When War offered me the chance to review Unknown Number, I was delighted to accept the title, thinking I was about to tackle another indie revelation with an original idea.
Let’s be clear: the idea exists — only heaven knows how long it’s been since I played a game controlled by voice commands (by the way: the first and last were “Tom Clancy’s Endwar”, which I really enjoyed) — yet, exploiting this particular mechanic in a sort of spy story where you’re directly involved... The execution, however, really falters.
Starting with the user interface: I must stress that this is my personal opinion, but the psychedelia of the backgrounds and the phone didn’t drive me mad. It seemed to me like an unlikely decision by Godolphin Games to include it solely to add a sense of dynamism to an adventure that wouldn’t lose much by being more “static”. Players with a risk of epileptic episodes, beware: Unknown Number is not suitable for you (to be honest, it’s even explicitly mentioned in the game’s Steam description, but I genuinely don’t understand this artistic choice, which, besides being subpar, excludes some people from being able to play this title).
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For us non-native English speakers, there’s another flaw: it often happens that during gameplay, you have to listen to (and note down) rather long strings of phone numbers or passwords. That would be fine if the game were translated, or at least if subtitles were available. Unfortunately, however, the subtitles seem to be completely non-functional (not as shown in the video above — tested on two different resolutions across multiple monitors) and appear to be generated automatically by some kind of glitchy system, displaying a word every hundred characters — and at the wrong moment.
But let’s get to the game mechanics: as we said, Unknown Number is a talk-to-play. The game consists of segments where you must dial numbers and enter passwords (by tapping the phone’s keys or speaking), visit websites via the in-game phone browser, answer simple yes/no questions, and speak structured phrases: and here’s where things go wrong. During a segment where the player must repeat a vow, I tried saying "your mother smells a lot" and it was picked up as a correct phrase by the voice recognition algorithm (no need to say that the vow wasn’t about a mother and certainly not in Italian).
Now, I admit that the first time I played Unknown Number, I did so with the laptop’s array of microphones, but the second time I was in a quiet environment using a standard headset, and the terrible voice recognition improved only slightly (it no longer misinterpreted my “yes” as “no” and vice versa, at least...). Kotaworld contacted Godolphin Games for a troubleshooting session, and we must admit the developer responded promptly and courteously, but we were asked to test again in an even quieter environment with a better microphone. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we also take into account gamers who don’t have access to high-end peripherals or a dedicated gaming room, so I cannot say I’m satisfied with this response.
Mention of disgrace to the in-game browser, which is essentially an internet browser... with security issues attached and connected.
Unfortunately, shortly after its official release, my verdict matches that of the teachers who tell your parents: "his son is intelligent, but doesn't study".
