[cardician]

Just curious if anyone has played this Action Adventure game for the PS2? I played it this past weekend and, though frustrated a number of times, quite enjoyed myself. As an adventure game, I think its superb. Great story, characters, writing, everything. I was actually touched and felt a pull on the ol' heart strings at one point near the end. Very rarely has that every happened to me in any game.

Now the point of this, other than to see if anyone else has played it. The game is actually referred to as a Voice Action Adventure. What that means? Well the game is played using voice recognition. Here is a bit of info on the plot. You're at the grand opening of a space hotel with a bunch of other guests. Suddenly aliens attack and start eating people. You flee and lose consiousness. You wake up to find yourself locked in the control room of the hotel. This is a room with access to all the stations video cameras and the ability to open and shut all the doors in the station. You then come across a woman locked in a cell, the two of you team up and try to get off the station. The thing is, you guide her and give her commands. The game requires a microphone and you literally speak the commands to her into the mic. You tell her where to search, what to look at, etc.

In concept, this is an awesome idea. I can think of tons of awesome uses for this, and the game actually does a pretty reasonable job. It is quite a bit of fun and really gets you into the game.

Unfortunately, this game is a couple of years old and voice recognition was not and still is not quite up to where you would ideally want it to be. While for the most part the game works great and its really neat how it recognizes all the different things you say, there are a number of frustrating moments when it doesn't work out so easily. For example, notice I said Action Adventure? There are some action elements interspersed throghout the game. These require you to guide her as well. Shoot this, shoot that, shoot this part of the monster, etc. Unfortunately, due to the nature of voice recognition, the game does no always recognize what you're saying, or it will interpret it completely wrong. This leads to frustration and issues, but for the most part, with a little patience, it was possible to overlook. And let me say this, I'm by no means good at action games, and I was actually able to do pretty well throughout the game.

Ok, sorry for the long post, if anyone bothered to read this far. I just thought I'd mention this game, see if anyone else has ever played it and get some thoughts. Or maybe get some discussion on the ideas of incorporating voice recognition into games in this way. Really, if the recognition were a little better, this game would be one of my top 10. As far the the story and cinematics go, its definitely in my top 10. Thoughts? Feel free to ask more about the game if you're interested. I can go into more depth.