Learning English with adventure games
What is an adventure game?
An adventure game is a kind of computer game which is similar to a movie. There is always a story and the main character (usually a person, such as a detective or a pirate). The difference is that you don't just watch — instead, you control the main character. You use your mouse or keyboard, and your character moves around in the game world, looks at things, picks them up, uses them, and talks to other characters. Your character also talks to you. For example, when you tell him to look at something, he will tell you what he sees. You can then use this information to decide what to do next.
Why adventure games are good for your English
As an English learner, you want to see and hear lots of English sentences. Adventure games are ideal, because they are based on dialogue. Your character talks to himself, talks to you and talks to other characters. Everything depends on dialogue.
When you play an adventure game:
- You program your brain with good English. When you play an adventure game, you have contact with a large number of correct sentences in real, conversational English. These sentences are not only spoken (as on TV). In many adventure games you can also turn on subtitles. If you do, you will hear the pronunciation and see the spelling at the same time. In effect, the sentences stick in your head more strongly, and you gain the ability to produce similar sentences yourself.
- You improve your understanding of spoken English. In modern adventure games, you can hear all the characters speak real English. The dialogue is easier to understand than in movies: it is slower, clearer, and you can often stop the action and listen to a phrase again. Therefore, playing an adventure game is excellent listening practice.
- You improve your pronunciation. Listening to good spoken English is always good for your pronunciation.
- You increase your motivation. When you play an adventure game, you are in a situation where knowing English makes you feel good. It's simple. If you can understand the dialogue, you know what is going on in the game. This helps you solve the puzzles and understand the humor. You have fun. You teach your brain that "English = pleasure", and your motivation increases!
How to use adventure games?
When you're playing an adventure game, you learn some English even if you don't want to. But of course you can learn even more if you try.
One useful technique when playing an adventure game is very simple: use a dictionary. Pause the game frequently and look up new English words in a good dictionary for learners. You will understand more of the game, and of course you will learn some English vocabulary.
If you are really motivated to learn English, you can write down all the new words. Later, you can add these words to your SuperMemo collection so that you will remember them forever. This is what I did when I was learning English in high school.
If you want to improve your pronunciation, pause the game frequently and try to repeat English sentences as well as you can. This is a great pronunciation exercise, and it's much more interesting than exercises in textbooks. Adventure games make it possible, because the pronunciation in those games is clearer than pronunciation in movies.
If you are especially interested in improving your understanding of spoken English, you can play the game without subtitles. In order to play, you will have to understand spoken language. At first, you will surely have problems, but you will become better and better. Notice that when using this technique, it will be difficult to look up words in a dictionary, because you will not see the words on the screen — you will only hear them.
Recommended games
Which adventure game should you play? I used to have a simple answer: any game from LucasArts. LucasArts adventure games have an intelligent story (more intelligent than most Hollywood movies), excellent humor, beautiful graphics, stirring music, and voices of talented actors. They do something amazing: they suck you in and make you feel a part of another world. When I was 13, I would shiver from excitement whenever I would solve a puzzle in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, often after two days of trying. In high school, I remember I wanted to cry after I reached the end of Grim Fandango.
Unfortunately, LucasArts published its last adventure (Escape from Monkey Island) in 2001, and its last great adventure (Grim Fandango) in 1998. Adventure games have lost popularity. Today, there are fewer games based on dialogue, and more games based on running around and shooting. And most of the LucasArts classics like Day of the Tentacle or Full Throttle look absolutely horrible on today's big LCD screens.
So what should you do? Here are some options:
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Telltale Games have recently released Sam & Max: Season One and Season Two — two mini-series, each containing 5-6 episodes based on the characters of Sam (a dog in a suit) and Max (a hyper-violent rabbit). The characters and the humor are identical to those in Sam & Max Hit the Road by LucasArts (1993). It was not LucasArts' best game, but it was pretty good.
Both games (or "series") have cartoon-like 3-D graphics and run well on modern computers. They have spoken dialogues, and you can also turn on subtitles. One problem is that Sam and Max talk in a very unusual, colorful style, using a lot of words that are difficult even for native speakers. They say things like: "surely the local lawbreakers must be missing our esoteric brand of personalized justice". The language is definitely not for beginners. More information about Sam & Max on Telltale's website.
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The three most recent LucasArts games run in 640x480 resolution, which is (barely) playable on today's computers. They all have spoken dialogues, and you can turn on subtitles. These games are:
- Grim Fandango (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk)
- Curse of Monkey Island (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk)
- Escape from Monkey Island (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk)
Three pieces of advice here:
- On Windows XP and Vista, right-click the game's shortcut, choose Properties, and enable "Windows 95 compatibility".
- Install the latest patch available.
- For 3-D games (Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island), turn on anti-aliasing in your video card settings to avoid jagged lines. For The Curse of Monkey Island, try running the game in ScummVM with 2x scaling. Looks surprisingly good!
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If you are crazy like me, you can run ancient LucasArts games (320x200 resolution) in the ScummVM emulator. You can try finding the CD versions of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and The Dig. These games have versions with spoken dialogues and they are one of the best adventures by LucasArts, with excellent screenplays and great voice acting. Just watch the intro to Full Throttle on YouTube.
I'm crazy enough to play these games full-screen (with 2x scaling) while sitting far away from my monitor. If I sit on a couch and use a mouse with a long cable, I can barely notice the huge blocky pixels :-) You might prefer playing these games on your Pocket PC or Symbian device with ScummVM. They fit perfectly even on small screens.
- You might try looking for action-adventure games which have more dialogue than others. In games like Half-Life or BioShock, you mostly walk around, kill enemies and collect various items, but there are also moments when you listen to other characters or audio/video recordings in the game. Such moments enable you to learn some English, although not as much as in pure adventure games.
