8 Genius Ideas Wasted On Bad Video Games

PS2 survival horror game Lifeline was nothing if not a brave, perhaps foolish attempt to do something radically different. 

Set onboard a space hotel as it becomes overrun with monsters, the player is tasked with guiding protagonist Rio to safety through voice commands administered via the PS2's microphone.

You never control Rio directly whatsoever, but rather tell her where to move, and how to both solve puzzles and attack enemies, while also being able to speak with her in a limited capacity.

It was certainly an ambitious setup for a game released in 2003, when console voice chat was still very much in its infancy, which may also explain why the game doesn't fully work.

For starters, the voice recognition software is painfully creaky, where any accent outside of received pronunciation is basically deemed too "exotic" to produce reliable results.

But for its time this was a huge swing, even if the maddeningly unwieldy voice recognition likely makes it too frustrating for most to see through to the end. 

It's easy to see how such a game would fare better with the more sophisticated technology of today, but 20 years ago we just weren't quite there yet.