At last, Dragon Dictate is now offering speech packs that will let gamers give voice commands to selected games, and yes, one of those games is Second Life. Furries everywhere are chirping with delight. The Boston Herald put Dragon Dictate through its paces:
Playing “Black Ops” with the speech pack was a big improvement from the moment the first mission started. I was used to dying frequently when relying on keyboard commands to do things like taking cover, switching or reloading weapons. But barking Dragon’s voice commands kept me alive longer and also freed me up to strategize more about how to complete my objectives.
In the “Mass Effect 2” role-playing space game, the action is not as fast and furious as a first-person shooter. But the speech pack’s voice commands for this game improved my attacks on opponents and helped me to control my squad more efficiently. The speech pack also really improved the immersion factor, the feeling that you are living in the game world rather than just playing.
I am looking forward to trying it out in PvP with World of Warcraft. “I said, ‘attack gnome!’ not ‘attack no one!'”
Other games that Dragon Dictate has speech packs available for include Starcraft 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn Of War, Medal of Honor, Pacific Poker, Rainbow 6 Vegas, Splinter Cell Convictions, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
-“Shouldn’t you be in school today?”
-“It’s Sunday.”
Welcome to Gamespotting. Here we not only spot games in other media, but we also consider the context. Videogames often appear as props, and gameplay is used as generic behavior. A couple of guys on a couch waving about controllers when they could just as easily be pointing a remote at a football game. But sometimes an artist includes a game and shows gameplay for a reason. Sometimes videogames matter. That’s what we’re looking for here.
PC Gamer, the UK version, has published the top 100 games of all time. The top five were posted in the Inquisitor. Here they are:
1. Deus Ex (2000)
2. World of Warcraft (2004)
3. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)
4. Team Fortress 2 (2007)
5. Half-Life 2 (2004)
I haven’t seen the rest of the list, but it appears as time edges onward the older games will be cited less and less in these kinds of lists, tumbleweeds rolling out of sight. Civilization, X-COM, Master of Orion, Doom, Red Baron, and all the other great games published before 2000, and not one of them made the top five? Not one?
For comparison, here’s the top ten from PC Gamer (probably the US version, but I’m not sure) back in 2005:
Stepan Yurov’s animated recap of Half-Life 2 isn’t just a cute exercise in fan art. It’s a reminder that the series’ sound effects are iconic. I don’t think it overstates the case to say that if more people played videogames, Half-Life’s sound effects would be every bit as well known as Star Wars’. The sound design is just that good.
And while I’m really glad Valve isn’t milking the Half-Life franchise with DLC and add-ons and quick n’ dirty sequels, Yurov’s short reminds me that I miss Dog and Alyx (I don’t really miss Gordon Freeman, because he was always such a non-entity, by design). But I mostly miss Valve’s world building prowess applied to single-player games.
This week’s two big releases are Little Big Planet 2 and Mindjack. Little Big Planet 2 looks like Sony’s attempt to make Little Big Planet something other than a venue for people to drop stuff into a level and hope other people will move from left to right through that level. Here’s hoping that works out, because it’s about time Sackboy got an actual game. Mindjack is a shooter with a twist (TM), published by Square/Enix. Here’s hoping for another Kane & Lynch 2 instead of another Front Mission Evolved.
The second Pinball FX 2 tourney is now live! To enter just fire up Biolab. Your highest score between now and January 28th will be logged. I was going to list the prizes for first, second, and third place, but please. None of us is going to win any of those. We’re just jockeying for position with each other. So I’ll see you on the leaderboard.
By the way, Pinball FX developer Zen Studios also released some info about the previous Secrets of the Deep tournament.
There were 26,339 official entries in the Secrets of the Deep High Score Tournament, with ancient_of_war taking first place.
Based on that figure, I did a little quick math. I’m happy to report that I placed in the top 92%. Suck it, 93% and below!
Curious Sense, the developer behind the unforgettable REO Speedwagon game Find Your Own Way Home, is now taking on one of the most iconic bands in the American music scene, the Grateful Dead, according to Rolling Stone magazine. The game will be playable on multiple platforms and devices, though no mention is made of the commercial videogame platforms.
The developers think that the Grateful Dead are “one of two or three perfect bands for this kind of multi-channel game experience,” according to Adam Blumenthal, CEO of Curious Sense, who added that blending digital and real world elements are planned. From the Rolling Stone article:
Examples might include “playing scavenger hunt bingo with mobile phone cameras” where players try to find a Grateful Dead sticker on a Volkswagen camper. Still early in design, many of the game’s core facets remain undefined, but he says the title will reflect themes prevalent in Grateful Dead lore, including Americana, the old west, gambling, Biblical tales, nature, space and journeys. Rather than one single play style, the title is intended to bring many together under a single banner of red, white and blue skulls and dancing bears.
