Beyond The Mouse and Keyboard

For PC gamers, when playing certain games on the keyboard, occasionally pressing the wrong key could cause disastrous results. Instead of pressing a key to crouch, a mistakenly pressed key causes a grenade to be thrown. Or, if one is attempting to reload, a character moves to the side. And if a gamer wants to command a full army to attack and presses the wrong key, there’ll be no attack. Although, those are slight mistakes, when playing an intense game, there is no room for mistakes. The Dragon Gaming Speech Pack by Nuance actually helps prevent those errors by carrying out voice commands while playing the game.

The Dragon Gaming Speech Pack is a digital addition that works with Dragon Naturally Speech: Home Edition which accompanies it. With its own headset in the package, Naturally Speech is the first product to require installation. Though it sounds like it might be a hassle to install, everything goes quickly. The only downside is that you get to select only a maximum of three games.

Each game that is compatible to the product has its own unique voice commands rather than having a gamer simply repeat “shoot” or “move forward”. For instance, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 responds to the gamer’s commands of hold, crouch, regroup, grenade, open and clear, frag and clear, flash and clear, night vision, heat vision, deploy smoke and so on. While Starcraft II has commands to build structures, train units, attack, move, patrol, stop, hold, and special abilities such as cloak field and blink. The commands are vast giving the gamer more time to concentrate on strategy and macro. Repeating words for clarification barely happens. Gaming Speech is very keen to picking up and understanding terms that are spoken as long as the gamer isn’t having a current conversation while using the product or blurting the words too fast.

Dragon Gaming Speech Pack actually works with several popular titles, which include a flight sim, commanding hordes of alien armies, and a modern war in first-person – Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Flight Simulator X, Mass Effect 2, Medal of Honor, Pacific Poker, Splinter Cell Conviction, Second Life, Starcraft II, Warhammer: 40,000, and World of Warcraft. The technology isn’t new but playing it with these titles is a new experience. It even saves time memorizing hotkeys or generic keystrokes. The product is a fun experience.