Lifeline

"Your voice is her command!"

Awesome awesome awesome! A truly original idea combined with excellent gameplay makes Lifeline one of the best games out! I truly hope they make a sequel to this or at the very least another voice controlled game. I've read other reviews and everyone complains about the accuracy of the voice recognition. A mute argument. Consider all the factors. First it was a Japanese port, so there is bound to be minor issues with grammar and translation. Second, even us natural born Americans don't use the language and grammar properly anyways who does? Third, the game is quite accurate considering you don't need to "train" it to your voice. And anyone who used other voice recognition programs know that even with your own voice as a template the program messes things up. Fourth, the person used as the template for the voice matching will obviously have a different tone and pattern than the four and a half billion people on the planet. I've had very little difficulty controlling her and making her do what I wanted. Considering all this, it's the most accurate voice recognition I've ever come across.


GRAPHICS
Excellent! They are very smooth and flow nicely. They are crisp and clean and suit the games atmosphere perfectly. The character models are very well done and smooth. The cut scenes are excellent.

SOUND & MUSIC
Excellent! A perfect match for both. The music picks up during battle or intense scenes which makes your pulse race with anticipation. The environmental sounds are great, from the humming of the space station to gunfire or explosions. Very good indeed.

PLAYABILITY & CONTENT
Excellent! The game is of decent length, although you probably can blow through it if you wanted to but what's the point? They've done an excellent job at making this game, they needed to program all the different voice commands into it and make it understandable by your character which must have been very time consuming! There are a variety of monsters you will come across during the game, and you battle them by telling Rio (the main character) where to shoot. So you would say "Head" or "Body" and that's where she'll shoot. Provided you don't start screaming into the mic she'll follow your commands perfectly. You can tell her to run away to get some distance or dodge to the left or right to avoid attacks. As far as moving around the station it's all voice commands. You tell her where to go like saying "Guest room 1" and off she goes to your destination. She always repeats the command to verify, so if you tell her "Go to the vending machines" she'll respond "The vending machines? Ok." Searching areas can be a little hard if you don't give the right commands or can't make out an object, but if you come close she'll say something like "Do you mean this?" and look at the item. If you can't make out what something is, you can tell her "Check the white object on the table." and she'll usually recognize what you want her to do unless there are several white objects, at which point she'll ask which object do you mean. The storyline is awesome and the plot has a real cool twist at the end. There are also mini type games that you can play with Rio. For one example, you can play a tongue twister game where she'll say a tongue twister and you have to repeat it. I kept laughing as I tried to do it and kept losing to her. As far as saving goes, there are save points in just about every room so you really don't need to worry much about doing too much over if you die. Normally I wouldn't play a game again after finishing it but Life Line is one of those exceptions!

CONTROLS
Several presets.

SAVING FEATURES
Save points.

THE GOOD
Voice activated controls.
Storyline.
Graphics.
Gameplay.

THE BAD
Nothing.

THE UGLY
Nothing.

OVERALL RATING 10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/04