It’s that slightly awkward time of year for university students, exam period. We really really should be revising more but now that we don’t live at home there’s no one to keep an eye on us and if you’re in your first year all you need is a pass, right? So no doubt you have created the perfect breeding ground for procrastination, however can procrastination not also be productive? Technically, no it cannot, but despite this fact here is a guide to revising with video games.
Maths: In order to revise for maths you should play a game from the brain training franchise for the DS. Although filled with only small tasks and computations, playing these will reduce human error, and so may just save you making a small numerical mistake in your exam.
Politics: What better way to revise political theory than to practice it in real time strategy games like Civilisation IV or Democracy II? Although perhaps restricted by the frame works set out in the games, you may just find yourself using political jargon as you play through.
Economics: It is safe to say economists know everything and are running the world around us, are student economists ready to take on this task or do they still need to paddle around in the safety of text books? Let us find out by making them play Sim City and seeing if they can run a successful and sustainable city and society.
Biology: I expect the game Spore is probably on the curriculum already. Biology students it’s time to stop reading about life, animals, ecology and evolution and start living it. More precisely it’s time to play Spore; you will see evolution right before your eyes. Put that in your exam.
History: It’s time to take control of all those armies you probably learn about in lectures in Age of Empires II. I don’t know if your course leader has said yet but you can do a cheat and get a little car.
Architecture: Now you lucky bunch get to play Assassin’s Creed II; you’ll be scaling a huge variety of buildings in different cities in renaissance Italy, it is really quite breath taking. Also you get to meet Leonardo da Vinci, who as it turns out was probably gay. History people, if you are still reading, you could also learn a thing or two from this game.
Law: Now what better way to learn different laws than to break them, how about all you Law students rampage around in a Grand Theft Auto game reciting the laws you are currently breaking, or perhaps what sentence you might get for shooting that old lady in the face. You could even imagine the court trial once you are caught. Sounds fun to me.
English: It is proven that reading books will improve your spelling and even writing style as a whole; perhaps the same could be said for games? I’m going to say it definitely could and is, what with games like the 1991 hit Zero Wing reading off dialogue such as ‘All your base are belong to us’ and the cutting edge reply of ‘WHAT YOU SAY!’. Truly, 1991 was the year video games took the literary world by storm.
Journalism: How about pretending to be a journalist in Microsoft Word, because that’s the closest you’re ever going to get.
Nutrition: As far as I’m concerned I just made up a subject, but I’m not going to check so any nutrition students out there should play Pac Man. You see the subject nutrition is all to do with eating and In Pac Man you eat little white dots to get points, also if you eat a cherry, which is fruit and so good for you, you can chase all the little ghosts around.
Physics: In Half Life you play a physicist. Also one time I saw the term ‘Half Life’ in a chemistry book, that turned out to be a funny day.
Chemistry: You should play Half Life because I saw the term in a chemistry book once, it’s also pretty cool how you can crow bar a dead body and see it burst.
Biology again: All you students should play Half Life, you can crow bar a dead body and see it burst.
So there is the revision plan, keep it with you. Good luck everyone.
Daniel Rowbotham
Related posts: