Limbo: A Creepy But Fascinating Video Game

I turned on my Xbox today and saw a teaser for Limbo.  I tried it out and was hooked.  This game is incredibly interesting, but horribly creepy.







What is so fascinating about this game is that it is different.  The vast majority of video games these days require hand contortions to get all the "moves" right.  Limbo requires two buttons - jump and apply - and one joystick since the action takes place only in two dimensions.

And when most video games are trying their hardest to cram in as many realistic effects as possible, Limbo is minimalist, using only gray scale.  Your character is hidden in shadow with no features, only the reflection of his eyes visible.

Most of the game I would classify as "puzzles" as you try to figure out how to keep moving forward.  As you descend further and further the scenery gets weirder, the opponents scarier.  And with the minimalist monochromes and strange images, the tension and the weirdness of the world just goes up as you keep descending.

I highly recommend this game, but not for small kids, even though the controls are simple enough for them.

Computers Lower the Skills of Poor Kids

I have always wondered about politicians touting computers and internet for low-income kids to "help them get a leg up".  Vast numbers of the poor can't handle basic reading and math, but a computer will somehow make them valuable workers?   What these politicians don't realize is that the vast majority of kids don't use their computer as a "computer", but rather as an entertainment vehicle for Facebook, games and porn.  It distracts them from learning, not helps.

Seems that some people are finally figuring it out.  From the NYT of all places:

Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts

When I got my first computer as a kid (queue up early 80s background music, see a 12-year old kid in front of a now-ancient Commodore Pet), I actually used it to program.  I taught myself BASIC.  I learned if-then statements and for-loops.   I wrote my own games.  It eventually led me down the path of electrical engineering ("Hey, computers are interesting, maybe I should go into that?").

Today's computers can be beneficial to learning - just like television can be - but most people won't take advantage of it and instead will be sucked into the mindless entertainment side.