Mass Effect 3 will soon be upon us. Come March, we will be able to witness the thrilling conclusion of Commander Shepard’s trilogy. Within just two games, the series has undergone a wild evolution. Some bad ideas were nixed: the horrendous menu system of the first game. Some risky gambles were made: eliminating the traditional experience system from the first game to make way for gaining levels per mission. Bad ideas were patched with worse ideas: the mostly boring planet exploration of the first game replaced with the completely boring planet scanning of the second. With the release of Mass Effect 3, Bioware is looking to roll out another new feature.
Yelling at your TV.
Kinect functionality has burst forth from the torso of Mass Effect 3 like so much Quatto from so much Total Recall. Rather than press buttons to do things, you can remember strings of verbal commands to have the Kinect recognize, take a second to process, and then have the game do what you wanted it to do a few seconds ago. By no means is the Kinect functionality mandatory, but this speaks to an issue that I’m ready to call for a moratorium on. Enough with the gimmicks. Please.
This started with the Wii. The Wii made a boat-load of money because people discovered it was fun to play an approximation of bowling for a few minutes. Over the years, the Wii started to became a dust-collector that was only fired up whenever a Nintendo first-party game would release but Microsoft (and Sony) had dollar signs in their eyes. If you want to try and get lightning to strike twice and get some of that sweet, sweet Wii Sports money…fine, whatever. But can we please stop pretending that motion controllers/cameras will add anything of value to “core” video games?
Everyone points to the shooter as the “holy grail” to try and shoehorn motion controls into. This makes sense. Shooters are a very popular sub genre of video games and they will certainly move a lot of units of whatever camera or wand or phallus you’re trying to sell. Killzone 3 springs to mind. You could buy a plastic gun to hold your robot ice cream cone and you would then be able to shoot guys. I heard it that it “worked, I guess.” Is that what we want? Do we want to make a conscious decision to throw down a controller that is the result of decades in evolution of ergonomics and engineering just so we can pick up something that boils down to a bullet point on the back of a game case?
With the release of Halo: CE Anniversary, we got a “scanning mode (Metroid Prime, please don’t sue!)” that had you scan stuff and it provided extra information about stuff within the game. Great, whatever. The devs put in voice-command that is really the same principle that has been the same since SOCOM was released with a headset years ago. You just kind of yell stuff like “reload,” “grenade”, or “regroup.” Is that really that fun? Does it really add that much to the experience? If anything, I think it limits you. Good luck trying to play a “better with Kinect” game (also, don’t get me started on that marketing phrase) while others in your house are trying to sleep.
So here we have more of the “yell the stuff you want in-game characters to do rather than just do a few quick, intuitive button presses” mechanic ready to be unleashed with ME3. It seems to be a matter of “coulda vs. shoulda.” The quick menus in the ME games have given you time to strategically plan out your battles; a feature that was very well-received and very well-executed. What was broken about it? I don’t want to yell stuff on the fly. Also, good luck remembering the names of the allies with you and the names of all the abilities that Shepard and his squad mates have equipped at all times throughout the hours of gameplay… Something makes me think that they didn’t implement a “Liara…do the thing!” catch-all phrase for when you get the inevitable brain fart.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about new technology and new ideas. I honestly believe that the Kinect and the various motion controllers are legitimately cool pieces of tech. Just please stop trying to force them down our throats as a viable enhancement for “true” video games. Gamers desire accuracy, intuitiveness, and not feeling like an absolute tool when they play their games. No one jumps around their living rooms like people in the various Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo commercials and if they did, they should be sent West with Bilbo.
Are there good motion-controlled and Kinect games out there? Sure. But this is a matter of something not being broken and therefore not needing the fixin’. I mean, I guess if you already have a Kinect and you want concerned looks showered upon you by loved ones and your mailman leering at the window as you shout things like: “James! Carnage!” (James Carnage is my professional wrestling alter-ego btw) or “shotgun, incendiary ammo, stasis!” be my guest. But as it stands, I don’t see why I need a Kinect. If I want to play Gunstringer (which looks delightful and genuinely cool) I’ll maybe wait until there are a few more games that are based around the Kinect and THEN decide to part with my hard-earned cash. Yelling stuff at my screen to accomplish what I could do in a preexisting and totally better-er quick menu is not a selling point for me. Not at all.
Then again, it might be worth the price of admission to be able to see the expression on my girlfriend’s face when she storms downstairs after hearing me yell “Shepard! Have sex with that weird alien probablywoman!”
Watch the ME3/Kinect video below and decide for yourself.
