The Grand Gaming Project

[tysond]

Haha 火箭筒 came up the other day in my gym as one piece of equipment looks like one.  

 

I had some vacation time recently and decided to play some games while on holidays.

 

I found that the "find the missing objects" games are quite good at teaching you about various objects (magnifying glass, candle, rope, etc) that you may not encounter in everyday life very often.  Typically they have a list of objects to find and you need to search around a cluttered area.  However, not much repetition so it's better for objects that are simple to learn but you just may not have encountered.

 

I tried playing Plague Inc in Chinese, that was quite good - it's quite text oriented and you need to understand the technology trees.  So lots of terminology about sickness, spread of disease, body functions, evolution, etc.   But ultimately the game is a little repetitive, the random events fairly consequence free, and you memorize the position of all the buttons you need to press in order to win.  Good fun when they mix it up with mind control parasites and planet of the apes simian flu though (and more vocab!).  

 

I tried playing Don't Starve in Chinese.  It was so difficult to stay alive that you didn't really have time to reflect on the characters in the user interface.  

 

Every now and then I go back to "To the Moon" and find it easier and easier to read.  At first I avoided clicking on everything because it was too time consuming to read descriptions of objects, but now it's much easier.  Probably helps that I ran all the dialog through Chinese Text Analyzer and learned most of the high frequency terms via Anki over the last year.

[abhoriel]

There is a chinese (simplified) translation of the playstation version of final fantasy 7. Here is the post with the links:

 

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/1092890290

 

here are the direct download links for the three CD images:

http://u.115.com/file/e6kwj43x#
PS最终幻想7国际版汉化版BIN_A.7z
http://u.115.com/file/aq7trbrw#
PS最终幻想7国际版汉化版BIN_B.7z
http://u.115.com/file/bhd3bw09#
PS最终幻想7国际版汉化版BIN_C.7z

 

 

I find the playstation version better, it had better music than the PC version and also you can emulate the playstation on your phone nowadays so you can play and learn chinese on the go!

 

If you need help downloading it let me know. When downloading things from 115, you need an account first. Once you have an account, to download it, click the orange 存至115云 (store in 115 cloud) button and then you can download it from your 115 cloud.

[imron]

Final fantasy 7 - downloaded from the Cloud. Ha ha!

[munterberg]

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Sims 3 (模擬市民3) is an excellent choice. Covers loads of useful vocabulary, but has no voice acting obviously.

 

When I play games though, I often get tired of whipping out my smartphone every other second, opening Pleco and drawing each character out by hand to get the meaning and pronunciation. How do you guys do it?

 

Ideally, you should have something like Perapera in Firefox where you could just hover over the character and it shows you meaning and pronunciation. But that probably wouldn't be easy to build given that it'd have to run on top of another application and has to recognize the text, but perhaps something like that exists in the depths of the internet ... does anybody know? It'd be such a huge load-off when playing games or using any application in Chinese.

[Hofmann]

About a semester ago I used The Sims 4 in a project. I like it because players are regularly exposed to a lot of everyday vocabulary.

 

To change the game's display language, change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Maxis\The Sims 4\Locale to "zh_TW" or "zh_CN" or run a script. Apparently this is only available in Traditional Chinese. It seems like getting Simplified Chinese might take more than changing a registry key.

 

You might also find that after you do this, text is too small, so you can install a mod to change it.

 

And here's what it looks like

[tysond]

@hofmann Thanks! You can get simplified Chinese for the sims 4? Previously I could only get traditional. I quite like this game and agree it's got plenty of useful vocab in it.

@munterberg There is no easy way to get pop up text in PC games.

I have tried quite a few techniques to extract the text from games. I only succeeded with To The Moon which I think I posted inj this thread. As my level has increased I now find it more acceptable to lookup the few(er) words I need while playing other games.

[Hofmann]

Actually I didn't try the zh_CN setting. I just assumed it would work because those modders seemed to get it working. Maybe they did something fancy. I'll edit my post.

