Sort of Learning Japanese
I came across a post on digg.com that talked about a game called Knuckles In China Land. It uses the character Knuckles from the Sonic games and plays out in an RPG style, but the goal of the game is to actually teach the player Japanese. Random encounters are cards instead of monsters, and in the beginning part of the game that I’m playing, the cards have katakana on them. To defeat the encounter you have to type in the meaning of the katakana. These are sounds like da, tsu, ra, chi and so on.
The boss encounters are made difficult by throwing random cards at you that you haven’t seen yet, as well as just throwing several cards at you in the encounter.
I can’t really say how good of a job the game does at teaching the Japanese language. I’m lucky to remember how to say “thank you”. What I can say is that I have visited some websites, such as the Wikipedia entry on the word Katakana and the Japanese version of Amazon.com, and I’ve been picking out the sounds that I recognize. In some cases I have seen some words that are recognizable, like ramen (ラーメン). Who doesn’t know ramen noodles, after all? Hah!
The game is a touch frustrating, however, because I personally feel that it throws too many katakana at you at the beginning. Oh, well, I don’t know exactly how much I’ll learn from this anyway, but it’s an interesting experience none the less. 
Links:
EQ2: Bleh
I find myself thinking, yet again, that I should have followed my initial suspicions.
/vent on
EQ2 never settled well with me. The game play is as unimaginative as it gets, the surroundings that you’re locked into quickly become dull, and there’s still no way to become unique (uniqueness is much less a problem, at least at lower levels, with the new character progression – Feb 07 ‘05).
The vast majority of tasks, wrongly named “quests” in EQ2, are not at all more creative than what you find in Horizons. Considering the wonderful author that now works for Horizons, HZ may very well now have more engaging content! Don’t know what I’m talking about? The author of The Last Unicorn now works for Tulga and is writing content for Horizons. Goodness only knows how that happened…
Anyway, at least the NPCs in EQ2 are able to move around. I suppose they still have that over HZ.
Combat in EQ2 is boring as all get-out. For ten or so levels I’ve been using the same abilities in the same order. There are only a few attacks. Have you ever mentally fallen asleep? You’ll be doing something and then you space off, imagining something completely different from what you’re physically doing, but eventually you suddenly realize that you’re still going through the motions of whatever it was before you mentally nodded off? Yeah, I do that with combat in EQ2 alot. It never gets my character killed. Just hit the same buttons in the same order and you’re good to go…
bleh
This game has zero replay value and it’s a MMORPG. That’s pathetic. Every character that you make will have their hands held through the exact same zones, the exact same quests/tasks, largely in the same order as every other character. – I have to back step here a little, too, because starting a new character is now more interesting. It’s still far from ideal and there’s not a great deal of difference between new characters, but at least there’s now a difference thanks to the racial mentors. However, after the racial mentor’s introduction / tasks it does boil back down to going through the same quests to stop the “invasion force”. Of course, you can skip them and go straight to the mindless grind… – Feb 07 ‘05
I could go on and on, but you’re probably wondering why I’m playing it in the first place if I didn’t like the game at all the previous time around. Well, a pal of mine that I know who moved across country began playing it and theortically we were going to team up, but real-life has pretty much made the game a non-option for him.
So I’ll be cancelling, obviously, but I – again obviously – felt the need to vent.
Oh yeah, the game runs like arse too (my system).
/vent off
bleh,
~Mysk
About
I’d describe myself as a very ecclectic and strange individual. My interests range from the very spiritual to the very technical, having delved into both non-mainstream faiths as well as little bit of Linux. I’ve been called a “hopeless romantic” by a very dear and intelligent woman and I find that quite fitting, and I typically shun social interaction in general.
This blog is a sister blog to Shadows In Motion and will most likely be used for personal posts; what goes on in my life, perhaps some of my writing, random thoughts and so on. Be prepared for some strange ideas!
