDemocrat]

1. Sounds like a pain in the ass to play

But it does give me hope that "Karaoke Revolution" will soon recognize syllables instead of just pitch and tone.

[Az]

2. This is doomed

We do not play the game by shouting our directions at the screen. It takes people out of the game to have to use this method of control. Expect to see this one in the bargin bins soon.

[htuttle]

3. Mac OS 9 could do this via Game Sprockets back in the 1990s

You could assign a command word or phrase for any button or sequence of buttons. I tried it from time to time, since it could be used with any Game Sprockets compatible game.

It was a pain in the ass to play that way, however. It is much quicker to just push the buttons, not to mention the effect that shouting commands at your computer has on anyone else in the room...

I think it's one of those ideas that sounds good, but doesn't work out well in practice.

[DarkPhenyx]

4. I've used it on a couple windows based games.

I actually found it easier during the fighter pilot games to tell it to fire missle instad of having to look for the button. Also made it easier to change weapon systems.