A few big changes have happened in the world of gaming lately. Namely: motion controlled gaming has been made more readily available across more platform. Once confined to the Wii, it’s now available on the 360 and PS3 for inordinate amounts of money. Incidentally: it still doesn’t work very well. $150 for the Xbox Kinetic will get you a miniaturized replica of HAL that watches you fuck your girlfriend on the couch after the playoffs. The Playstation Move, on the other hand, is a colour changing dildo. Neither of these things should ever be used for gaming in any capacity. Motion controlled gaming is the way of the future… for the next three months. Then people will get bored and they’ll stop making compatible games.
I’m reminded of the headset for the PS2. It was a breakthrough at the time. It was device that enabled the user to speak to a person or persons over the internet, and tell them they’re fags. Today, their standard fare with any hi-def gaming system, but back then, which was like eight years ago: they were a big fucking deal. So big of a deal, that they tried to incorporate the headset into SINGLE PLAYER MODE GAMES. Yes: you would use the headset to speak to the game itself. And it would look at you with confusion, then walk into a wall.
There were a few games you could control using only your voice. SOCOM 2 was one of them. In SOCOM 2, you “controlled” a group of Navy Seals by issuing voice commands. Bear in mind, the game’s vocabulary was lacking, and most commands were in “military-speak.” For instance, a sentence like, “Roger, Blue Falcon, we are Oscar Mike to Foxtrot, over,” should make perfect sense to you, if you wish to play this game. Also: the game didn’t understand you no matter what language you used or how loud you yelled into the mic. You had to have perfect diction in order for the game to understand, and speak at the exact tempo. If not, your team of elite Navy Seals would shoot you. They would do this for any reason whatsoever. For instance, if you were trying to lodge a grenade through a window to take out a sniper, one of your team would misconstrue the command for, “Lay low!” to, “Stand up!” thus they would place their noggins between your grenade and the window. Once their head was blown clear off of their body, another member of the team would decide your clearly placed command for not sticking your head in the way as poor leadership and mutiny on the spot by unloading a shotgun into your spine. Your team, however, shows a clear lack of independent thinking. If you were to say, “Follow me,” and then slide down a ladder, they will simply leap into the thin air and fall to their deaths. Those who do not, will shoot you in the spine like you’re Barbra Gordon. It’s amazing I made it through this game at all, even on Normal.
I picked up another game in the bargain bin one time called, “Lifeline.” It was a game about some bitch in a space hotel that gets overrun by aliens and you have to talk her through the whole thing. It was a lot like the adventure games like Leisure Suit Larry or The Treasure of Monkey Island where you had to issue commands and hope the game understood. Plus: you had to have perfect diction.
Here’s a real scenario:
You tell the girl in the game, “Walk over to the table.”
She’ll say, “I don’t know how to do that.”
You’ll repeat, “Walk over to the table.”
She’ll say, “I don’t see that here.”
You’ll look at the screen, clearly confirm you’re looking at a table, and repeat, “Go to the table.”
She’ll say, “What are you, some kind of pervert?”
This is in the least aggressive scenario. There are alien monsters crawling all over the place, which she either needs to avoid, or fight to the death. When it comes to fighting, you have to tell her how to attack and dodge. It doesn’t go over very well.
This game was created to punish all life for the crime of living, until it doesn’t want to live anymore.
Nowadays, the mic is only used for terrible kareoke in music games, or to call some anonymous stranger a faggot. Years from now, the motion controlled camera will only be used to show pics of your asshole to strangers. That’s progress.
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