Inside Xbox Live: Voice
Time to Speak Out
Imagine the setting: A gruelling game on XboxLive with your pals sees you (just) clinch victory from the jaws of defeat. What are your friends doing? What are they screaming at the TV? How hard did that controller hit the floor? Imagine no more... it’s time to turn up the volume with voice on Xbox Live.
From Taunts to Tactics
Armed with your trusty Xbox Communicator headset, you can talk in pretty much every Xbox online enabled game out there. How you use it and what you say will depend on who you’re playing with, what you’re playing, and how you’re playing it. In team-based games, talking with team-mates to coordinate moves and plan attacks will prove vital. However, go solo and use your voice to start the banter – it might just put your opponents off their stride.
Silence is Served
You may come across some gamers who you just aren’t in the mood to listen to. They maybe loud and coarse, you may be feeling delicate – whatever your mood, you needn’t stop playing because of the volume of others. To silence any players in your game, head to the in-game menu, find the player list and find the perpetrator of noise. Hit ‘mute’ and rest your weary ears.
Dress up your Voice
No, it’s nothing kinky – there’s a feature on Xbox Live called Voice Masking. This is the ability to manipulate the sound of your voice using the Xbox Communicator – from a robot to a meathead. There’s only one real reason for this feature – for fun. If you use it to abuse it, take it from us, you’ll get ripped apart.
Leave a Message
It’ll only take a couple of minutes before you start chatting with people on Xbox Live. If you fancy asking them to join your Friends List, you can send them an invite with a Voice Message attached! Try to think up something that they won’t forget in a hurry...
Match Preparation
Sometimes you’ll need to get together with your team to firm up tactics before the game starts – who goes where, does what and when. On Xbox Live, you can do this easily - just head into your Dashboard and invite your friends to come and chat.
And so we draw to an end, our vision for voice in gaming well underway... if you haven’t tried it verbal yet, give it a go – what have you got to lose? Aside from your dignity, that is. Seriously, it’s only through talking as you play that you really capture the full flavour of gaming on Xbox Live – the cultural differences, the banter and camaraderie, the yells of victory and the cries of defeat.
It’s not to be missed. Try it, you just might like it.
