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Gaming Forums => General Gaming => Topic started by: Stogi on September 06, 2007, 07:35:39 AM

Title: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 06, 2007, 07:35:39 AM
Hi guys,

I need your help once again. I need help collecting a list of games that pertain to science (for example Trauma Center). I know there are not too many out there, but I would really appreciate any help I could get.

Thanks in advance.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 06, 2007, 07:39:39 AM
Trauma Center is more science fiction but...
Does it actually need to be scientific or can it be just related to science?

E.V.O. for the SNES (Evolution)
SimEarth (Geology, Biology, ecology, planetology, cosmology...)

Ummm...

Carmen Sandiego? Or does Geography not count? &<

Civilization (How the technology tree loosely shows how scientific progress was built upon earlier discoveries?)

Re:Mission? That game was about shooting Cancer cells after all...

Odell Lake on those old AppleIIs... (food chain)
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 06, 2007, 07:59:09 AM
It needs to focus mainly on science. While Trauma Center (and I haven't played farther than four levels) might be lean towards science fiction, what you actually do is very much planted in science.

SimEarth sounds interesting. Geography I wouldn't consider science simply because it is more of a political thing.

What is this Re:Mission game? Sounds interesting. Do you know if there's actually any scientific knowledge based within the game? Like this person's gun; does it use radioactivity to make cancers explode?

Also, I honestly didn't want to mention this because it's not as important, but if these games could focus on cancer that would be great. They don't have to though.

I appreciate your help Kairon!
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 06, 2007, 08:04:01 AM
You're in luck. Re-mission is very much so about cancer...

Here:

Community Site

Game  
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: EasyCure on September 06, 2007, 08:25:51 AM
oh man i think that game is an awesome tool for kids wth cancer to understand what is going on within their bodies. when i first heard of it i was amazed by how heartfelt the developers seemed to be and the goal they wanted to achieve with it. then i thought of how jack thompson could spin it and call it a violent irresponsible game.. i couldnt think of anything but im sure jacko could
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 06, 2007, 08:57:14 AM
Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
You're in luck. Re-mission is very much so about cancer...

Here:

Community Site

Game


Thank you SO MUCH Kairon!

Because of you, my boss is buying me this game and trauma center for Wii!  
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: EasyCure on September 06, 2007, 09:46:45 AM
care to explain in a little more detail what this whole thing is about and why you're getting two free games out of it?
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: vudu on September 06, 2007, 10:00:56 AM
Resident Evil.
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 06, 2007, 10:05:35 AM
Quote
Originally posted by: KashogiStogi
Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
You're in luck. Re-mission is very much so about cancer...

Here:

Community Site

Game


Thank you SO MUCH Kairon!

Because of you, my boss is buying me this game and trauma center for Wii!


Okay, NOW we need some back story.

But Re-mission is free. Make your boss give a donation to the game's suggested charity?
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: King of Twitch on September 06, 2007, 01:41:19 PM
Metroid Prime 3 deals with hoards of unusual bioforms and their histories--even the most dangerous and menacing species.
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: UncleBob on September 06, 2007, 02:04:24 PM
Conway's Game of Life
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: BranDonk Kong on September 06, 2007, 02:09:25 PM
CSI.
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 06, 2007, 03:08:53 PM
Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
Quote
Originally posted by: KashogiStogi
Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
You're in luck. Re-mission is very much so about cancer...

Here:

Community Site

Game


Thank you SO MUCH Kairon!

Because of you, my boss is buying me this game and trauma center for Wii!


Okay, NOW we need some back story.

But Re-mission is free. Make your boss give a donation to the game's suggested charity?


Yeah, I noticed it was free after I said that. We have an oncology department so we'll most likely get it through them.

Anyway, my boss (a professor) is always looking for a new way to attract students (normal students, foreign students that visit, and even high school students who he occasionally deals with) to medicine and so he told me to do some research on games that pertain to science; something that could become a "WOW" factor. I don't know if you guys know, but Oprah opened a new school for girls in South Africa. These girls are visiting a certain university and my boss wants to impress them (and Oprah). These girls are high schoolers and jr. high kids, so anything that could entice these young students to come to medicine is at least worth a look.

So, after showing my boss my findings, he asked if I owned a Wii and I said I did. Then he told me to go purchase it tomorrow and give him notes on how it could or could not be used.

I couldn't help but smile.

Oh ya, he's also looking to buy a Wii if my findings are beneficial (even in the least bit).
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 06, 2007, 04:20:59 PM
You sound like you have a pretty important job there Kashogi. Don't worry, if Trauma Center doesn't wow them, then nothing will. Do you have it already?

Though.... hhmmm... the Wii won't come out in South Africa until October...
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 06, 2007, 04:45:59 PM
Oh, these girls wouldn't take it home if they liked it. It's all part of bringing them back again the following year!


And my job isn't a important as it may seem. I just manage a bunch of things for this professor, whether it be the online courses or random tasks such as this one. I'm still a college student ya know, although I do love working here. I remember last year we had a bunch of students visit from Japan and at the end of the program one of them gave me a samurai sword! We also got drunk together which is fun as hell because I learned some pretty sick drinking games (which have become more valuable than the sword).

