Play Video Games You Lazy Bastard!

One of the biggest hobbies or interests in the world is video games. I know more people that play video games than don’t. Now that we’ve identified video games as a common time sucker for most people, we need to make that laziness (relaxiness? :P) productive!

Guild Wars – Language Toggle

Recently I started looking for games I could play in Japanese. The problem is that it can be VERY tedious and frustrating to hop on a pure Japanese MMO where there is no English for help at all. Sure, there are registration guides, but once you’re in the game there is so much text it becomes daunting. Then I stumbled upon a feature I never even knew Guild Wars had: The Language Toggle.

Okay, so check this out. Apparently Guild Wars can change languages (didn’t know this earlier, at least not that it could be changed to Japanese). But the icing on the cake is that in the control options you can set a key that when pressed and held, will revert all text on screen back to the English, until the button is released in which it goes right back to Japanese. All I can say is : H O L Y S H I T

For me, this is a game changer. If I hop onto the international or Japanese GW server, I can also type Japanese into the main channels, etc. The only thing that needs to be pointed out, which I found out through trial and error is that you should not set the toggle button to something on your mouse or something easy to click. The problem with making it so easy is that you use it to often. Set the control to the furthest button (that does nothing) on the right side of your keyboard. That way, you have to take your right hand up and off the mouse to reach over an click it. Trust me, it does wonders to make sure you don’t just keep using English.

If you play GW and would like to add me, my name/handle is : Zyaga Nihongo

Dynasty Warriors

Dynasty Warriors is a game I hadn’t played in years. The last time I played DW was DW3 and I kind of got addicted. I played the game every day for months (summer break, so wasn’t in school) until I beat the game. By beat, I mean leveled up every character to their max, unlocked the best weapon for each character, and unlocked every single horse/item/trinket in the game. Yeah..

Well, now I’m back at it. Not quite so obsessed now, but the point of the previous story is that I’ve decided to play a game I know well, only in Japanese. It’s much easier to play or do something in Japanese, that you’ve already done. That’s not to say I won’t have to read things, figure things out, etc since I’ll be playing DW6 instead, but it’ll be easier than having to learn/comprehend the game. Think of Final Fantasy Tactics. Learning the gameplay in English can be a bit confusing (to learn to play well, with strategy, etc). Now think of jumping into a game like that with only a beginner level foundation in Japanese. It’s just way too much to handle. It’s going to discourage you, by being tedious instead of fun.

But a game like DW, especially having played it before, is so easy. In fact, you could not know any Japanese and just guess your way around. How do you think kids play games when they don’t understand words? Sure, sometimes they ask their parents, but often times they just click things to see what happens. That’s part of the suspense and surprise! However, we adults dislike getting things wrong and we hate the unknown.

Learn to be a kid! DW is so easy to play. You just run around killing people. The map points out everything you need to know. But at the same time, eventually you’ll learn words for menu’s or names, or whatever. The most important thing is you’re getting used to Japanese itself. It won’t scare you off so much. Just remember, it doesn’t have to be DW. Just pick a game that has those qualities of being easy to play without having to read a fucking tome of text. Generally, aim for a game you’ve already played before as well!