[Loyola]

I have a new game I made for Chinese learning. The game is free, great revision and it has a song that you can learn!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kic.godline

Or look up Kaitlyn in Chinaland on Google play.

[kangrepublic]

So steam are having an Anime weekend sale:

 

Ones with simplified chinese or traditional

 

I went through the list and selected some that might be interesting. They are mostly visual novels which is a genre I haven't tried but might be good for reading and listening practice.

 

Season of 12 colours - £1.79

The Rainy Port of Keelung - £9.49

Oblivious Garden - £5.49

Notch - The Innocent LunA: Eclipsed SinnerS £3.49

Blood Code £4.89

MayJasmine episode 1 - What is God £3.49

BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Extend £17.24

 

I might try The Rainy Port of Keelung, sounds interesting ("where the player will face one of the most traumatic historical events in the history of Taiwan"). Only issue with it is that it doesn't seem to have simplified chinese characters, but there is chinese audio which can be replayed. Guess I will have to learn traditional characters, shouldn't be too hard I guess. Not knowing traditional characters is restricting me a bit when it comes to good content that have Chinese translations such as comics and games so it is probably worth investing in.

 

MayJasmine may be similarly interesting (about the May Tragedy in Indonesia). And Notch might be good, about a creepy town that has had a recent slew of murders.

[kangrepublic]

Oh and of course Gao Kao Love 100 Days if you want to experience the stress and excitement of falling in love 100 days before your gao kao exam! 

 

But it apparently has good reviews.

[mouse]

Thanks for these, I ended up buying a few, even though I can't play many of them at the moment as they're Windows only.

 

I started playing Blood Code and it's not bad so far. Quite generic anime-style visuals which aren't particularly to my taste, but they aren't actively horrible. In fact this game, perhaps not surprisingly, has a very heavy Japanese influence, despite being developed by a Chinese company. The characters all have European names and wear elaborate costumes — lots of crucifixes, etc. If you've played a few Japanese visual novels you'll find this very familiar. 

 

I've only played a bit, but so far the story is engaging enough to keep me going. In terms of using it as a learning resource, all the characters bar the protagonist have spoken dialogue (which as far as I can tell can't be repeated) and you can chose between simplified and full-form characters. Most of the voice acting is fine, but some of the ancillary characters sound like they were read by bored 宅男 and recorded on headset mics. These ancillary characters also often don't have character portraits, which is lazy. The game is a visual novel with dialogue choices, and quite a few of them, which might make replaying it interesting (although it's still too early for me to tell).

 

There are quite a few negative reviews from Chinese players on steam, so maybe it takes a drastic turn for the worse. We shall see.

[kangrepublic]

I bought Season of 12 Colours (as it was so cheap), Notch and The Rainy Port of Keelung. I started The Rainy Port of Keelung but ended up requesting a refund, as it only having traditional characters meant that I was reading way too slowly and I don't have time to invest in learning traditional characters at the moment. (You can ask for a refund on steam games in the first 2 weeks if you've played less than 2 hours which was handy.)

 

'Tis a shame as it looked like it could be interesting. Maybe they'll add simplified characters sometime soon.

 

I probably could've run with it if there was audio for your character and the narrative bits but the audio seemed to be only for other characters (which seemed to be good). Also couldn't replay the audio, I just assumed that you could from some screenshots (which showed a play like button that turned out to be just a skip button).

[mouse]

I took a break from Blood Code after noticing The Coma: Cutting Class is now available in (simplified) Chinese. Unlike Blood Code, The Coma does not have any spoken dialogue, but I fancied playing something where you have the freedom to move around, rather than a visual novel. The game comes from a development company based in South Korea. The story is set in a Korean High School, or rather an other worldly version of the player character's High School.