Upon entering the online game, ostensibly designed for play foremost on personal computers, enthusiasts will reportedly be greeted by an interactive, high-tech Grateful Dead universe. Adaptable to individual preference, the game world will be divided into regions filled with mini-games, activities and social events. Settings from familiar songs will host highlighted digital diversions, with familiar characters from popular songs featured throughout.
“Whimsy, surprises and pranks will delight,” says Blumenthal. “There will have to be a Miracle button.”
The Grateful Dead have enjoyed a unique relationship with their fans for decades. Ultimately, the game is about what will drive this special relationship forward into the digital age:
“We want a Deadhead Uncle to be able to buy a Grateful Dead Games gift card at Target to give to his nephew who will redeem the credits and special privileges in the game.”
Salman Rushdie likes watching his thirteen-year-old son play Red Dead Redemption. He is intrigued by the idea of a narrative that “goes sideways” instead of from beginning to end and mentions that this kind of narrative is like the idea in Borges Garden of Forking Paths. Games are good, Rushdie says.
Wait — then he goes on to say that games don’t develop intelligence in children and that playing games may erode our attachment to storytelling, leaving open the question as to what that will do to us as humans. As Rushdie says, we are the only story-telling animals on the planet. Games are bad!
There’s a four-minute thirty-nine second clip of Rushdie discussing videogames here at Big Think. Videogames are a central idea in his childrens’ book, Luka and the Fire of Life. Here’s a clip from a NY Times review of the book:
With every heroic task he completes, Luka pushes a button to save his progress, and a new-level number appears in his field of vision. He also gets plenty of extra lives. But while the setting feels like something out of Nintendo, the characters come either from Rushdie’s lively interpretations of mythology or his jovial, limber imagination. A pixelated Fire Bug bursts into “a little cloud of angry, buzzing sparks,” and an army of insult-slinging warriors on flying carpets do battle with a colony of touchy rats.
Gods of Egyptian, Norse, Aztec and Chinese extraction, among others, converge in the final chapters, to stress the diversity of a mythical world eroded by onscreen interfaces. Rushdie isn’t against video games, exactly: Luka’s father cheerily defends them in the novel’s early pages. But the story suggests they are a mythmaker’s chief competition, and Rushdie seems determined to make his book busier than any game, a “supercolossal ultra-exploit.”
How I long for the days when gaming was as simple as being a drunken space marine trying to bag an elvin chick. Now I can’t even play an online game without also helping advance medical science.
ETeRNA is a free online puzzle game about RNA. I will let the NY Times explain:
Designed by some of the same researchers as Foldit, EteRNA is similar in that it is basically a two-dimensional puzzle-solving exercise performed in this case with the four bases — adenine, guanine, uracil and cytosine — that make up RNA molecules. Players can design elaborate structures including knots, lattices and switches. Unlike earlier efforts at crowd-sourced science, EteRNA will cross over from simulation to biology. Each week the best designs created by game players and chosen by the gaming community will be synthesized at Stanford, according to the scientists.
And these gamer-made bits of RNA will lead to this:
“The dream is that within a year or so we will be able to create RNA that is functional and that we can transcribe into cells to do things such as sense light or even deactivate a virus,” said Rhiju Das, a physicist who teaches in the Stanford biochemistry department and who is one of the designers of the game.
The article quotes says researchers think that RNA can be used to build a biological computer someday.
Gamers competing to design RNA that may someday be turned into a biological computer? What could possibly go wrong?
I’m pretty psyched to be reviewing DC Universe for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because it’s my first time contributing to this particular publication, and I’m delighted to get to write for them. I’m even more delighted with how they’re handling the review. Instead of asking me to play for a while and then drop a chunk of text and a rating, the review will be divided into weekly installments before getting to that tricky “final score” thing four weeks after the launch. Furthermore, I’ll be working alongside someone who’s playing on the PS3 while I’m on the PC, and I can already tell she has a very different perspective than I do. I’ll post a link to the coverage when it begins next week.
But mostly, I’m psyched to be reviewing DC Universe for the following three reasons:
1) Holy cats, what a fantastic opening cinematic! I only understood about half of what was going on (Why is Superman a zombie? Am I supposed to know who “Adam” is? Where did that amazing 50-foot tall woman go? And since when is Wonder Woman so bad-ass?), but what a great way to set the stage.
2) I don’t have much City of Heroes experience, so I’m looking forward to digging into an MMO that isn’t fantasy or sci-fi. Wait, aren’t comic books sci-fi? At any rate, I haven’t seen any elves yet, so that’s a good sign.
3) The name “Superchick” wasn’t taken on my server (Brave New World, which is a pretty cool name for a server)! I’m already suffering pangs of character envy seeing how everyone else’s character is way cooler than mine, but I suppose that’s what I get for going with the default Superman template (pictured).
