Quite the puzzler, but not good enough...
The story begins at an orbiting space station hotel. You are your girlfriend, Naomi, are invited to a Christmas party at the hotel’s grand opening. As you enjoy a few drinks and mingle with the guests, the party is interrupted by a large explosion. Then without warning, all hell breaks loose. The room is suddenly infested with alien creatures that begin attacking the terrified guests. In the midst of the chaos, you get separated from Naomi and fall unconscious from the overwhelming shock. After regaining consciousness, you find yourself trapped and wounded inside a control room. As you check the control screen for survivors, you discover a waitress named Rio is alive but locked up in a secluded security area.
Rio is searching for a journalist with vital information as she explores the hotel. In return for her help to search for your girlfriend, you agree to direct her around the hotel as you have a security camera’s view of the entire hotel and access to all its rooms. In this game, the key thing to note is that you are not Rio herself. Instead, you tell her what to do and where to go by issuing voice commands through the USB headset. Your voice serves to be your greatest asset in this game as the use of the controller is kept to a minimum.
You give commands to Rio via the USB headset as you unlock doors and explore the various guest rooms. If you want Rio to stand by the lockers, you have to say “Go to the lockers” to get her moving. Movement is made fairly simple by virtue of the fact that any location is discretely labelled on an overhead map. A zoom in feature is available to have a closer look at Rio and her environment while in motion.
When combat is initiated, Rio automatically draws her gun and awaits your command. As you give her orders to shoot, a menu appears at the bottom of the screen indicating enemy body parts. You are required to target specific parts of their anatomy while finding its potential weakness. For example, if you want to destroy the enemy’s head, you would say “Head, Shoot, Shoot!” The parts alternate from being vulnerable to entirely blocked, forcing you to time your shots carefully. Rio also responds to other commands like dodge, reload, run, etc. Problems arise in battle as the reaction times are slow forcing you to shout your commands quickly. After shouting “Left Eye, Shoot, Shoot” and “Reload”, it took Rio a full two seconds to fire while she ignored the “Reload” command. Though it seems forgivable, I found that Rio was often hurt by a swift enemy attack before she could even react.
The voice recognition is mediocre at best. As you search the rooms, the challenge lies in guessing what items are actually displayed. You can sort things out quickly by colour, shape and size to try to determine what an item really is. For instance, I once asked Rio to “check the papers” only to hear her reply “Which papers are you referring to?” that forced me to rephrase my wording. In other instances, Rio would reply “Are you talking about this?” which allows you to identify the item after a certain number of guesses. As you progress, you will encounter flashy items, notes and other objects that require the proper use of vocabulary. But if, when trying to identify an object, one of your words happens to match the description of another object, Rio may inspect another object entirely. Repeated attempts at finding the right words is necessary as the vocabulary is quite limited.
The “Consultation” mode is a unique part of the game. If you’re curious about any events, you can talk to Rio personally by saying “Consultation”. By bringing up the Consultation screen, you can ask her questions like “What do we do?” and “Why are you so cranky?” that directly relate to the story and other characters. Consultation is a treated as conversation time with Rio that serves to be a good break between long searches and intensive battles. Should you be unclear in phrasing your question, you will be forced to repeat yourself as Rio may not respond the first time around. Consultation is ended by saying “Finish Consultation” to return back to the game action.
Visually, Lifeline isn’t astounding but it manages to hold its own. Backgrounds range being plain to overly generic. Character designs are average but sport quite a bit of rough edges when you zoom in on the characters. Rio has different costumes in the game but suffers from very stiff movements instead of moving like a real actual person. For battles, the game uses some nice transparency effects when monsters appear and disappear in the immediate area. Aside from all of this, there’s nothing really worth mentioning.
Regarding sound, the game has its fair share of gun shots and enemy creatures with "slittering" noises. As for the voice work, speaking clearly but effectively requires a learning period that ranges from the first ten to thirty minutes of the game. For the most part, the dialogue between Rio and yourself is reasonable but proves to be quite a nuisance when solving puzzles.
Lifeline delivers quite a unique experience apart from other adventure titles. The voice recognition still needs work but is able to perform its job adequately. The opinions surrounding this game are fairly mixed and controversial. If you have a great deal of patience and the idea of a voice-activated adventure title appeals to you, Lifeline may just be your cup of tea. Otherwise, you may want to rent this game before spending your hard-earned dollars on it.