Konami's Lifeline was one of my most highly anticipated games of 2004, and for good reason. The ability to guide someone through a semi-abandoned space hotel using the PS2's USB headset reminded me of classic scenes from the movie Aliens, but sadly, Lifeline comes nowhere close to bringing that sort of intensity to the table. Rather, it crashes and burns like an athlete who breaks his leg on his first play of the season.

Lifeline's gimmick is in its voice recognition gameplay. After the grand opening of the world's first space hotel is crashed by swarms of ugly and hungry aliens, you're separated from your girlfriend and wind up in the hotel's main control room. Trapped and unarmed, your only hope for escape is to guide one of the lone survivors, a waitress named Rio, across the spooky hotel by issuing commands via video cameras. It's a cool concept, and I was intrigued by the game because I enjoyed Seaman for the Sega Dreamcast, but Lifeline winds up tripping over itself much sooner than Sega's life simulator ever did, and this is where the two differences between the games become apparent. In Seaman, all you had to do was give one or two word responses to the talking man fish, and while he sometimes misinterpreted what you said to him, it was okay because he was rarely in danger. In Lifeline's case, however, misunderstandings between you and Rio happen at the absolute worst times, and the result is often death for her and Game Over for you.

The concept behind Lifeline's gameplay is simple. You guide Rio around the hotel issuing commands ("go to room thirteen"), and once she's there, you instruct her to inspect whatever you'd like. If you see something in the vending machines, you say, "vending machines," and Rio will go to them. The problem with this is the game's objects aren't always that easy to describe. Sometimes she doesn't understand what you're saying, even if it's one word, and then it becomes a puzzle of sorts. You need to get her to interact with the object by picking colors and thinking of other words for the item. It's like Konami wanted the player to buy a pocket thesaurus just to play, which is ridiculous. If you were trapped in a control room watching someone bumble around through closed circuit television, you'd have full conversations with them. Sentences. Paragraphs. Your conversations would mean something, but in Lifeline's case, all conversations with Rio are stilted and dominated by one, two, or three word commands and responses. Sure, she'll talk your ear off, but Konami couldn't have expected to actually instill compassion in the player for Rio with the way the game's played.

Actually, if the game had any short piers, I would have gladly told Rio to take a long walk. Playing Lifeline incited so much anger I had to shut it off before I broke the game in half. Having to give one word answers and watching her do the wrong thing just made me crazy. I wanted so badly to take control of her so I could show the idiot what I wanted her to do. It's terrible, but not as bad as when Rio's in combat. When the aliens pop up, you have to tell her to shoot, and she can't just shoot anywhere. Each creature has different hit points, so you have to call out, "Left Eye" or "Stomach" so she actually succeeds. Now I don't know why I know where to shoot them and she doesn't, but I went with the idea anyway. Unfortunately, trying to frantically tell her where to shoot when she's surrounded by three monsters oftentimes results in death because she doesn't always react accordingly. At first this isn't a problem because the aliens are non threatening, but the harder ones make battles almost impossible. Throughout most of the game, I wanted to take the gun out of her hands and do the blasting myself, but therein lies another one of Lifeline's problems.

Lifeline's gimmick is in its voice recognition technology, and quite frankly, it's terrible, so when a game's special feature falls on its face, the rest of the game is exposed to attack. In Lifeline's case, it became very obvious that it's a very generic adventure that's powered by the "find the key that opens the door" cliché. There's nothing special about it at all, so once I realized that using the headset wasn't fun, the game became mind numbingly boring, but the gameplay can't take all of the blame.

Also at fault are the game's graphics, which are only slightly above average, and the voice acting, which is all wrong. Rio is voiced by Kristen Miller, known from the television show, She Spies, and while she's a decent actress, she's too damned calm given the situation. When you first encounter Rio, she's trapped in a holding cell and quite docile after nearly being eaten by aliens. She acts like nothing bad has happened, and this goes for the other actors/actresses as well. The scene is supposed to be everyone covered in blood, clothes torn, hair matted to their heads and their nerves shot. Not, "oh those aliens, when will they ever learn?"

Bottom line, Lifeline's cool idea didn't translate well into a videogame, and I'm not sure if it ever could. It never recreates an actual sense of communication between two people, and the mundane gameplay and dispassionate voice acting only serve to damper what's already a snoozefest, if you're not trashing your hotel room out of frustration.