I guess it has it's perks...but I would still rather not have a job (but I'm forced to so what can I do?).
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: mantidor on September 06, 2007, 06:25:43 PM
Quote
Originally posted by: UncleBob
Conway's Game of Life




The subject of my failed master's thesis. It's just so amazing, complex systems, cellular automata, all that stuff, but I have to eat and thus I have to work, no research for me in the meantime.

You should certainly check out The Incredible Machine, probably the most awesome game ever, if anything it will teach basic physics, and its just plainly and simply fun.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: oohhboy on September 06, 2007, 07:37:27 PM
Oregan Trail.

"You shot 900000 pounds of meat, but you could only take back 500 pounds".

And that sums up the story as to how the West was won.
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 06, 2007, 08:50:47 PM
Quote
Originally posted by: mantidor
You should certainly check out The Incredible Machine, probably the most awesome game ever, if anything it will teach basic physics, and its just plainly and simply fun.


QFT. The Incredible machine is just a wonderful piece of software. They need to release a Wii version!
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: KDR_11k on September 07, 2007, 04:00:46 AM
SimEarth definitely has a lot of science in it but I'm not sure if the way the game shows the gamestate is informative enough to easily understand what's happening. The whole thing's a planet simulation, it starts with a giant ball of molten rock that cools down and develops oceans, some time after that you get prokaryotes and eukaryotes that then slowly climb the evolutional ladder, become multi-celled, form vertebrates, go on land, evolve into the classes we know and finally produce a sapient species that then goes from the stoneage up to the nanotech age and finally leaves the planet. All of that can happen without you doing anything or you could influence anything from the geology of a given spot to the axial tilt of the whole planet. Hell, you can even hand your favourite species a monolith to make it rapidly advance through the progression or just drop a nuke on Washington for the heck of it.

But as I said, the presentation is fairly abstract, you get a tile view of the planet's surface that can display heights or vegetation (and extra views like temperature, wind, humidity, pressure, ...), you have symbols for animals and people moving around with no easily visible reason, you see icons for "fire" or whatever pop up but that's all you see. You can't look at a city and see what's happening there, you can't see why your mamals are dropping like flies (at least not diectly, you can look at the environment and possibly figure it out though), you don't see volcanoes scorching the cities around them, etc.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 07, 2007, 06:02:29 AM
SimEarth was a really difficult game to experience... basically because the geologic time scale is ridiculously slow for anything exciting to happen quickly, and it's much too easy to get impatient and overcompensate for things. Plus, it really is a simulation because all it takes is a little fiddling around with greenhouse gases and my entire planet freezes over. If anything was more sim than game, this is it.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Ceric on September 07, 2007, 06:31:15 AM
Dr. Brain Series.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: KDR_11k on September 07, 2007, 07:29:28 AM
In case you're wondering, I got SimEarth as a kid for 20 DM and my playstyle was mostly randomly nuking things (until I figured out that another desaster actually hits all four blocks it's drawn on instead of only the one you click, I think it was fire) or just hammering the monolith on a species to cause the exodus.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 07, 2007, 07:52:54 AM
I got SimEarth as a kid for the SNES, and I also found an old guide for the PC version, "The SimEarth Bible". The SimEarth Bible was an AMAZING READ, I would often read it in bed because not only was it guide to the game, but guide to the theories, concepts, science, and backstories of all that went into the game. It explained Gaia theory, it explained the albedo effect, it pondered about terraforming planets in the future, it romanticized trichordates, and it speculated on what civilized insects might look like. It was a truly wonderufl book.

I guess it's meainly because the guide was so good that I tried again and again to play SimEarth. It was always difficult, because nothing happened quickly and my petience was sortely tested, but with time I would be able to get civilizations to the stone age and beyond.... and then run out of patience and monolith them into space.

What WAS fun was creating earthquakes under the ocean and spawning tidal waves in 8 directions at once... or using volcanoes to make new islands or continents...
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Caliban on September 07, 2007, 01:37:18 PM
Cubivore...and the importance of evolution in wildlife.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: that Baby guy on September 07, 2007, 01:38:43 PM
And color.  The importance of color, too.  If a place doesn't have color, you can't even walk there.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Caliban on September 07, 2007, 01:41:36 PM
Camouflage is very important for the wildlife, so if you don't have the right colour you will be killed instantly, or not.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: ryancoke on September 12, 2007, 11:49:49 AM
any star trek game
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 17, 2007, 04:49:43 AM
UPDATE
--------------

First off The Incredible Machine looks awesome; definitely have to show it to the boss.

Secondly, my boss is really intrigued about the Wii, mentioning how it could be a fantastic way to liven the dull nature of education. In fact, he is so interested that he wants to buy a Wii and Trauma Center (and the Planet Earth DVD's; another topic, yes, but still awesome) and setup shop in my Lab.

So pretty soon, I'll be playing Wii while being paid. Huzzah! And then I'll play Re:Mission, because that's just as interesting, and hopefully, impressive.
Title: RE:Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Kairon on September 17, 2007, 09:13:00 AM
Yeah... *sighs happily* I love the Incredible Machine.
Title: RE: Games that pertain to Science
Post by: Stogi on September 17, 2007, 10:24:42 AM
After watching a bunch of Youtube videos I would love to see a new rendition of it in the same vein as the PS3 game small planet or something; upgrade the technology and you have a classic on your hands.