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Tag Archive for Prince of Persia

Neural plasticity

It’s a wonderful thing, this adaptivity of the human brain.  My oldest child (7) has been a FPS player since he was 4.  He picked up very quickly on how to navigate a virtual environment, and FPS’es have been his preferred gametype (although now that he can read well, he seems to be developing an affinity for sim games like Civ: Revolution.

Except now there’s Prince of Persia.  Now, my son and I have a long history with the POP titles.  When he was 3, I was playing my way through POP: Sands of Time.  He still remembers it as “the scooching game” and he’s dabbled with the sequels, but never really gotten into them.

Anyway, back on track, he’s been playing this game, for about three hours (over the past two days) and he already seems to be an expert in the game mechanics.  The game is *totally* different from a FPS, the controls are used for different things, but he seems to have adapted right away.  I would have thought, with him being a FPS guy, he would have his reflexes programmed to use the triggers to shoot, etc. but I haven’t heard a single “stupid controller” complaint out of him yet.  In fact, he has the Prince dancing across the walls like he’s only ever played this type of game.