Computer games for learning?

[zedar]

Hi,

I've found a shop selling a lot of Chinese computer games in my city. Being a keen gamer im hoping someone can recommend a fun single player game with plenty of mandarin voice and text. Any adventure/rpg would be great

[simonlaing]

I played Sanguo 3 I think like 5 years ago.

You had to conquer cities which produced soldiers and heros.

My Chinese was still pretty poor back then but I learned the meaning of the character's special abilities through trial and error.

Would have been much better if I had been able to understand everything. Most Chinese games come with written commands and not so many with spoken ones.

There was a recent San guo action game where you are a hero with a couple of body guards and you fight armies. After killing 5 bad dudes you can do a super move. Your choice of character is key, some are faster short range guys , others are strong, and most have some kind of range weapon. You can ride horses and eat mantou for power ups. The toughest part is beating the big bosses. usually 2-3 on each level. These give you the most exp though and help you level up.

The game play gets a bit repetitive though it is cool that like chinese kungfu you can attack 5 guys at once.

The other Chinese games other than MMPG are casuall games like paopao tang bubble gum, there's a mario cart, a dance game and a 3 on 3 basketball game.

It has been a while since I played. Having a wife who doesn't like smoke cuts down on the net bar time.

I haven't played a Chinese NPG but I think they exist.

have fun,

Simon

[necroflux]

You might give World of Warcraft a shot - I played the Chinese version for a month or two and forced myself to read and translate everything I saw on screen. Not a lot of useful language by any means, but as a means to practice character recognition it's at least halfway interesting. To some extent you have to understand the mission text to know how to complete it, so it works pretty well. A bonus is joining up with a clan, you can chat with other people, but again the language people use in-game is pretty repetitive and not hugely useful in a real-world context.

[mirgcire]

Has anyone tried zon yet?

I doubt there is enough action for a "keen gammer", but it does sound interesting.

[zedar]

Thanks for the recommendations, just the kind of information I was after.

necroflux: I used to play wow, and have been considering playing the latest expansion.

Do you know if blizzard let IP addresses cross servers? Can I play on asian servers from Australia?

I think I would have to buy wow/BC/Wotlk clients all in mandarin and start fresh on an asian server. That would be fine though to mix learning and playing, and probably because I already know the game reasonably well in english, I could guess a lot of the meaning.

mirgcire: Just read the zon info, I'll try it out, looks promising.

simonlaing: Sounds like my kind of game, ill see if my shop has the new version of it you mentioned