Been staring at my steam game library for a quite a while for the next game I’ll pour my attention to for the coming weeks or month. . . . and like most people, I really can’t decide. I don’t know I’m stuck in a loop of buying a new game or just settling down to what I already have. A thought comes in, “What I really need are brain games! My mind is probably getting rusty for all the unhealthy habits I’ve been doing, lack of exercise, foods, count it all, I probably have the worst habit there is!!! Then As I browse my game library, these games started to pop out!”
To justify myself picking up one of these games, it got me thinking if fighting games can be also be tagged as brain games? In order to become good or better at one of these games, your brain needs to form new connections inside in order for the game to slow down a bit and be able to know what the hell is going on and stop yourself from getting your ass whooped all the time. I’ve played a bunch of fighting games when I was a kid, Marvel vs. Capcom, Street Fighter Zero 3, Tekken 5 (such an old school gamer! wew). With my teenager brain, all I want was to beat the enemy, be it button mashing or such.
Tekken 5 is where I started to learn the fundamentals of the game itself, it’s also the first time I entered the “Practice” mode of the game and performed different combos and moves of different characters. I noticed that doing this puts my skills to another level compared to my classmates. Tekken 6 moving to Tekken 8, several of my move sets are not working anymore or was nerfed from the characters. But with the fundamentals I learned from my teenage years, I can say it still keeps me in par with my colleagues whenever we have game nights (once or twice a year maybe? typical adult life. haha).
Fighting Games as Brain Games
How do I differentiate Brain Games to other games?
There are three things I noticed I’m doing differently when I’m playing a genuine brain games:
- Needing the Extra Focus: There are games where I can play while texting, talking to the phone, or having a conversation about anything. These are the games I think are solely for entertainment only whenever you feel stressed. Fighting Games are different, I need to be on the look out on what the other side has to do and counter it out. Or make sure my moves are so clean the other side don’t have a counter. As someone mentioned, it’s like we’re playing chess. and I think it’s one of the most popular brain games in the planet.
- Brain Awareness: This is the realest thing there is, whenever I’m playing a brain game, this is the very time I’m aware that my brain is sitting at the top of my head or inside my skull. I can somehow feel it being stressed out or trying to build patterns and adopting to the game and character’s habits. It’s like a physical exercise for the brain! And guess what, this is definitely how it feels trying to land that Special Attack!
- Perfect Repetition: Different scenarios but same outcome. Whenever playing a brain game, you’ll have your own pattern on solving it. Like when adding 2-digits of number, people have different approach trying to perform the solution in their brain. Some probably can add it directly, but some are adding how many tens are there before adding the rest.
Same with fighting games, you’ll have different scenarios but you always want to perfectly repeat your launcher in order to perform the combos you spent hours developing in practice mode!
Some may agree, or some may not, but I’m definitely getting pump. With the Sparking Zero coming up! I’m thinking of picking up Dragon Ball Fighter Z. 🙂
But please let me know if Demon Slayer or Naruto is still the better one to learn the fundamentals and combos!
What do you think? 🙂