What is Game Commander? Well I have to say it's one of the coolest pieces
of software I've ever put on my PC :o) Game Commander is application specific
voice recognition and control Software that is aimed mainly at gamers.
By application specific I mean it detects what application you are currently
using and only uses commands specific to that app or game. It comes with
it's own high quality voice cancelling Mike but you can use your existing
one if you prefer. Anyone who's ever used Roger Wilco for multi player
games will know how cool it is to communicate with their wingman using
voice.
Now, thanks to Game Commander you can also use voice to communicate with
your Wingman, ATC, AWACS etc in single player games. When you want your
wingy to go spread, which of these is more immersive, pressing w w w
1, or saying "Two go spread"? Don't even bother to answer that cos we
both know which is prefferable. ;o) There's nothing like speaking a command
to your Wingy or AWACS etc and hearing them come back with a response.
Ok I think you can allready tell that I like it so let's get on with
the review.
In the colourful Game commander box, you get the Game Commander CD, a
noise cancelling microphone and the instruction manuals (one for Game
Commander and one for the Mic.). Installation was as simple as ever.
The CD autruns into the setup program. From there is was just a case
of putting in the serial no (on the included registration card) and accepting
all the defaults.
The microphone that comes with Game Commander is pretty nice too. It's
a headset mic with a bendy mic arm for ease of positioning. The great
thing is that it has no earphones. This makes me really happy because
the normal mic I use for Roger Wilco is a combined headphone and mic,
and the "phones" get in the way when not in use. The headset
is adjustable and light, and sits quite comfortably on the head. The
mic worked very well with both Game Commander and Roger Wilco. It also
has a long lead which gives you some freedom of movement (so even if
your beers are 4 or 5 feet away you should be ok :).
The manual is well written and easy to follow. It covers everything you
need to know and has a troubleshooting guide too. It is printed on high
quality paper and adds to the quality that seems to exude from this product.
System Requirements.
• Microsoft Windows 95 / 98
• P200 MHz Pentium Class CPU
• 32 MB Ram
• 10 MB Free HD space
• Full Duplex Windows 9x compatible sound card
• CD-Rom drive
• Mouse.
Well I suspect the question you will be asking is "How well does it work?"
In my experience so far I would have to say exceptionally well. It has
been completely problem free and I have only had to repeat a command
on very rare occasions. Personally I found this just added to the immersion
as in real life not all radio calls are heard by the recipient due to
poor signal, interferance etc. I have so far yet to have a command misinterpretted.
So far so good, I guess you are thinking "So it is great fun and works
very well, I bet it's a pig to program right?". Well it is about as easy
to program as you can get. The first thing you need to do is download
and install the 1.0.110
patch to allow multi key macro's. Then it is just a simple matter
of going to the commands section of the main menu, selecting the game
from the applications drop down (if the game is not here you will have
to import the games .exe in the user section). Click on add then type
in the command name (this will be the word or words you have to speak
to run this command). Then type in the keystrokes then (as we say in
UK) Robert will be your Fathers Brother (Bob's your Uncle).
The beauty of Game Commander is that it is voice independant, unlike
most voice recognition software you don't HAVE TO train it to your voice.
It will recognise English regardless of your voice. You do have the option
to train it and this will make it more effective, especially if you have
a strong accent or are not an English speaker. This is done by repeating
the command 3 times. Game Commander then is able to use this as a basis
for recognising the command. Personally when I set it up I was going
to train it (just to be sure :). But in the end I couldn't wait to try
it out so I just went straight into Falcon 4 without bothering to train
it. I'm glad I did because I discovered that it works exceptionally well
without any training at all. As long as you make sure that each of your
commands is fairly unique you should have no problems at all. If you
have several commands that sound the same you may find that Game Commander
makes mistakes occasionally so this is worth being aware of when creating
your own templates.
When you've created your own template you can export it and send it to
your friends. Also you can download templates from the Game Commander Home Page. This is a usefull feature because rather than
setting up a template from scratch, you can download one then edit it
to suit your tastes. When you save your template a .gca file is created,
this is the command template itself. A text file listing all the commands
and the key sequences they represent is also created. This makes learning
new templates very easy. It also takes a lot of the work out of creating
templates for others. Importing and exporting templates is simplicity
itself.
Import and Export Templates
I find the best use for Game Commander in games like Falcon 4 is for
Comms and views. This way anything you could normally do in an F16 without
using the keyboard is covered. This massivly adds to the immersion factor.
In games like Half life you can use it for weapon changes etc. I have
tested Game Commander in a variety of games including Falcon 4, XvT,
Half Life, Confict Freespace. I found that it enhanced them all.
There are also several very handy side effects of voice control too.
For a start you don't need to remember a lot of key sequences for comms.
Secondly I have gained several free buttons on my hotas as I had them
programmed for common Radio calls like AWACS picture and declare or Tower
inbound etc. The downsides are that I look like a pratt talking to my
PC :) and that you need to program Game Commander (although this is a
simple procedure, and you can download ready made configs). Also I now
need 2 hotas configs, one for single play and 1 for multiplay as Game
Commander does not yet work alongside Roger Wilco (they are working on
this and say they are getting close).
Now the bottom line!! Do I consider Game Commander to be a worth while
purchase? I would have to say no, I consider it to be an ESSENTIAL purchase
:o) Having played with it for a few days now, I honestly couldn't imagine
being without it. And once it works alonside Roger Wilco I will never
need to be without it. I have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending
Game Commander. If I actually had a scoring system for reviews Game Commander
would get a top score. But as I don't have a scoring system and am violently
against scores in reviews, I'll just give Game Commander 10 out of 10
and we'll leave it at that :o)
