Mass Effect 3 Gets XBox Kinect Function and Demo Date ~ Pare News

Thank you for using rssforward.com! This service has been made possible by all our customers. In order to provide a sustainable, best of the breed RSS to Email experience, we've chosen to keep this as a paid subscription service. If you are satisfied with your free trial, please sign-up today. Subscriptions without a plan would soon be removed. Thank you!

A new Mass Effect 3 trailer has hit the Internet showcasing the highly-anticipated action role-playing-game’s new Kinect functionality.

The video shows players using their voices to give commands to allies, pick up guns or even shoot weapons, activate special abilities and throw grenades.

It’s unclear if players can also move their characters and control all aspects of the game, including menus and Mass Effect‘s signature conversation trees. From the looks of the video there appears to be a very slight lag from when a command is given to when the action occurs. This is understandable since the player has to finish saying “sub-machine gun,” for example, before their avatar actually pulls out the gun.

That said, it looks like the Kinect, Xbox’s gesture and voice-based peripheral, does a pretty good job of controlling gameplay in Mass Effect 3. It could be fun to give verbal commands to your comrades though we’re less psyched about yelling at ourselves to open doors or fire weapons. The game will also be available for PlayStation 3 and PC though no word if gesture-based controls, such as the PlayStation Move, will be available on those platforms.

Fans itching to try the game will have to wait until Feb. 14 when the demo for Mass Effect 3 will be available for download.

The Mass Effect games have always been a careful balance of first-person shooter gameplay and role-playing game-style leveling. The branching narratives, which the user can influence through conversation trees, add another layer, letting players craft how their in-game avatar reacts to situations. The inclusion of Kinect voice control may not only speed up the action (no more fiddling with buttons and menus to change weapons or throw a grenade), but it could lead to far richer gameplay for future Mass Effect updates.

Check out the video above and look past the obvious cheerleading to see how Kinect will work with Mass Effect 3. Is the Kinect functionality a selling point or does it look like a headache? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.