Milo

[Psych]

And levels. And experience points. Maybe Milo will shoot something in the face at some point.

I think he'll either cure cancer or commit genocide.

[Nappi]

I appreciate how creepy they made the whole setup. I bet that after one of his darker adventures Milo's body will be found at the bottom of the lake, pockets full of stones, head full of goatse and memes, the parents blaming themselves for not paying any attention to their kid's imaginary friend and the cloud that taught him everything he knew.

[MrHoatzin]

Ack!

I don't understand why they make these creepy robots who're allegedly supposed to react realistically to human interactions. Their very nature makes us want to break them by throwing all kinds of curve balls at them. They will always fail. Google voice has yet to transcribe the messages I leave my wife into coherent English (no matter how much I enunciate and try not to slur, she will get these hysterical gibberish messages the true content of which is impossible to even guess sometimes; this doesn't seem to happen to anyone else who leaves messages on her phone! I have no idea wtf that is all about. Maybe my accent is utter shit, or google has been fine-tuned to telemarketer speech patterns). How will this toy be able to do a third of what Google voice is supposed to do? Let alone understand the content and context and nuance and reply to it? Façade and Scribblenauts were so easily breakable and they didn't have the voice pattern recognition on top of everything. This game will piss off a bunch of people who try to play it.

Who will play (with?) this monstrosity anyway? What is their target audience? I am somewhat freaked out by the premise of the game: real people are supposed to be imaginary friends to a robot. Having a real-life imaginary friend would probably be a more fulfilling experience than having to soothe a melodramatic facsimile of a human with a focus-group-designed personality.

However, being an imaginary friend is a fascinating thing to try to simulate in a game. All the weird hand gestures, voice and face recognition and all that shit are irrelevant complications of the premise/promise. And now that I think about it, the premise is not much different than any adventure game ever. Only here it is more unfocused and lacking in gaminess. In LEC games the characters even acknowledge they're sometimes compelled to do crazy things that they don't really want to do. I dunno if it is Guybrush or Manny or Bernard who basically acknowledges the player as a kind of conscience that is guiding him along.

This should've been a Willy Beamish-type game. Maybe then it would have a point of some sort.

[Denial]

I'd still be curious to see if Milo and Kate actually comes out as a game. I've played with Kinect a bit (although in a very controlled environment), and what I was able to do was a lot more basic than the stuff in that first demo - I have a hunch that Molyneux is absolutely sincere in his desire to see it released, but that it's running at the edges of what Kinect can do under optimal conditions, and quirks in people's voices/living rooms/competence to set it up might cause problems which Microsoft are understandably reluctant to see reported in a big game launch early on in the technology.

Molyneux has a reputation for making statements about Lionhead/MGSE games which don't entirely stack up in the final product, which might make him seem like a salesman or an idealist, I guess depending on where you stand. I think Milo and Kate's useful, at least - because it's making a case for Kinect games which aren't variations on sports games without a Wiimote, Nintendogs without a stylus or Rock Band: Human Leg Edition. If you put a simplified version of this kind of mechanic into, say an Alpha Protocol sort of game, and got it working, it could do some interesting gameplay things.

[Kolzig]

Milo is dead, his body is rotting in Molyneux's basement!

[MrHoatzin]

Good riddance.

[Orv]

Milo is dead, his body is rotting in Molyneux's basement!

Finally this topic can go die in a fi-. . .oh.

[Irishjohn]

Thank God. Although it's not like Kinect and Playstation move have suddenly become less annoying. I'm going home to turn on my wii.

[Salacious Snake]

Thank God. Although it's not like Kinect and Playstation move have suddenly become less annoying. I'm going home to turn on my wii.

I like the idea of turning on a Wii as an act of defiance.

[miffy495]

I've been playing mine more lately anyhow. Aside from a quick go at Rock Band, I can't remember the last time I turned on my 360, and aside from signing up for streaming Netflix, ditto for PS3. So much Wii gaming though. Still waiting on someone to make Time Crisis with the balance board as a cover pedal though.

[Erkki]

I hadn't seen that TED demonstration before. God, that was awful.