So the latest buzz around the video game blogs (or at least Wii Fanboy) is that the new Harry Potter game for the Wii will have a microphone accessory included, presumably to allow the player to verbally perform the incantations for the spells that Harry and company perform. People are apparently getting really excited. I believe that this is because these people have never attempted to play a game that requires speech recognition.
Pretty much every time I’ve played a game that involves more than picking up a tune (as in the Karaoke Revolution games) or blowing into it (see half of the Nintendo DS catalog), it’s been an exercise in abject frustration. We gave up on Nintendogs after a day because the dog couldn’t recognize its own name. Odama is gathering dust because I would go hoarse screaming, “Press forward!” only to have my soldiers sit there and get trampled. Heck, even Brain Age, which only has to recognize four freaking words (red, blue, yellow and black) can’t get it right. It’s always entertaining seeing someone attempting to play Brain Age and shouting, “Blue!” into it repeatedly, each utterance more frustrated than the last, until they start to devolve into some sort of mental case. I’m amazed that we haven’t heard about as many Brain-Age related DS breakages as we have Wii Sports related television breakages. So we can’t handle “blue” but we’ll be able to interpret “Wingardium Leviosa”? That’s some heavy duty magic they’re working there, then; I hope they’ve got Dumbledore on the case.
Add to that we’re talking about EA, who has been extremely hit or miss in terms of Wii development. Plus, it’s a licensed game, which is strike 2, and to make matters worse, it’s a Harry Potter game, all of which have been boring at best and a complete waste of time at worst. So what is there to get excited about again?
Maybe I’m jaded after 20+ years of gaming, but I’m reaching the point with some of this stuff where I’m not going to believe it until I see it. Nintendo I trust to wow me with doing fun stuff with the Wii and making it work (other than online gaming, of course). EA, not so much…