Arcen Games’ Chris Park is the Energizer Bunny of game developers. It seemed like just yesterday that he wrote a dire assessment of his company’s future based on not enough of you jerks buying AI War and Tidalis. Seriously, why haven’t you gotten Tidalis? I love Bejeweled 3 too, but we’re not a bunch of casual soccer moms dinking around while the kids are at school. And don’t give me any of that guff about Tidalis being too complicated. It’s as easy or as complicated as you want it to be thanks to the exhaustive player options. That’s the beauty of Tidalis! If you don’t believe me, read this review some dude name “me” wrote.
Anyway, I’m not here to tell you about Tidalis again. I’m here because despite Park’s earlier dire assessment, AI War is a rampaging monster of ongoing post-release developer support, the likes of which we haven’t seen since, well, various other fantastic indie titles. But look at all the new stuff going into version 5.0, which will be available as a free update later this week. I don’t understand half of what that is, but it sure does make me think it would be a swell idea to revisit AI War. A whole new defender mode? I don’t know what that is, but I’m pretty sure I want to play it. I love it when version numbers shift on the left side of the decimal point!
Did I really just type cumming? Tom told me he was trying to elevate the tone around this place. Some ideas need to die a quick and messy death.
Anyway, exciting news from the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo:
A “Bonecraft” computer game at the expo was pitched as a spoof on popular videogames “Starcraft” and “World of Warcraft.”
The game opens with drunken space soldiers crashing on a planet with troll-like “orcs” and Elvin women.
“The space Marines start fighting the orcs to get with the Elvin women,” said a ‘Bonecraft’ spokeswoman who gave her name only as Sarah. “The goal of the game is to have more sex with Elvin women.”
And what a fine goal that is! Starcraft II, meet my dusty shelf. It’s Bonecraft time!
How’s that for a headline, and I hope I misspelled his name and took game journalism down even lower. What could his secret be? That he paid $2000 on eBay for shoes worn by Rex Ryan’s wife? Probably did, but that’s not really a secret. Is it that the EA top banana looks at World of Warcraft revenue and has a secret man-crush on Acktard’s Bobby Kotick? There could be something to that, but no, that’s not this secret. In an article at IndustryGamer.com he says that digital sales for PC will overtake brick and mortar sales this year, which is sort of interesting but not really. This, however, gave me pause:
The free-to-play model has been a huge boon for EA. Riccitiello noted, “Our highest ARPU (average revenue per user) are free-to-play games among paying users. You think about that and say, ‘how can a free game be the game they pay the most for?’ We have people who are giving us $5,000 in a month to play FIFA Ultimate Team. And it’s free. Dirty little secret.”
Riccitiello then rubbed his hands together and giggled.
People are paying five grand a month to play FIFA? That sure made me stop daydreaming about Ashton Kutcher’s abs. What are they paying for? More kicking tees for the field goal kicker? New helmets? I don’t get it.
And that’s why Betty White is still alive and ready to repopulate the world with Ashton Kutcher after the social order collapses, according to a study conducted in Scotland:
People who exercise regularly but still love the box are just as likely to keel over as couch potatoes, research revealed yesterday.
The reason is thought to be that simply sitting for so long causes coronary problems.
Computer game addicts also increase their heart attack risk by 125 per cent – as do office workers who spend too much time at their desks.
Smoking, high blood pressure and being overweight simply ADD to the peril, research by University College London found.
Recently Ashton Kutcher made comments about how people should get as fit as possible. Maybe he was joshing. Maybe it was just an elaborate joke that tied in to his interview that’s the cover story for Men’s Fitness. Or maybe he’s ready to move to Australia and bunk with Grimoire non-developer Cleve Blakemore in his underground vault. Here is why we have to get in shape, according to Kutcher: We are going to lose our electricity and this will be…The Apocalypse!
“It won’t take very much, I’m telling you. It will not take much for people to hit the panic button. The amount of convenience that people rely on based on electricity alone. You start taking out electricity and satellites, and people are going to lose their noodle. People don’t have maps anymore. People use their iPhones or GPS systems, so if there’s no electricity, nobody has maps.”
Dear god, in a world without maps how will I ever find my way to my local Hooters? It gets worse, though:
“And people are going to go, ‘That land’s not yours, prove that it’s yours,’ and the only thing you have to prove it’s yours is on an electric file. Then it’s like, ‘What’s the value of currency, and whose food is whose?’ People’s alarm systems at their homes will no longer work. Neither will our heating, our garbage disposals, hot-water heaters that run on gas but depend on electricity – what happens when all our modern conveniences fail? I’m going to be ready to take myself and my family to a safe place where they don’t have to worry.”
So what game do I want? A tower defense game would be interesting: How long can Ashton hold out as the mindless cannibals attack? No, that’s not really it.
Kutcher has been running in the canyons near his bunker to get in shape, and he is spurred on in his runs by “visions of being chased by a wild boar.” There’s something Freudian there, but I’m not sure what it is — let us hope Ashton someday gets over his inner struggle and finds peace.
So here’s my dream game, and it’s simple: I play a boar. I chase down Ashton Kutcher. And when I catch him, the world’s collective I.Q. rises dramatically. Queue the Mario power-up music.
