Six franchises that would rock your controller-free life…and one that wouldn’t

If the Nintendo Wii has proven anything, it’s that you can’t just bolt on motion controls to a game not intended to have them and expect it to be any good. So we’ve mind-melded and thought outside the box, using what we know about Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal to select a handful of top titles that would be enhanced with smart Natal support. Plus, we suggest five better names for this stunning new tech. Heck, our suggestions can’t be any worse than “Project Natal”!

WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw

What We Want to See: Signature moves are all the rage in the WWE, so why not use Natal to invent your own and use them on real athletes in the game? Ohhhh yeeeaaaaah!

Why It’d Be Cool: Pro wrestling is all about cheesy, staged fun. And what would be funnier than muscleless, skeletal nerds (like Ryan) doing flex poses in their living rooms after winning their matches? Or blocky, pale ones (like Corey), for that matter? Of course, parents and downstairs neighbors would likely go mental from gamers stomping the floor for their power moves, but series publisher THQ would laugh all the way to the bank.

Odds of Happening: 1:3 by WWE SvR 2011, 1:2 by WWE SvR 2012

Fable

What We Want to See: Pelvic thrusts! Farting! Flipping the bird! The heroes of Albion aren’t known for being chatterboxes, and communication in this fantasy action-adventure has always been expressed in the form of D-pad–driven gestures. Natal would be perfect for replicating these or creating your own.

Why It’d Be Cool: If you can’t have fun dancing, juggling, and flipping off your TV and being applauded by the onscreen characters for doing so, then you should probably try another entertainment medium, because videogaming clearly isn’t for you.

Odds of Happening: 2:1 for Fable III — Peter Molyneux is one of Natal’s biggest champions. It’s inevitable.

Sam & Max

What We Want to See: Using your hand/finger as a mouse cursor, picking up objects in the environment, and making a pistol with your thumb and forefinger to fire Sam’s hand cannon — all using Natal, while listening to the inane comedic ramblings of the wisecracking freelance police duo.

Why It’d Be Cool: “Finally, a way to instruct a character to pick his nose that makes the player feel as ashamed as the character does!” joked Telltale creative director Dave Grossman about our Natal idea. ”It’s a great leap forward for immersion gaming. Though I can’t quite figure out how we’ll get it to emulate Sam and Max’s famous no-hands driving style…” Added Sam & Max lead designer Brendan Ferguson: “Now when you throttle a punk, you really throttle a punk. (Free punk included with every Sam & Max purchase.)”

Odds of Happening: 1:1 for Sam & Max Season 4

Mass Effect

What We Want To See: Simple: we want to read Shepard’s dialogue out loud so that we’re actually talking to NPCs. And Natal could pick up our facial expressions and/or tone of voice and detect if we’re being angry, nervous, or tense, with the NPCs reacting accordingly. Now that’s role-playing!

Why It’d Be Cool: To us, this would be something of a holy grail for RPGs. Being able to actually converse with game characters — and having Natal be able to interpret your vocal inflections — would change everything for the genre, even if you’re reading off of a pre-written script. In fact, whoever does it first (BioWare, Bethesda, or someone else) is going to take the industry by storm.

Odds of Happening: 1:2 for Mass Effect 3

Dead Rising

What We Want to See: Holding the hands of innocents as you guide them back to the safehouse, or mimicking any of Dead Rising’s myriad weapons with your hands as you slay countless zombies, would be pretty sweet. Wielding air chainsaws would be particularly great.

Why It’d Be Cool: Did you not read the bit about “wielding air chainsaws”? And we think it would really add to the frantic feeling if you had to stick one arm out to hold your rescued citizen’s hand as you used your other hand to steer your way through the zombie horde with the gamepad. To stop and fight, you’d have to put your other hand back on the controller, releasing your in-game grasp on the bystander.

Odds of Happening: 1:10 for Dead Rising 2, 1:3 for Dead Rising 3 (if the series becomes a trilogy)

Mechwarrior

What We Want to See: In proper BattleTech lore, the Mech pilot’s body controls the 30-foot-tall robot’s movements from the cockpit. Natal could allow us to do the same in the upcoming MechWarrior videogame (see page 08), using our arms to fire weapons and our legs to move the metal monstrosity.

Why It’d Be Cool: Theoretically, MechWarrior could be done entirely controller-free — if Natal’s voice recognition is used to select weapons (“Select Gauss Cannon!”) and target your foes (“Lock on arm!”). We’d pay $60 to try it out.

Odds of Happening: 1:2 for MechWarrior. “We’ve certainly spent some cycles thinking about it,” says Piranha Games boss and MechWarrior director Russ Bullock.

And One That Shouldn't: Any Sports Game

What We Don’t Want to See: Anything resembling Wii Sports or EA’s Wii Play line of sports titles.

Why It Wouldn’t Be Cool: As Wii owners have learned, it’s not fun to repetitively throw a faux football 100 times in an hour. In fact, it’s the polar opposite of fun. It’s a tennis elbow, bicep tear, or Tommy John ligament replacement surgery waiting to happen. We can feel our tendons swelling up already at the mere thought of it. And what kind of pansy is your girlfriend going to think you are when you tell her exactly how you hurt yourself?

Odds of Not Happening: Zero. Prepare for the Natal sports suck-fest.