Heaven Games Reviews Microsoft's Sidewinder Game Voice

The company line:
"Bring the power of voice to your games:
Complete voice solution: multiplayer chat, and voice commands.
Optimized for great game play and sound.
Quickly find and talk to your friends."

Chat Evaluation & Comparison.

With the help of a good friend of mine, who happens to live on the other side of the world, we put several chat programs through their paces in addition to the Game Voice so that we'd have something to compare it to.

Just to give some perspective first, we both have 56k modems and not so great ISPs. Talking on the phone with someone who lives on the other side of the world isn't perfect either, carrying with it plenty of static, so keep this in mind. Our findings aren't scientific, just our own experinces using the following products.

First up was BattleCom, a free chat program. We used it before, and during a 1 on 1 game. It presented us with a lot of static, and we found ourselves repeating messages most of the time so that typing would have actually been much faster in this case. During the game we played it was very difficult to understand much being said as many words were getting lost.

Next, we tried Roger Wilco, which is a fairly well known free chat program. It was better than the previous program, however, words were still being lost to static and we weren't even playing a game yet. This program faired a bit better than BattleCom, however, we still had to repeat ourselves on occasion in just a basic chat situation, without any of the extra stresses playing a game puts on your bandwidth. The price is certainly right though, free.

The Game Voice is certainly a large improvement over these two free programs, and it certainly should be since you're paying for it. There was a substantial improvement in the quality of the chat, and even during a game of The Conquerors we very rarely had to repeat ourselves to be understood. Eventhough both of the systems we used were low on the Game Voice requirements with regards to internet connection, trash talking was not only possible, so too was communicating the fact that the enemy had a Castle built at the edge of my town very early in our Conquerors game, all without having to type a word.

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Voice Command Evaluation

Probably the best thing about the voice commands is that they are customizable. If you are having some troubles getting your commands recognized, you can simply alter the words used to bring up any given command quickly and easily. As I mentioned earlier, when the word "Home", which selects my Town Center in Age of Kings, was being misunderstood by the software, I simply changed it to "TC" and that solved the problem. The real power of the voice commands is really in the macros you set up for yourself. The profiles often are setup so you lose time by using voice commands, substituting one or two hotkeys for the time it takes you to hit the command button and say your command. By setting up your own custom commands, you can use the macro feature to activate multiple hotkeys, which really can come in handy! For example, I created an opening move called "Alpha" for Age of Kings. I hit the command button and say "Alpha" which activates "H-C-C-C-.-small pause-v-e". Translation, select my town center and create three villagers, select an idle villager, pause for a few milliseconds for the game to select that villager (this is essential and is only the blink of an eye really), then instruct that villager to build a house. Basicly after I've said the command, all I

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have to do is click where I want my house placed, as the villager is already instructed and waiting. Now there's a nice time saver!

Are voice commands useful? Yes and no. While playing Age of Kings, speed is essential. If you know your hotkeys fairly well, the common ones at least, you'll find that it is much faster to hammer a couple of keys on the keyboard then it is to hit the command button, and then say your command. But if you take the time to create your own custom voice commands, you can save yourself some time by issuing multiple hot keys at once, however, I can't see myself using it to change weapons in a FPS when the punch of a key will do it faster.