 

 

The game involves you sneaking around the dark hallways and classrooms of the school, trying to find a way back to the human world. You also have to avoid a murderous antagonist who stalks the corridors looking for you. Like many survival horror games, you find out about the world of the game by reading notes and other written material. One way the game ups the tension is that the game does not pause when you read anything or access your map, and you can be attacked without warning. This is a nice game mechanic, but it makes reading things in Chinese a bit difficult. It does force you to try and read quickly though, which is no bad thing. There are lots of things to read, so you're not likely to go a long time without being exposed to Chinese. However, the translation seems a bit sloppy at times. Often the text is not formatted properly and sometimes Korean words remain untranslated. Also, there is a lack of consistency in some of the vocabulary, with items and rooms sometimes referred to by different words at different points in the game, which makes an already confusing game a bit frustrating. I'm not entirely sure how good the translation is — I'd have to ask a native speaker — but it does seem a bit off sometimes. It's not something that hurt my understanding, it was just a feeling I got.

 

 

However these are small complaints. Over all, if you like this kind of game and you want to read more Chinese, then you can't go wrong by picking this one up. There are dialogues, descriptions of items, and copious notes written by different characters, The visuals are great and the story is engaging. It's also appropriately stressful, despite the threat getting somewhat repetitive after a while. It's also very reasonably priced.

[Cyath]

Hello, great to know people besides me are learning Chinese from video games! Right now I am playing Hearthstone to learn Chinese, since I already know the names of all the cards in English. It's been proving reasonably effective.

 

My strategy at present is to find a game that I already know in English, so when I play the Chinese version, it's automatically translated inside my head. Trouble is, I am quite picky about the games I want to play, so I am looking for suggestions.

 

Would also be open to finding a good game in Chinese, but so far my searches have turned up with nothing. Chinese games typically don't have the production values of Japanese/American ones, or so I've found.

 

Ideally would want to play FF14 in Chinese, but I think that the Chinese version is region locked. 

[ZhangKaiRong]

Ideally would want to play FF14 in Chinese, but I think that the Chinese version is region locked.

I don't know about the PC version, but the PS3 version is playable on Chinese servers if you have a HK/Singapore/Taiwan PSN account and buy the game for those accounts. I tried it at release, that time it worked, but I could only get traditional character set though.

 

I plan to buy the HK edition of FFXV to PS4 as it has Traditional Chinese and Korean subs included, that would be a great source of fun and learning.

[Cyath]

I have the PC version of FF14 and would not like to restart the entire game again. I think thanks to the Great Firewall it's region locked?

 

Ambivalent about FF15 right now. Also don't have a PS4. 

[ZhangKaiRong]

Does anybody know whether Final Fantasy VI has a Chinese version? I just started to play the Asian version of Final Fantasy XV which has Chinese subtitles, but only 繁体字 provided in the game, and due to the fast gameplay I cannot finish reading the sub. I know this is rather an issue for me, who have quite limited self-studied knowledge on traditional characters, but still annoying.

I thought that I would play FF VI with traditional Chinese subs, and speed up my JRPG vocab and character recognition. I think FF VI would be a good choice, taking that I have played it several times, and mostly know the dialogues. Being a traditional game from the good old 90s, you can control the textboxes as well.

[mouse]

It's on the App Store in full-form and simplified characters. A lot of people don't like the way they updated the sprites, though. You can still get a ROM of the GBA 漢化版 version here. Here's some screenshots:

 

 

 

[ZhangKaiRong]

Thank you, mouse! The GBA ROM will be useful, as I have a PSP with CFW that can emulate GBA games

I can imagine that the Android/iOS version of FF VI is horrible - I downloaded the FF V before to my Android, and it is a very bad port of the original SNES version in terms of sprites, and it also drains the battery of my HTC One m8 crazy fast, so it's only a plausible solution if you have an external battery or you sit at home charging your phone.

[Leirosa]

I just finished up a playthrough of that FF6 translation recently and found it very manageable despite being in simplified (I focus on traditional). The hardest part was keeping track of the names of useful rages, where I had to resolve the issue by only picking up a few really good ones. That same site mouse linked to has reference guides with the chinese names for everything if you need to check anything.

 

I would suggest patching over it with the sound restoration and color restoration patches for a closer experience to the original (better music and less washed out graphics). They patched the translation over the US rom, so use the US version patches (the translation is still based on the Japanese, though).