Adventure Gamers - Forums

My first language is not English and I often tell people I polished my English by playing adventure games back in the day. So I feel somewhat qualified to throw my recommendations out there.

You mention the first Monkey Island game. You should definitely look into getting and playing the second and third as well. I can’t recommend the fourth one with clear conscience because of doubts both about its quality and about how simple (or culturally-independent) the language there is. Add Tales of Monkey Island there as well.

TimovieMan’s recommendations are great - the Simon the Sorcerer and the Indy games should be quite good for you too.

A list of games right off the top of my head that might be simple enough are Beneath a Steel Sky (maybe, free on GOG), the two Bone games, Dragonsphere (free on GOG), Flight of the Amazon Queen (free here), Full Throttle, Heart of China, the early King’s Quest games or their remakes (not sure about the later ones), Loom, Rise of the Dragon, the Syberia games, Teenagent (free on GOG)... And most of these games are pretty good as games as well. (I might misremember the language style in some of these game - hopefully, people will correct me)

But seriously, if you liked and understood The Longest Journey, the sky’s the limit for you. Your difficulties with Sam and Max and DoTT might come from the fact that their language is loaded with a lot of American cultural references which are not immediately accessible to non-Americans. Good luck!

TimovieMan - 10 March 2013 03:06 PM

Meh, I still win…

Not to mention the difference in post quality!!!

On that list, I am between Marek and Agustin Cordes on one side and Emily Morganti on the other. Talk about being in distinguished company

Edit: I second all Iznogood said while I was slowly typing the above post.

Advie - 10 March 2013 01:21 PM

chrissie - 10 March 2013 01:10 PM

Hopefully someone will come along without english as their first language to help a lot more!

 

Hopefully .. Chrissie ?!
                 

chrissie - 10 March 2013 01:40 PM

Hi Advie, I don’t know why you think that is so funny!

I think Advie was making fun of you based on the (completely groundless) idea that it’s wrong to use “hopefully” to mean “let’s hope that…” instead of just “in a hopeful way.” It’s just one of those language myths some people cling to.

You recommended children’s games - as a non 1st language speaking person you could surely stop taking the piss & be more constructive because you just don’t play children’s games (or do you?) so why can’t you be more helpful?

Actually, I think children’s games might be a good idea. Eco Quest, Pepper’s Adventures in Time, the Freddi Fish titles… Nice games with simple English.

And I wouldn’t stay away from comedy, either. In more cartoony, comedic games, the visuals can often help you understand what’s going on when you lose track of the dialog.

When I was first learning English, I played Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Quest for Glory, Kyrandia/Hand of Fate, Tex Murphy, Dagger of Amon Ra, Conquest of the Longbow, Leisure Suit Larry, Full Throttle, etc. Mainly, not knowing the language well just makes every game harder.

Simultaneous subtitles + spoken audio is a must - nowadays almost all adventure games have it, but that wasn’t the case back then - and it helps teach pronunciation as well.

When I play games in French (and I’m NOT fluent in French—only took French classes in high school), I like having subtitles and conversations that pause until I click past them. That way they don’t disappear before I’m finished deciphering them—and I have time to consult a dictionary (or online translator) if there is some word or words that I don’t understand.

So maybe some of you can remember whether any of the adventure games you’ve played recently had this feature. Unfortunately most of the games I’ve played lately are not adventures, and the adventures I have played recently don’t pause the subtitles.

I was busy until now, and when I looked again   I was a very Surprised from the number of answerss. again I was surprised to see how many here are not speaking English as a first language.
I have no words to thank you all, Especially not an English words.   

I don’t think I’ll play children games. I learn English now in some other ways and I play AG in my free time, for fun, if I learn English too at the same time, well, I dont say no. If I’ll find that playing adventure game its helpful for my purpose of english study I’ll do that.

about the other recommends, I’ll try some , and thank you.

I see that everybody are very enjoy here, so don’t let me disturb you,  go on. 

and thank you all again, I’m happy you want help me.

The Carol Reed games have quite simple English in my opinion. I am also not a native speaker but my English is quite good so I may be wrong. On the other hand, if you could follow TLJ these games should be doable for you. There is some reading involved in playing these games but the texts always stay on the screen as long as you want them to and the pronounciation of the people who speak is clear and they use short, easy to understand sentences. They do have a slight Swedish accent though (the games being from there) but nothing to be afraid of. They are subtitled as well, so even if they are hard to follow you can still understand what they are saying.

Carol Reed may have simple English but I find the stories difficult to follow sometimes. Keeping track of who’s who, who’s doing what and why, and what I’m supposed to be doing is hard for me. But I’ve never been good at figuring out murder mysteries and can’t stand those types of books or films (unless it’s Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes). It’s surprising to me that I like the Carol Reed games at all, but I do

Back to the topic - For a game with simple english, I would recommend The Dig - no confusing jokes, a very simple plot, easy to understand. The Runaway games should be easy enough for you and you could also try something like Return to Mysterious Island which doesn’t have a lot of speech or writing. Same goes for Bad Mojo.