Game Review: Immune Attack. Fight or be killed... FROM THE INSIDE.

Recently, my friend and Harvard economics teacher Saad Fazil referred me to a wonderful article on how gaming is being used to improve education. From 6^th graders at the high tech Quest to Learn school to border officer trainees at Loyalist College, players of educational games have had empowering results: not only do they fair better on academic and critical skill tests, but they are also more enthused about learning. This is an achievement that should not be easily dismissed: students more excited about learning are more receptive to new ideas and perspectives and continue to benefit in the long-term. 

One of the games discussed in the article caught my eye. Immune Attack is a first-person-shooter in which the player explores the 3D environment of an immunodeficient patient and teaches different cells how to fight different infections. Personally, as a high schooler, I could never get excited about biology because I found the static pages of cell diagrams distant and surreal; it took some intense amount of imagination and faith to believe all that stuff was happening in my body.

Think you miss high school? Flip open that dusty old biology textbook and let me ask you again...

Also, with so many labyrinthine (<--take a minute to think about how cool that word is) biological terms (eosinophil, reticulocyte, ductulus efferens, to name a few, and to make your head hurt a little), it was seriously a drone reading about them and trying to remember what did what.  So, suffice to say, I saw real potential in Immune Attack, developed by the Federation of American Scientists and Escape Hatch Entertainment.

Nothing says "cool" more than red, black, and ADVENTURE!

Immune Attack: Review Time!

[Note: This review is based on a 15-minute test of the game. For a more in-depth perspective, you can download it for free here!]

Pros:

I’ll start with the pros. Upon booting up the game, I was immediately impressed with the quality of the graphics, content, and voice overs. The story is engaging, the tutorials helpful, the game controls easy to understand, and the game display pleasantly uncluttered and easy on the eye. I particularly appreciated the structure of the missions: numerous scientists would chime in, making your mission seem excitingly important, and helpful information pop-ups, a mini-map, and light-up navigational “buoys” (arrows pointing you in the right direction) were readily available to clear up any confusion. Not only that, the game resisted being just a static FPS by interspersing cut sequences of vivid animation explaining and showing your mission objective. I was PLEASED and RELIEVED by the variety of gameplay because my biggest fear when looking at the promo video was that it would just be a lame, typical low-budget FPS that would get really old really quickly. First watching the biology in action and then repeating it in-game really helped solidify one’s understanding and gave one a sense of purpose. After 15 minutes, I’d already learned a surprising amount: Chemical signals inform surface proteins to bind to a monocyte’s receptors and slow it down; ICAM (another surface protein) then transforms the monocyte into a macrophage to ward off infections. Okay, so I might have gotten the specifics a tiny bit wrong, but still, this is way more than I knew about immunology thirty minutes ago!

My favorite weekend activity? Navigating my nanobot in a blood vessel while trying not to be destroyed by erthrocytes and macrophages. Duh.

Cons:

Now for the cons. These are things that are very easy to fix, but could substantially improve the gameplay. My major critique is the way the game deals with death. Upon death of your nanobot, you lose essentially all the progress you’ve made thus far and return to the beginning of the current or previous mission (it seemed to be either/or, based on the two times I accidentally kamikaze-d).  This can be particularly frustrating in the beginning of the game, in which the mission is merely navigation. Here’s an example for you: I completed the first training mission, began another mission, died near the end of that, and was returned to THE BEGINNING TRAINING MISSION. Why, pray tell, would the developers think that after almost completing the second mission, I should go back and learn again how to move my arrow keys and whatnot? It's a bit ridiculous. These kinds of problems are simple code fixes but can massively frustrate the player and destroy his game experience. Adding to this, there should be a way to defend against death or to increase nanobot health. This would make navigating the vessels more fun and interactive.

A part of Immune Attack that I did NOT get to because of my repeated deaths :(. It looks cool though. 

What would also make navigating more enjoyable would be to encourage players to inspect the non-mission-essential cells they float by. So far, there is no incentive, save the “I feel smarter!” incentive. Unfortunately, as we all know, that’s really not much incentive. I floated by lots of purple and green blobs and, unsurprisingly, I felt no desire to examine them. The game developers should learn from people’s natural love to collect and meet mini-goals. For instance, they could add a “photo book” type feature, in which learning about a new cell adds its picture to your book. Collecting photos would make you more eager to examine your surroundings  and make new discoveries. In addition to priceless satisfaction, rewards for collecting could include increased nanobot health capacity.

People like to collect the weirdest things. Giant Plush Microbes, including "Sperm Cell", "Human Ovum", and the quintessential favorite, "Toxic Mold". At Think Geek.

Lastly, though the user interface design is nice and clean, more feedback mechanisms should be added. Specific buttons/features should be lit up when they are discussed to make the gameplay more comprehensible.

FINAL NOTE: The quality of this game really impressed me. I have little doubt that substituting this game for a high school immunology course would leave the student better educated about immunology, with a greater capacity for explaining details and how specific cells perform their function, as well as increased excitement for school and learning (I'm definitely more than a little biased though, since I went to a bad public school and learned very little from my science classes). (Edit: Here's some evidence that it increases students' confidence with molecular biology! Woot. Gimme some of that!)

 Do I feel it reaches the pinnacle educational game (in which the game is so fun that it would be downloaded just for entertainment)? Not really. But it defied my expectations by being well-designed, interesting, and relatively fun. I know my first post was kind of a downer on current educational offerings; testing this one out made me realize I should learn and explore more before I make overarching judgments. ANYWAY, enuff for now. Peace!