A Sirious Look at iGames and Voice Commands

So, when Siri came out on the iPhone 4 I thought it was a sign of the Robot Apocalypse. Hey, it's 2012. I gots Doomsday on the brain. It's more realistic than my fear of Escarmageddon, when we're all going to be destroyed by snails.

You laugh now...

Anyconspiracy, I have taken the time to test out this "Siri" and I have come to the conclusion that it is not yet intelligent enough to be able to conquer the world. Heck, it doesn't even know that the first Mega Man game came out in 1887.

The nerve of some things.

Anyways, a bit less hypercritical, I assume some of you are wondering what my opinion of Siri is, while the others are simply expecting since it seems that's where this segue is leading.

I guess I need to start out by saying that I'm not really much of an Apple Fanboy. I don't have any particular qualms with the company, I do have an iPod and iTunes and all that iJazz. But in terms of gaming I just can't really get behind it. The elements like the touchscreen and tilt controls aren't unheard of in popular console games, but like everything with video games I prefer it to act as a supplement to the basic "push buttons to win" feel of a game rather than a replacement. It's cool I can select an item from the bottom screen with a touch in the various DS Mario games, but when all I'm doing is tapping the screen as if I were using a button or dragging my finger around as if I were using a mouse without the physical feelings of the true actions, it feels like I'm getting a hampered experience.

It doesn't help that most games, at least most popular ones, seem to be those with no definitive goal. Get the little cannon guy to get as far up the screen as possible, slash the fruit repeatedly and simply hope you get about 50 watermelons at once or something, just doesn't give me the satisfying feeling that comes from reaching the end credits of a game you've been working on for days, weeks, months, or even years. All I feel like I'm doing with these App games is wasting time for the sake of wasting time, with only a rather arbitrary number to show for my efforts.

So yeah, that's my opinion on game apps. But as for Siri? I git it a heartening "Eeh." It certainly isn't bad, there are good uses for it. But it really isn't the whole "amazing do everything for you" it led us to believe, even if that's a fairly unrealistic expectation. But it can set dates! That comes up... sometimes. But honestly, whenever I tell it things it usually just asks he to do a web search for it. I guess all that really does is save typing on those teeny-tine spaces that are supposed to be "keys." Also, any time I mention video games at all it just tells me about places that sell video games that are fairly close to me.

So helpful? Yes. Life changing? No. My two cents, it doesn't buy me an iPhone.