PDA

View Full Version : N.U.D.E at IGN



Brevity
05-01-2003, 08:10 AM
MS's latest would be much better with actual nudity.

April 29, 2003 - N.U.D.E@ stands for "Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment," with the "@" probably standing for "at," although we're not quite sure why it's there. This latest in Microsoft's small library of Japanese-developed Xbox games sees you interact with a cute robot called "PASS" (Personal Assist Secretary System), using the Xbox Voice Communicator (the same one used for Xbox Live) to teach her words and basic functions with the goal, apparently, to turn her into your personal digital assistant.
Voice recognition games have been around for some time now. Seaman brought voice-recognizing, smack-talking fish-men to the gaming scene back on the Dreamcast and ended up being the system's highest selling title in Japan. Nintendo and Sony have also experimented with voice recognition, with Sony's latest efforts making a few interesting strides (while managing to sell only a handful of copies).

Given that N.U.D.E runs on the world's most powerful game system and has had a few years' evolution time since Seaman swam through uncharted waters, you'd think that there'd be much more to the voice-based experience. Sadly, there isn't.

N.U.D.E. takes place as a series of phases through which the experimental PASS robot grows more and more complex. Things begin with your teaching the robot the names of various items located about your room. This is as simple as repeating the name of the item over and over again until PASS says that she understands (all of this is in Japanese, of course, as the game is currently Japan-only). The next phase involves simple manipulation of items whose names pass memorized in the previous phase. Here, you instruct PASS by telling her, for example, to turn the TV on and off and raise and lower the volume. The third phase involves more "complex" commands, including asking PASS to make food for you and clean the room.

The game makes use of the internal Xbox clock to keep track of PASS's progress. Every so often, the company that developed PASS (ARK -- Absolute Radiant Kingdom) will come by to check up on her and upgrade her with the latest version of the operating system. If you haven't finished up a phase of her development by this time, she say's "Sayonara" to you and is taken away for good. PASS herself also has to periodically disable herself. From midnight, she becomes unusable for a one hour period. A few of the actions that you attempt to teach PASS are also time-based. Have her cook some food one day, and you won't be able to perform the same action until the next day because your fridge will have been emptied. Of course, you're free to cheat by playing around with the Xbox clock before starting up the game.

The big problem with the game is that you don't really get the feeling that you've contributed to PASS's intelligence. You're not really teaching her how to say or do anything. You're just answering a couple of questions here and there. When teaching her to make Japanese curry (-- subliminal -- worst food in the world -- end subliminal --), all you have to do is answer a couple of yes/no questions with regards to potatoes and carrots. This gets absolutely absurd when you have to instruct PASS in how to tidy up the room. All you have to do is say "Clean," then when asked what to use for cleaning, say "Vacuum Cleaner." That's it. Following a brief clip of PASS moving the vacuum cleaner around, the lesson ends.

All the real "progression" for PASS occurs when she's taken away from you to a lab at the end of a phase to be upgraded using the latest revision of her operating system. She comes back knowing so much more that anything you might have taught her in the phase is besides the fact. There's no sense of accomplishment in what you do.

We think we've determined the reason for this simplicity. The game seems incapable of understanding more than a single word from the player's side. If you say "Make food," the game will not understand you. You have to instead first say "Food," wait for PASS's response, then say "Make." She'll then go off and make food for you. The game's handling of its vocabulary seems limited, too. If you, out of nowhere, say "magazine" to PASS, the game will interpret the word as something completely different. If, however, you say "read," and in response to PASS's question of what you'd like to read say "magazine," she'll understand you perfectly.

Although N.U.D.E on the whole does a better job of correctly matching up what you're saying with its internal vocabulary, the obviously context-sensitive vocabulary and single word limitation make it less impressive from a technology point of view than Sony's Operator's Side. That game did a fairly convincing job of parsing through basic sentences, allowing you to communicate much more naturally with the characters. With N.U.D.E, you get no real sense of communication.

Operator's Side had an interesting, progressive storyline to fall back on whenever its voice recognition failed it. N.U.D.E doesn't. Taken as a game or form of entertainment, there isn't much going on here. The only challenge we found is figuring out the correct single word to say in a given circumstance, even though we could think of numerous phrases. Entertainment? We laughed a few times at some of the mistakes PASS made (usually with her taking our orders too literally), but we've had much more fun playing even bad games. PASS, while cute and well designed (albeit a bit scary when she stares at you) isn't nearly as memorable as Vivarium's talking fish was some years ago (here in Japan, non videogamers are still able to identify Seaman's voice).

Once you've gotten far enough in N.U.D.E, things get a bit more complex. PASS begins asking you more questions and talking more often. You can set up a schedule for caring for plants and fish in your apartment, and PASS will follow the schedule, occasionally adding her own suggestions as well. You can take part in a few mini games with PASS, including black jack and paper-rock-scissors.

If you get your kicks out of that, maybe N.U.D.E. is just what you're looking for. For everyone else, we'd suggest that you wait a few years until voice recognition technology is at a point where a game like this can be even remotely interesting. In the meanwhile, real friends, and real personal digital assistants, are still the way to go.

-- Anoop Gantayat, Contributor